January 22, 2005

What's in a spleen?

According to chinese medicine, quite a bit.

And it's funny how you can wake up thinking today I will do this, and instead fate slaps you on the ass and you get spun in a completely different direction.

Today i was going to walk to Red Rocks, although there are no seals there at the moment. I don't really mind as they smell bad and one threatened to chase me last time I was there. Instead I got a call from the mum of that boy in town for X-air early this morning and he was in hospital with a torn spleen and they were still six hours from Wellington. So I went to hospital instead.

On the way to town I walked with our downstairs neighbour. She was on her way to National Radio for an interview with Kim Hill on frying chicken, because she is from the deep south of America and ostensibly this makes her qualified to speak on the topic. (She reviews books for a living and does a regular slot for them). She looked quite good, which is nice as her and her partner of many years busted up recently after a succession of late night screaming matches that clearly penetrated the floor/ceiling separating our respective flats.

Once in town a nice old Jehovah's witness of Pacific Island descent in his best navy suit and of a ripe old age came up to me and gave me some reading, "Jesus's miracles - fact or fiction?" and invited me to a 'meeting' tomorrow. He reminded me of my Poppa. Just without the bottle of Waitemata permanently affixed to his hand.

I was up at the hospital for quite awhile. The boy (he's my age, most boys my age are boys) was all wired up and prepped for surgery, but he was conscious and quite responsive. He got me to dampen a flannel for him and i asked this Orderlie (that looks wrong) who was either deaf or very rude and fond of aggressive gesturing, and I used the basin he sent me to, but apparently the wrong tap because this jet of water shot horizontally maybe five metres across the room. Lucky that Orderlie didn't see me.

Anyway i'd been there for a few hours, and the boy starts engaging me in deep and meaningfuls, which was fine, I've known him and his family for maybe ten years and his parents are Jake's godparents and were really supportive when mum was sick. But then he asked me aboutthe breakup with Mark, if I had a boyfriend, and if I remembered the first time we met, which i didn't, but apparently i was sitting on his deck, our mum's were chatting, then we went and watched Top Gun. Then he asked if he had been my first date. By date, he is referring to when we were about 14, he won a dinner for two to a fancy winery restaurant in Tauranga and he took me. Cute yes, but date?

Then he says, "Did it hurt?"

I look down at my busted finger and start to recite the tale, and he cuts in, "No, when you fell from Heaven"?

Arrrghhh. I started to feel some English Patient neurosis coming on and resorted to reading the paper aloud to avoid embarrassment. I don't really blush anymore. At least, not unless I like what I am hearing. He's actually quite sweet but really. I also think this is a good indication he's going to be okay.

So apparently, the big earthquake that reclaimed the land past Lambton Quay happened 150 years ago tomorrow. Eerie? I think so.

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