The #8 Bus

Erin Fitch, Oregon Health & Science University

Waiting for the 7:38
Portland is quieter than it should be.
It is a polite and well-behaved city.
The cacophony of other cities is dulled here, maybe by the water or the trees.
We're conscious of our neighbors and carefully avoiding them.
And the city is hesitant to assert itself.
There is no enormous Texas sky to catch all the noise and hurl it back, reflecting off buildings, chasing ambulances, inflaming passionate arguments between two women in love.
The clouds soak up murmurs and rain them down in winter.

Terwilliger
I wanted to kiss the back of your neck, the way the hair curled over the collar of your scrubs and the crookedness of your right ear. You stared out the foggy window, your book forgotten on your lap, and I tried to see what you saw. I couldn't see your face, and I am already forgetting how your head was set upon your shoulders. The length of your stride as you left the bus and walked out of sight.

Nearing the VA hospital
The veteran next to me says he drinks lighter fluid and smokes 2 packs a day, down from four last year. The driver laughs and says, "you gonna have trouble findin' a girlfriend like that, honey." Non-spontaneous combustion.

Another leans in and says, "you must be a Christian" and I grin and he says "you've got long hair and are wearing a skirt" and I nod and he says that the rest of the bus is going to hell and that the passion of the Christ wasn't bloody or violent enough for his tastes and that he loves Jesus because he saved his arms after both legs were blown off in the war.

At the end
This small yellow man has cost the hospital "over a million dollars" in care. He has "the face of death," as described in the textbooks. A "perfect example" of the symptoms of liver failure, and we scrutinize his nail beds and yellow eyes and swollen stomach. His daughter plays around our legs and colors a picture for him, and we palpate his abdomen to listen for all the normalcy in this man with an "idiopathic" illness, to learn our vocabulary and detached concern.