I've been home for more than a month. No one has come to see me in all that time.

Do I want them to come? No. So it's all the better. I've gotten a flood of mail though. Cards, flowers, plants, from people at the hospital. They must think I'm opening up a nursery.

I suppose this is what it would be like to be alive after your own funeral.

A part of me did die, I suppose. I don't want to think about it right now.

The first two weeks were easier. I took sleeping pills, fell asleep most of the day on the couch in front of the television. During my non-groggy moments I watched a couple of soap operas, I am ashamed to say. General Hospital actually isn't half-bad, when you're an invalid with nothing else to do. Some of the girls on that show are pretty cute. There's even a young one named Elizabeth...

She called me. There was a message on my machine, from the first week, although I didn't check the machine until the third week. That's when I started getting antsy and bored. Could it be I almost wanted to go back...to work? I guess I was, am, getting that desperate. I mean, there's nothing else to do.

Getting back to Elizabeth - like I said, she left me a message. She said she was calling to see how I was, and if I needed anything. My arm back. She left her phone number, which of course I already had. I didn't call her. She called again, later that week, left another message that she was going out of town to visit her family, and she wanted to know if she could bring anything by before she left. I'm glad I didn't get that message right away, you know? I might have told her yes, come by. Drop everything and come by, you don't have to bring anything, just you, you're all I need.

God, thank God I didn't. That's all I need, to drag Lizzie into this, this -- what? This life, which really isn't a life, it's just my existence. Which has become a very isolated one.

I've thought of calling my family, but what's the point? They've never been there for me, and I've never told them anything, not even after my accident. When my mother called, a couple of months after my arm was reattached, I told her I'd broken my arm and wouldn't be able to make it to Thanksgiving. They were getting together, she and my two brothers and their families, in Wisconsin, where my brother Tom and his wife live. Told her I'd been in an auto accident, and I was okay but I wasn't up to traveling anywhere, I was still recovering.

Still recovering. Once again, I'm still recovering. If anyone wants to come here, I'll tell them something to keep them away. Hell, they couldn't want to come that badly, or they'd have found a way. It's not that hard, is it? If you really want to see someone, it's not. It's a lot easier to avoid them.

August 10, 2003

Something that's occurred to me as I've been lying here night after night, when I'm not at the hospital. I went back to work a while ago.

It's been a long time since I got laid. I mean, a long time.

This is not the first time this thought has occurred to me, but somehow, I pushed it off easily before. Last year, I was concentrating on recovery (a word that's becoming painful to say, to write), convinced I'd be getting stronger, better, back to normal. Don't get me wrong, there were times when I wanted some female companionship, where I wanted so badly to call Nikki, or Janine, or any of the endless girls from my past. Well, not endless, but there were a few.

I even thought about calling Carolyn, futile of course since we broke up in 2001. It was a mutual breakup. We liked each other, but we weren't in love. She didn't love me, and she knew I was still in love with Lizzie. We parted ways amicably. I read in the paper last spring that she had gotten engaged to a cardiologist from Mercy Hospital. She always did like doctors.

So, no Carolyn. No one to call. Last year there were women to call, women I could have looked up in my faded little black book, and one or two of them might have even come over if they didn't have anything better to do. I always knew how to give the ladies a good time, if you know what I mean. That Rocket nickname wasn't for nothing. Yet I didn't call anyone last year, maybe out of frustration, maybe out of fear, for what's happened to me now.

I look down at the loose material on the left side of my flannel shirt, the way it just hangs there limply.

How could I invite a woman to come over, to see what I don't even want to see?

I feel like half a man, inadequate.

I was on the train the other day -- I've been taking the El a lot more than I used to, it's easier than driving. I was in one of the less crowded cars and I got a seat. There was this woman sitting across from me, she was blonde and very pretty. She reminded me a little bit of Carolyn, actually. I've always been into blondes. Well, usually.

Anyway, so I looked over at her, and she smiled. I smiled back and then I glanced down. It's been cold out lately, for fall. I was wearing a black winter coat. With a long coat like that, and the newspaper over my lap, she probably wouldn't have been able to tell that I was missing an arm. For a minute I felt okay, almost normal, but then it passed. What difference did it make if I pretended everything was okay? It wouldn't change anything.

