Saturday morning I woke up to the dripping sound of melting icicles hitting the metal wheel barrel that I had inadvertently left outside for the winter. I suppose there was nothing inadvertent about it, but It sounds better to say it was an “inadvertent” thing rather than saying I had just been sheer lazy last autumn, doesn’t it? What a difference a week or two makes though, when you’re from Chicago. One week it’s warm and the next week there’s snow.
I grubbed down breakfast straight quick and had an early start of it. Mom wanted to leave earlier for work that day on account of the icy and snowy roads. I was anxious to see Bob that morning so I was all for it.
I didn’t see Phoebe that morning. Remember? - The older hottie at the “information desk” that I had sort of flirted with last time. Instead, it was some old lady that rocked gray hair, polyester clothing, and smelled like liniment and cough drops. She was just as friendly and smiley though. And she kept calling me “dear” which if you think about it, it’s kind of the same thing. When a girl calls you “honey” or “darling” and an old lady calls you “dear”; it’s all the same thing.
After being called “dear” and a “nice boy” like a million times, I made my way towards Bob. I remembered how to get to the cancer unit and I tried not to think too much about dead leaves and code blues. I was buzzed into the unit and then I went through the routine of making myself as germ free as possible; I washed my hands, put on the scrub pants, scrub shirt, hair net and footie slippers. I skipped the grim reaper mask this time or surgical mask, whatever you call them. The nurse said they weren’t required and I’d rather not wear it anyway. This time I felt as if I could visit the cancer unit without the mask as my patina yet still offer an appropriate countenance.
I walked into Bobs’ room and he immediately blurted out, “Phil K Swift … Neighborhood Street Rocker in the Emmer Effin hizzy! Me brizzy.”
He shook my hand and then summoned by yelling, “Nurse Mary … will you be so merry as to bring your merry self in here to marry me, Mary?!” Bob could have pressed the “nurse button” on his TV remote control but he obviously preferred yelling.
“Right on, it’s not crazy to ask someone to marry you if you’re just joking around?” I said randomly.
“Who’s joking around?” Bob smirked.
Moments later, Nurse Mary walked in with swollen red eyes and sniffles but she flashed a smile at us to hide what she may have been thinking. She cleared her throat and speciously threw on a more permanently contrived smile to counteract her teary eyed face, “Hi Bob” she said.
Then she looked at me and said, “Hey I remember you from last week, Bob talks about you and his break crew every day.” Her face had finally reversed, and with a gleaming look in her eyes she said, “I’d ask you what you want Bob, but I can tell by that tone in your voice … I know what you want.”
Bob replied, “Yep, you know!”
“Red or orange this time?” Mary asked as she was half way out of the room.
“Red for both of us,” Bob said, “STAT,” he yelled. “That’s another hospital word kid, Stat. It means right away.”
I epiphanically blurted, “Ohh popsicles?”
“It’s never too early or never too late for popsicles; popsicles for breakfast, popsicles for lunch, and popsicles for dinner. Can you guess what I eat at snack time?” Bob asked while raising his brow-less brows.
“Popsicles?” I smirked.
“You know it kid,” Bob said while beaming. Then he whispered to me, “Mary has been crying today, one of the rooms next to mine now has an empty bed. She’s crying over a damn empty bed again. Doesn’t she know that someone will be filling that damn thing again in just a few short days? … Women … Always crying over empty beds or broken heels or something,” he decried.
Mary walked in swiftly and passed out the popsicles while laughing half heartedly, “Here is your icy cold popsicles to combat the fire-ee hot chemo - as Bob likes to say,” she said while looking at me.
We took off the Popsicle wrappers and before I could eat it, Bob clanged our ice cold popsicles together and said “Cheers kid!”
I requited, “Nostrovia”
“Ohh, you’re a Polak?” Bob asked, “ … Me too! Mowamy po polsku?”
“No,” I said, I never learned how to speak it. Even though I didn’t speak polish, I had heard my grandma speak it enough to know what he had asked me.
While sucking down the popsicles I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out Bob’s NSR nameplate. I draped it around his neck and said, “And now … NSR is officially in the hizzy!”
