The morning after

June 28, 2025

So let's continue filling in the gaps in the Madlandia timeline. This one, the gap between when I was wheeled out of the ambulance and the next day when a panel of experts tried to assess just how mad I was and what to do with me should go fairly quickly because I took no photos at all. There şisshould have been one though, and could have been two. The should have been shot was of Rachael lying in the small, cramped window sill at the edge of the room, too short and narrow for her to stretch out. She managed to through the night in spite of that, no doubt helped in this because she was undoubtedly exhausted from my eccentric behavior over the last several days. We'll come back to that second photo later.

After initial orientation to our room which we were fortunate to share with no one else, a nurse came in to hook me to an EKG and then gave me a Valium so I could hopefully get some sleep. It worked, and I passed out shortly afterwards and didn't wake up for the next seven hours, feeling the most refreshed and unmuddled that I have since this mania began.

In the morning Rachael and I compared notes and speculated about the day, and then the breakfast menu is brought in for me to mark my selections. Rachael doesn't get a free meal delivered to her room, so she walks down the hall to fend for herself. Before she leaves though she takes a series of photos to help her find her way back again:

She returns maybe a half hour later, happy to have found granola and her favorite flavor of yogurt, and of course coffee; and I'm feeling proud of her for succeeding in finding her way there and back in this unfamiliar setting,

While she's out I order and enjoy my own breakfast from the Cardiac Menu, so named because it adheres to principles of healthy eating - not too nunchucks fat, not too much salt, etc. it's a fine and filling breakfast, one that surprises me by how well it suits me. Who says there's no such thing as a free breakfast?

Also while Rachael is out the orderly comes in, a seemingly bright, upbeat young woman who comes around to check on issues, adjust the electrodes on my EKG, and so on. She has an accent, one that to me sounds Slavic - maybe she's Serbian, Croatian or even Russian. She seems quite approachable so I ask her about it, and she responds with surprise that she doesn't have an accent. So I ask where she grew up. Here, she says. She was born in Portland and has lived here all her life. She's still open to this line of interrogation, so I ask about her parents, and learn that they're first generation Ukrainians. Oh, of course.

So that opens up a whole dimension to the conversation, and I tell her about the exciting news I saw on the newsreel this morning (I forgot to mention that I've got a large screen TV in front of me to help pass the time): that Bob Dylan sang 'The Times They Are a Changin' for the first time in public yesterday in a concert in Athens, Greece that Obama sponsored as a fund raiser for Ukrainian war refugees. It's Dylan's call to the Peopls to rise up again, as they did in the Vietnam War era incame of age in. I imagine a flood of Americans standing up in rebellion and reclaiming their country before its time too late, so I share this news with her but it draws a complete blank. She's never heard of the song, and thinks maybe she's heard of this guy although she doesn't recognize the face:

So I give her a brief background, say I'll write down its name later and leave it for her, and then turn to the local Ucpkranians and the fact that they no longer show up at Lovejoy Bakery. Have rhey all go one underground for their security, I wonder. And then the subject comes closer to home and she starts talking about her family - relatives who have been lost or live in constant terror or are alive but permanently scarred, and her eyes start welling up. She composes herself, we chat some more, and then she's off to see to the next patient.

This is the photo I'd like to have taken to help remember her by, but of course too risky and can't be done. I wish I'd written this down sooner though when the image was fresher. Already I've forgotten her name a pond hair color, not that either is an important fact about her, I'd just like to remember.

__________

Soon I hear Rachael's voice out in the hall - she found her way back! - and then we pick up where we left off, talking about my status. We don't know yet how long we'll be here, so she decides to do something about the fact that our devices need charging and decides to walk to the nearest electronics store to get a charger. Like before, she takes a few shots to help her find her way there and back again.

Soon after she returns we get an overview of the day, and before long the primary doctor overseeing my case steps in, and the fun begins.

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