New York Scary Tales - Fall In The Spring

Eric falls down a lot. As a result, he's learned to sense when it's happening and usually roll onto his back with a competence that a butoh dancer would admire. (I know this being a butoh dancer.)Sometimes though on the gravelly sidewalks he catches a little of what he calls "road rash" - minor scrapes and bruises. It's all part of a life that begins with a birth trauma.

I sometimes try to catch him, as the Cure song goes, but other times it happens before I can grab him, or while I'm distracted by something else going on around us in the streets. I curse my slowness and my spaced-out, schizoaffective nature when this happens, although I'm often taking note of several things on going on that he missed. "Did you see that one? How about her? Him?"

Usually when this happens, a number of people rush to offer help, hovering over us a little uncertainly. The "decent human being" instinct is to help someone who's fallen, especially someone disabled, and part of me is happy to see that it still exists, but my dear husband hates this kind of help, even from me when this happens. "I'm fine! I can get up!" He'll shout. Eric has a will of iron and have lived through circumstances that would have broken other people into a thousand pieces. I'm not trying to get all inspiration-porny here, disabled or not, I'm serious. And so were these two cops. As they solemnly examined the trickle of blood on his cheek I was dabbing with a sanitary wipe, they said they needed to detain us until Eric could be looked at by an EMT. 

What.

I had flashbacks of that time I had been dragged to Bellevue against my will after blowing up at some clown who tried "negging" me on the street once. (That day was also, by the way, how I learned what "negging" -trying to get a girl to sleep with you by putting her down- was). I was stuck waiting for hours in a poorly lit psych ward where the only way to gage time was a television that blared out one contrived sitcom rerun after another. Half-hour blocks of time went by, Eric on the outside trying to locate me in the system (he says it went smoother after he explained I wasn't there under criminal charges...Bellevue also took in EDP arrests, who's wrists were cuffed to their stretchers, unlike us "regular" captives) and me gaining the sympathies of a Haitian nurse who was planning her birthday party out in Bed-Stuy to bring me enough unwanted fruit cups to make a vegetarian meal. 

Twice I needed to use the bathroom and both times I needed to get permission. The first time in the outer intake section I wasn't allowed to fully shut the door and a large dishwater blonde nurse stood between me and the rest of the room. At one point I heard her bellow at one of the other waiting patients to sit up straight and quit trying to peek past her into the toilet. The second time, in the ward, I was allowed to shut the door, but after all the fuss of the first time it just made me even more suspicious and I was convinced there was a camera hidden in there.

Eventually I was able to convince an English doctor I deserved release to my husband's care by saying we needed to perform Schwitter's Ur Sonate in a week and reciting part of it.

Now, I had to convince these overly concerned officers to let release my husband to my care, and that we weren't about to bleed coronavirus all over the street, the unspoken concern lingering in the air…literally.

Eventually they also got sick of waiting for an ambulance because one of them asked "Do you live around here?"

"We're a block over" I said. "Getting home won't be a problem." They gave Eric some simple tests, like asking him how many fingers they were holding up, etc., and let us be on our way.