Charlotte Roche Two-Book Collection: Wetlands and Wrecked. Charlotte Roche

in case the supervisor happens to walk past. They don’t want to be caught smoking in the nurses’ station. Better to chat on the hallway while shifting something around. They can’t fool me. I creep past them. Nobody acknowledges me. I think I’m going so slow they can’t see me with their hurried glances.

      It’s just as bright in the hallway as in my room. The linoleum reflects the light back up from the floor. It looks like gray water. I walk on the water. It must have something to do with the pain medication. I still know the way to the elevator. You retain that even over the course of several days. The escape route. I lie there in bed the whole time in pain and know exactly how to get out—without even being conscious of the fact that I know. Out and around to the left. There are bad religious paintings hung all over the place. The nurses probably put them up to please their parents. They all end up here sooner or later. The parents. Proctology unit. Oncology. Palliative care. Something will bring them here. Unless they care for them at home, which I think is the best way.

      I bend over and hold my stomach because I can’t reach my ass in this position. It hurts. I’ve made it to the glass door of the central part of the building. I just have to pound the buzzer like Robin and the giant glass door will open automatically. I stand there and don’t go through. I have no money with me. Crap. Have to go back the whole way. No one acknowledges me on the way back, either. I guess I am allowed to wander around. I’m also allowed to take care of my wound myself. It’s in an extremely unhygienic spot. Pretty much the most unhygienic spot Robin can imagine. Room 218. Mine. Open the door and in I go. Back to peace and quiet. Thanks to my idiotic forgetfulness I’ve wasted a lot of energy. I look in the drawer of my metal nightstand. There are a few small bills in it. Mom must have put them in there while I was sleeping. Or did she tell me she had? Or did I dream it? My memory’s gone to shit. In any event, I’ve got money now. I hold it in my hand as I walk. They don’t make sheets with pockets yet. My ass is getting used to the motion. I’m a bit quicker now than on the first trip. Probably because the pills are taking effect. I stare at the floor the whole way. We’ll see how far I get before someone comments on my attire. I punch the button. The automatic door swings open and this time I go through. Beyond is a whole new world. Here different diseases mingle. Ass patients and ass nurses aren’t the only ones out and about. An old woman with tubes in her nose is walking around. The tubes run into a backpack that’s attached to a walker.

      She obviously has something wrong with her head—not a proctology case. That’s a change of pace. She has beautiful white hair that’s in a long braid coiled on top of her head. And a nice bathrobe on. Black with three-dimensional pink flowers on it. And nice slippers. Made of black velvet. You can see the shape of a bunion through the slippers. Like a tumor on her big toe. It’s growing sideways over the other toes. And by doing that it pushes the joint of the big toe farther and farther to the outside. Until it’s quite far away from the rest of the foot. A bunion like that is a destructive force. It bursts out of all your shoes over time. It’s about to destroy those velvet slippers. The toes end up like teeth in a jaw, crowding and displacing each other and becoming crooked. But the big toe always wins the battle. I know it. I have a bunion, too. Everyone in our family does. Father’s and mother’s side. Very bad genes, all things considered. The big toe always wants to go where the other toes belong, so little toes keep having to be surgically removed. My uncle, my grandmother, and my mother hardly have any toes left. Their feet end up looking like devil’s hooves.

      I want to think about something nicer so I try to find a pleasant end to my granny observations.

      Okay, even her spider veins are pretty. I used to call these weblike formations varicose veins. But they’re actually called spider veins. Everything about her is pretty. Except for the bunion and the tubes. The tubes will soon be taken out, I’m sure. Hopefully she won’t have to die with them in.

      I push the button for the elevator, cross my fingers for the handsome old woman, and say hello to her very loudly. In case she’s already hard of hearing.

      Old people are sometimes startled when someone addresses them. They’ve already gotten used to being invisible to those around them. Then they get happy that someone has noticed them.

      The elevator arrives from above.

      I can tell from the red arrow. If I still remember correctly from my sterilization, the cafeteria’s in the basement.

      The elevator doors pull apart from each other with a loud screech and invite me in. Nobody else in the elevator. Good. I push the button marked B.

      Cafeteria is written next to the B. I use the ride down to hoist up my toga with the hand holding my money and pull out my homemade tampon with the other hand. Bloody and slimy as it is, I’ll put it near the panel of buttons, the most scrutinized place in this moving crate. Just below the button panel is a bar you can pull down, like a handrail. I yank the horseshoe-shaped bar down and balance the bloody, sticky lump right in the middle of it. Success. Toga down as if nothing’s happened. The doors open and two men are standing there. Perfect. Looks like a father and son. None of the important things in life are discussed much in this family, either. I look at both of their faces. The father is ill. His face is yellowish gray and he’s wearing a bathrobe. Lung cancer? The son must be here visiting. I greet them, beaming with joy. “Good day, gentlemen.”