Maran - The new old me: My Late-Life Reinvention

AUGUST 30, 2012

W hen the knife slips, I feel nothing. Everything freezes: the knife, my breath, time. I go numb. Dumb.

I know that Ive cut my finger, and I know that its bad. But its too soon for pain. I hold the ring finger of my right hand to my face and I see things I shouldnt: blood, tendon. Is that bone?

I grab a dish towel with my good hand and wrap it around my bleeding hand and thrust the mess into the air.

Instinctively I call out my wifes name. For fifteen years, thats what I did whenever something terrible or wonderful happened. I called out my wifes name. My wife is four hundred miles away, but old habits die hard. Nearest emergency room, I tell myself. Hurry.

I dont know where the nearest hospital is, or how to get there. This is Los Angeles, not Manhattan, my childhood hometown of the geometric grid; not Oakland, where I lived for the past thirty years, with its numbered east-west avenues. I dont know where anything is, nor how to get there in L.A.s twisted gridlock of four-lane streets and scrimmaging intersections.

The nearest hospital, Siri tells me, is fifteen minutes away. Everything in L.A. is fifteen minutes away, the locals say, and it takes an hour to get there. The dish towel on my finger is soaked with blood already. I hope this time the locals are wrong.

I replace the towel with a fresh one, grab my purse and my keys, maneuver my upraised arm and then the rest of me into the drivers seat of my car. I dont want to be in the drivers seat of my car. I want to be in the passenger seat of my wifes car.

I drive south on Silver Lake Boulevard, straight into the setting sun. At the intersection of Silver Lake and Sunset, Siri tells me to turn north. If I knew where north was, I wouldnt be talking to Siri. Its easier to turn left than right without the use of my right hand. I decide that north is left.

I pass the sprawling Scientology campus on Sunset and pull into the ERs circular drive. A sign on the wall reads DROP-OFFS ONLY. NO PARKING .

L.A. hiking trails have valets. Real estate open houses. Ice-cream parlors. Boutiques. But not the ER, where a valet is actually needed. Not here, where the not-rich people go.

I decide against arguing with the security guard that Im both driver and patient, and therefore entitled to leave my car here while I drop myself off. I drive to the nearest garage, spin up and up and up the circular ramp, find a space on the fourth floor. Im too dizzy to search for the elevator. I get dizzier, trudging down the urine-soaked stairwell, right hand held high.

The ER doors slide open. I follow the receptionists eyes to my right hand. Apparently the newspaper rule If it bleeds, it leads also applies here. She jumps up, rushes me into a treatment room, and runs out. A tall, balding doctor appears, snapping on gloves, and then a nurse, her hands already gloved. Neither of them makes eye contact with me. Neither of them says a word. The nurse lowers my hand from above my head, removes the dish towel, and deposits it in the hazardous waste bin. She lines the doctors lap with blue-and-white Chux and sets my right hand into his upturned palm. His hand and the Chux turn red.

The doctor squints at my wedding ring. Well need to cut that off, he says.

You cant do that, I say.

The doctor raises his eyebrows at me. Im sure he sees plenty of crazies in this ER; how would he know Im not one of them? Maybe I should tell him about the Dr. Phil moment I had yesterday, when I actually thought, Its time to move on with my life, and I looked at my wedding ring, wondering what it would feel like to take it off for the first time in a decade, to be me without it, without the story it used to tell, and then closed my eyes and pulled it off.

I put the ring in my underwear drawer and closed the drawer. I looked at my left hand without my ring on it and put the ring back on. I unhooked the gold chain around my neck and hung the ring on the chain and looked at my left hand without my ring on it and took the ring off the chain and put it back on my finger.

Problem identified. What I want is not to move on with my life. What I want is my old life back.

How long, I wondered, will it take me to stop wanting that? Will I be seventy, eighty, ninety, single and still wearing this wedding ring?

Baby steps, I told myself, and put the ring on my right hand instead of my left. It felt weirdscary, sadbut also accurate: not exactly married, not exactly not.

I cant let you cut that ring off, I tell the doctor.

He frowns. The nurse whisks the bloody Chux off his lap and replaces them with a clean set.

Im sure you cut wedding rings off all the time, I say. But my wife and I are separated. Im still hoping

The doctor stares at me. There is a certain narrowing of his eyes, a certain clenching of his jaw. I realize that although its 2012 and gay marriage is legal in seven states and were in one of the worlds gayest cities, this white-haired, white-faced man is not happy to be holding the hand of a woman who has a wife.

I watch as his conscience kicks in, or the diversity training the hospital made him take, or the nondiscrimination policies they require him to uphold. He reassembles his face. Too late. Message received.