Your Hip Surgery, My Headache, by David Sedaris

It was nice to escape, if only for a few hours. Make someone Me Bols of nuts and water glasses. At the table, I mentioned the lady who had groaned me at CVS. Then Mike told us about a woman who had spotted Ted Koppel carrying a basket of lawyers in a farm stand in Maryland.

“Do guacamole?” She asked.

“No business fucking,” he said.

I recapitulated the evening for Hugh the next morning, saying that there were many more festivals to come. “I hope you can come with me at Antonio Christmas lunch in two weeks. We had so much fun last year, do you remember? ”

“Fifteen days!” Hugh made a gesture towards his tense leg. “Look at me!” Are you out of your mind? “

John, who left that morning to buy a juice, put a glass of something that flowed like wet cement in front of his brother and raised his voice, which was different from him. “My God, David. He has just undergone major surgery! ”

I raised my voice in return. “Well, excuse me!” I thought he was finally could improve!“”

By outsourcing Hugh’s care, I got out of his recovery. Now I wanted to come back, but it was too late. After saying, “Whatever you do, don’t give her a bell,” Amy brought Hugh a vacuum that she put a few quarters.

Noise,, noise,, noiseI heard while sitting at my office. Clang, Clang.

“How can I help?” I would ask, run in the room.

“John is below,” said Hugh. “Go get him and tell him that I have to put my socks.”

I would roll up my sleeves. “I can do that for you.”

“Go get John.”

The two were inseparable and gathered every morning to dissect their dreams. “So I’m back in Port Angeles under a black sky, fry – by fraying – the slots in a pan”, I caught John saying a week after arriving, when he was sitting at the edge of the bed, massaging oil at the feet of Hugh. “I may be wrong, but I interpret it as meaning that I could use more copper and iron in my diet.”

During meals, the brothers thought about their childhood in Africa. “Remember that the CIA agent who had a crush for mom in Djibouti?” “What was the name of this Belgian nun in Ethiopia to whom we have given to our monkey?”

It was difficult to join the conversation. This is in contrast to Amy visits. Shortly after Hugh’s operation, she fell asleep her elderly rabbit, Tina. A few days later, with a stuffed nose and with swollen eyes, she came to dinner.

“Is it a cold?” John asked.

“In fact,” said Amy, “I think I’m allergic to Tina’s ghost.”

Hugh has a sister named Ann, and one morning I entered the dining room and found her talking with her on the speaker. “Do you have enough chairs at ease?” She asked.

The answer would normally be yes, but, due to his hip, he had to be raised while sitting. “There are a few who are ok if I put a cushion on them,” said Hugh, making me fill his cup of coffee. “At the office of my doctor yesterday, I saw one that would be perfect, but there is no way that David allows it in the apartment. It’s too ugly. “

“Well, screw it,” I heard Ann. “We are talking about your health here!”

The next morning, she sent an SMS that said “David helps you?”

Before Hugh could answer, I took his phone and typed: “None at all”, adding an emoji – my first time – a mixture.

I expected that she replied with “you are kidding” or “I don’t believe her for a second”.

Instead, she wrote: “This kind of angry put. But then he is so involved.”

Rather than sending him a text, I returned to my office and I took the writing in my newspaper. Self-involved,, IndeedI thought. Hugh had not shown me the chair he was talking about Ann, but, if it was really as ugly, I’m sure he didn’t want it either. Why was I the villain here?

Hugh left his pain relievers after the third day. After the eighth, he put aside his walker and was able to move with a cane. He arrived in the hall, slowly, then to the corner. Now that he didn’t need as much attention, I started to take John to see a little from the city. One afternoon, on train C, we came across a man who had peed on himself-and probably did it for a long time. The stench of the old urine was so intense that it had emptied half of the metro car. Neither awake nor asleep, he was sitting down next to a bottle of dribble vodka, mumbled.

CheckI thought, since it is something that every visitor in New York needs. After looking at this man for a while or two, John noticed not on the smell or on the hats of Santa Claus ridiculous that the man wore but on his hands. “Have you noticed how beautiful they are?” He asked.

I took him to lunch in a cold meats in Carnegie Hill. Just as our orders arrived, I heard someone ask, “Can we have a photo?”

Should I? I thought, looking at my right and realizing that the person did not speak to me but of Kevin Spacey.

“Wasn’t he canceled?” John asked much stronger than he needed.

“It always counts as a star observation,” I told him, thinking, Check!

We went to the Met and MumaThen to the most garish of souvenir shops so that John can buy fleece sweaters for his grandsons. In Times Square, he stood motionless and took photos of display signs while people who work in this neighborhood cursed the pair of us. I told Hugh when we got home: “I even took him to see the tree at the Rockefeller Center.”

It was enormous, because no one in their good direction goes near the Rockefeller Center of Thanksgiving in mid-January.

“What do you want, a medal?” Hugh asked.

I tried to remember that he was still suffering, and that, trapped inside for every thirty minutes a day, he was going a little crazy. It was difficult for both of us, but became surprisingly easier when, shortly before Christmas, John returned to Washington. That morning, I accompanied Hugh to the office of his surgeon for a follow-up meeting.

“Questions?” Dr. Reif asked after withdrawn Hugh’s bandage to examine the injury.

“Yes,” I said. “Do you see a reason why he can’t prepare for Christmas dinner?” We have nine invited to come, and he threatens to make him answer. ”

The doctor replaced the bandage. “Oh, I think he’s up to par.

“Padding of a box?“I said when we were back in the street.” Falmage, period? As if we had Turkey on Christmas Day! This man did not Know who he was talking to, is he?

“No, he didn’t do it,” sniffed Hugh, raising his cane to greet a taxi. And, with that, he was back. Christmas almost killed him, but no shortcut was taken. He made a second entry for vegetarians and two desserts. Given a few more days, he might even have produced his own butter.

I left New York in early January to go back on tour, and when I saw Hugh again, six weeks later, it was fully found. Walk, swim, go up and down the stairs. “It’s a miracle!” He said.

I once met a young man who had discovered by accident that one of his kidneys died in him. The doctors withdrew him and when I asked what had happened to the cavity, he said that his other organs had moved slightly to occupy it. This is what happened to space that Hugh had filled with his pain. It is not as if we now devote it exclusively to politics or the appreciation of art, although the two subjects grow, as is the word of our families and our friends. As he becomes his old self, the pleasure of our life together has in a way swollen, fulfilling everything except half a bottle of oxycontin and a very high toilet seat now bringing together spider canvases next to an aluminum walker in the damp basement and inviting our building. ♦