It’s taken five weeks to track
Betty from ICU to rehab, until last night after Shabbat our visit-the-sick and
elderly (Betty is both) listserv confirmed that her smashed eye and hip are
healing. Rehab it is.
There’s only one bus that
services her facility from mainland Jerusalem. In a loop it goes, and goes
again. Today is the first day of heavy rain. The bus shelters in Israel are
made of tiny grille work, so you can watch for your bus. The rain ricochets mud
through the grille onto my face. The kid who spent every summer at Brighton
Beach finally acquires freckles. There’s something odder. It takes me time to
find my glasses but when I do I see it. A doorless red booth with a bygone
phone and a woman, leaning against its wet glass, speaking Russian on her
mobile.
The rehab ward clerk tells me
Betty’s room number in English, and although it’s only an easy left she
gesticulates as if I will be walking to Lebanon. I arrive at Betty’s door just
as it’s closing behind a twinkly nurse’s aide, who, pulling on hospital gloves,
polls the patient, “You made pee-pee? It’s okay, it’s okay.”
Two men in scrubs wait too. One
is necklaced by a stethoscope and carries a chart. The other pushes a cart of
tubes and tubing, a phlebotomist. The phlebotomist is Arab, I can tell by his
accent and red gold wedding ring. Both are chumming away about, this I do not
miss, kiduri regel – soccer, which annoys me. Is Canada not
the second most humongous country in the world? Is hockey, therefore, not more
important than playing basketball with your feet?
As I’m framing my case in Hebrew,
Stethoscope is paged and rushes off. Wedding Ring exchanges seats with a
newspaper, holds it up, and reads.
Page one center features the
female Arab doctor in Cleveland. I’ve read what she threatens to do to Jews.
Having an Arab read it three feet away makes me feel, who knows why, embarrassed. I watch Wedding Ring’s
response. The lines and colors on his face shift, from engrossed to bewildered,
to appalled.