I looked up once again, just to see if she was still there. She smiled again. I smiled, looked down at the newspaper. Safer there.

I didn't look up again until I got to my stop. By then she was gone. I guess she had gotten off at an earlier stop. I felt sad, but also relieved.

I'm supposed to pick up a prosthetic arm in another week. They say they had to allow time for the stump to heal. Will it make much difference, though? I don't know how real it will really look, close-up, and eventually I'll have to take it off. I just can't imagine having some woman over my house when I take it off. She'd be repulsed, I'm sure. Wondering what she was doing there.

So, this is what I'm thinking about tonight. Priorities, right? I could be thinking about all the limitations I have now, permanently (again, maybe the myoelectric arm will help, but I'm not expecting much). The challenges of eating steak. No longer being able to go to karate, or play a game of golf. Opening a bottle of wine (which I could really use right now). Should I go on? The list is fucking endless. But no, instead of focusing on all that, I'm thinking about how long it's been since I've had some action in the ol' bedroom. Yeah well. The mind goes where the mind goes.

I'm going to bed now. Alone. Goes without saying, I guess...

September 15, 2003

Could this day have sucked more?

I went to see the prosthetist, actually thinking that she'd done her job right and would have the myoelectric arm ready for me. No. She gives me this piece of crap hook instead, 'cause apparently that's all the insurance company thinks I'm worth. I let her know I wasn't happy about it, to put it mildly. She claims I need to get the hospital to vouch for me that I need something better, and in the meantime she'll see what she can do, yeah yeah yeah right. Basically, it all just means that Weaver screwed me over (easier to blame it on her) and I have to either 1) get back in her good graces somehow (ha) or 2) piss her off enough that she'll help me out just to get me away from her. Guess which option I chose.

So, look, there were a ton of things that went wrong today, and I don't have the energy to go into detail about them all. Weaver, that little shit of a resident, Coop, nurses giving me crap, a kid patient looking at me like I'm a freak, etc. The list goes on and on. Then at the end of the day, I saw Elizabeth. I was getting ready to sign out for the night and there she was. She looked great, as always. She was wearing this blue sleeveless shirt. I remember looking at her arms and hoping she wouldn't notice mine, my lack of, too much.

So, we did the small talk thing for a minute. I felt her eyes on me as I was using the computer, and I knew she must be looking at the hook, wondering why I didn't have something better to use. I hoped she didn't think, you know, that I looked like too much of a freak. I did feel awkward, but I don't know, for a moment I was almost happy, because it was Lizzie. You know, the whole day had just sucked but there she was, and her being there made it a little better. I just wanted to bask in her light for a minute, and feel close to her beauty, her gracefulness. I don't know. I wasn't going to pretend that I could have her, not like I used to. I just wanted to be near her. For a minute I really felt okay.

Then Dorsett came by, and, you know, it all changed. I just felt awkward again except maybe a hundred times more than I did before. A guy who looks like that -- even in my best of days, I would have felt inferior standing next to him. So I moved. I was standing a few feet back, so I could kind of hear their conversation. Something about him wanting to take her to coffee (yeah, right) and that she owed him one. She said she would go with him but she only had an hour. Okay, whatever. So they went off. I mean, she said good night to me, which was nice, but in a way I almost wished she hadn't. I thought she had forgotten I was even there. Watching them, I think I had almost forgotten I was even there.

The thing is, I know there's nothing between me and Lizzie - nothing on her end, anyway - I know that, I've known it for a while. Yet when I saw her with Dorsett, it was just so painful, like nothing I've known before. I just watched their retreating backs and somehow I knew, I knew that things were going to get progressively worse for me. Which is funny because I thought things couldn't get any worse. Just goes to show. It never ends, you know? There's always more -- more pain, more misery, more sorrow. More loneliness. I can't get my fill. It comes and it comes and it comes again. It's my drug.

I did the only thing I could think to do. I threw the hook through the glass of a trauma room. I got the tiniest bit of satisfaction, watching it sail through that wall, glass shattering everywhere, causing damage. Damage and destruction are what I have left, and they're all I have.