Bob smirked and then told me something with a smile, which seemed to belie his true thoughts. He seemed to be obfuscating, “I have some good news and some not so good news, but I don’t like not so good news, so I’m only going to tell you the good news. In fact, it is great news,” he said as he paused, looked at his NSR nameplate, smiled and then continued, “They are stopping all of my chemotherapy. I am going to receive blood transfusions about every week or so … Hey, check this out kid - once my immunity level goes back up. I am going to be free and clear to get out of this crazy joint!”
“That is awesome news,” I said.
I looked at Bobs I.V. bag stand and I noticed that he only had one bag of saline pumping through his veins. Bob took his nameplate off and was staring at it admiringly and said, “So anyway, I should be out of this dump by next weekend … We can all go breakin’ together at those rinks you’ve been telling me about.
The doctor told me: Bob, you’re a young man; you should go out and enjoy the things that young men are enjoying. Go live your life, life is short, so enjoy every minute of it… So Swift kid, be ready, Boogie Bob is going to be rockin’ out somewhere next Friday or Saturday night,” he said with his eyes ascending upwards.
I told Bob, “The whole crew can’t wait to meet you! I’ve been telling them all about you and it’ll be cool, it will be a stone gas!”
“It will kid, I can’t wait to meet everyone too,” he said.
Bob and I talked back and forth for about an hour or so; but he was not as lucid the last half hour that I was there. Bob would say something that kind of made sense for a few minutes, then he would drift into sleep or a state of mind that didn’t make sense. In his state of stupor he said, “Did you know Phil - when you die and you go to heaven they give you chocolate and feathers? … chocolate because it tastes good and feathers so everyone can get tickled all of the time, it’s a nonstop place of laughter …”
I just laughed and said, “Oh yeah?” I didn’t know what else to say.
After that Bob asked, “Hey Phil, Can you go get me some water?”
So I started towards the hallway to get him some.
But he yelled back gruffly, “ … And HEY, don’t get me any of that foo foo flavored water shee-ott … NO FOO FOO water! Just get me some plain water … H2O.”
I walked out of the room, grabbed water from the nurses’ station water cooler, and Mary commented, “Non foo foo water for Bob?”
I smiled and said, Yep.”
Upon my return, I gave Bob his water, he took a sip, and then Bob turned on his side to see me, with wider eyes than he had shown in a little while and said “Hey man, I’m going to give you a ticket.”
“A ticket for what?” I asked quizzically
Bob chuckled, “I’m going to give you a ticket for not drinking.”
His seemingly stultifying remark begged me to ask again, “Wazup my brother?”
“You don’t have a drink in your hand; I’m going to give you a ticket,” he said.
I finally understood and epiphanically said, “Oh, you want to have a drink with me, you don’t want to drink alone, you’re joking around … ok, I get it.”
Bob shook his head yes into his pillow and wincingly smiled. I hastily darted back to the nurses’ station and told the nurses that Bob wanted to have a drink with me. But when I got back, Bob was drifting in and out of sleep..
I wasn’t sure what to make of Bobs random comments; was it the chemo withdrawal, was it the leukemia, or maybe he was just tired. I wasn’t sure. However as I sat there I thought about how Bob was going to be joining us NSR’s outside of these hospital walls in just one short week, so that made me feel better, as I watched Bob fight to keep himself awake.
Bob eventually drifted off to sleep in the middle of my story about the previous nights escapades at Suburbanite. He liked hearing me talk about the breakin’ that had been rocked out by us NSR’s and Rockefeller. And he laughed like a freak show about the nitwits that had used paper towels to smoke their reefer. I also told him about the foggy windows in the parking lot and the hockered burgers and all, but he fell asleep during the best part of my recap, about how I had finally scored some chicks numbers.
I hung out for a few more minutes, just in case he woke up again but it became obvious that Bob was going to continue napping, so I bailed. The only thing that bugged me was that I didn’t get a chance to tell him that we were all going up to Chicagoland Rink that same night. I wanted him to feel like he was a part of every moment but I didn’t want to wake him; he looked worn out. Bob was clenching his NSR nameplate in his hand while sleeping as I walked out into the cancer unit hallway. I divested of the hospital garb this time and headed home.