OCR Text |
Show 187 Highland Jig Isla ("pronounced 'Eye-la,'" she had told rne - her father named her after an island in Scotland) has come into my room again. She is nursing one-to-one with me, meaning that she has no other patients but me, but sometimes she must leave the room. She is never gone long. She is Scottish. My ancestry is Scottish but she is so recently Scottish she still has the brogue. Her speech reminds me of my Uncle Frank, who moved to Oregon from Scotland when he was thirty years old, and I have told her so. She smiled when I said this and remarked that, with my red hair and what remains of my childhood freckles, I look like her countrymen. I am honored. "I'm getting quite stiff," I tell Isla. She is looking at my curving arms and fingers. She knows by their degree of contortion that my legs are already as stiff as possible, drawn up under me, feet turned in and under, toes under-curled. "I'll call," she is saying as she reaches for the telephone. I am hating her making this call. It is 3:00 in the morning. "Dr. Chappie has ordered us to turn on the pump but only for a while," she is saying, hanging up the telephone. We have been at this see-saw of overdose and under-dose for some time now. We |