A long, eventful day, pretty much entirely positive.

Tanja’s roommate in rm 10 of OHSU Trauma 13C is a lovely 86 year old woman named Nan who took a tumble when she hurried back into her house to get, of all things, her Trauma Alert Pendant. Anyhoo, she got pretty banged up but she is progressing and was set to go to a rehab facility yesterday, but her BP dropped and it sent her down a bad path that required the attention of a team of five or six medical professionals. They worked from five pm to about eight and every now and then they would reach through the fog to assess Nan

On first contact Nan, when asked, reported that she was 68.

“Eighty six,” Tanja said, soto voce, willing Nan to recovery.

Next, Nan, when asked, reverted to her maiden name. A good sign? A bad sign? Who knows?

“Nan,” the nurse said. “Do you know what year it is?”

“Of course,” she said, weakly. But she would go no further.

And we sat, on the other side of the curtain, just hoping for this lovely lady to come back to 2023. The first sign of hope came around 7:45.

“Nan, do you know who the president is.”

“Biden,” she said. “Unfortunately.”

By morning, she was in great spirits, ready to make light of it with the day nurse.

“I woke up in the night,” Nan said. “And I looked outside and it was snowing.”

“Really,” the nurse said.

“And there were young people just frolicking about.”

We are on the 13th floor.

“Well,” the nurse said.

“Just frolicking in the snow.”

“It didn’t snow last night,” the nurse said.

Tanja, without the use of her hands, could not make the cut off motion but one could tell she dearly wanted to.

“If Nan ever wants to get out of here,” she said, quietly. “She needs to shut the fuck up about the snow and the frolicking and the young people.”

Shortly thereafter word came down that Tanja would be leaveng OHSU to head to RIO at 1:30. Her personal shopper was deployed so that she could make the trip in something other than the diaphanous wrap that currently preserved what remained of her modesty. A tank top and a pair of light cotton pants with a drawstring was the request. Here is the report:

First of all, one wants to cleave to the path of positivity that has served us so very well on this journey. So, how to put it? When did the reality of Target become so unequal to its promise? Well-lit bedlam. Miraculously, amidst the despair, a suitable tank top was found. Super!

On to Athleta where the woman running things was so nice, just radiating kindness. She showed me exactly what Tanja wanted, but not in her size. She suggested Lululemon, just down the block.

On the way there, I spied drawstring pants on a mannequin in Anthropologie. I ran in. Perfection. There were, on the table, three examples in XXL.

I approached the register where three employees were chatting. The young man in the center of the trio saw me and said, “Can I help you?” in a way that made me fairly certain he couldn’t.

“The stock on the table there,” I said. “That’s all you have, right? There’s not more in the back?”

“No,” he said. “That’s it. What size were you looking for?”

“Medium,” I said.

“If it’s not there, we don’t have it.”

I enjoyed a moment of silence while I internally communed with the man I use to be back on March 3. And then I thanked the cashier and went on to Lululemon where, feeling somewhat defeated and deflated, I spent $98 for six ounces of stretchy fabric with no drawstring that, I was promised, were simply the. perfect. pant.

On the street, I checked my phone. Tanja’s move to rehab had been pushed a day.

I went back up the hill to the hospital and told Tanja the news.

“Ok, just as well,” she said. “Let’s walk up to the nurse’s station and see about timing.”

When we came out of her room, a young woman was standing there with a wheelchair.

“You must be here for Nan,” I said.

“Could be,” she said. “They sent me up here, they called me off, then they called me back.”

We took about three steps and realized: She has come for Tanja.

It was a flury of packing–all these people, nurses, so skilled at preserving life, just jamming random shit into bags, packing flowers into basins, hustling us off to Rio with a sense of urgency we hadn’t felt since the ICU.

“When they are ready for you,” one nurse said to me, “It’s kind of a ‘go’ situation.”

A nurse came back from somewhere with the perfect drawstring sweats and a fuzzy hoody.

“People leave this stuff,” she said. “It’s yours now.”

They stripped her down and dressed her up with gentle efficiency, I signed something and we were bundled out the door, Tanja in a wheelchair, me carrying bags of flowers and sundry items.

Good Samaritan is different from OHSU. It’s not a teaching hospital. And there’s a lot more marketing materials on the walls. But once you get up to the rehab ward, the people are, again, super kind, super engaged and seem incredibly competent.

Tanja’s room is comfy. It faces the NW hills. Little bits of the protocol are different–she needs a nurse to walk her to the bathroom, for example. And she needs to order food two days in advance because her days are going to be far too busy for that kind of thing.

She feels energized and ready. And, sitting there in regular clothes, she just looks great. So great that when it was time to order the food, I just handed the menu to her, without thinking. And, after a short pause and a mighty effort, she took it from me, and began planning her menu with little oohs and ahhs over all the dishes that , her new roommate informed her through the curtain, in a scornful, European accent, “will not fail to disappoint.”

“Really?” Tanja said. “That bad.”

“Well, they try,” her roommate allowed. “And the mushroom soup is quite good.”

They booted me at 8:00. And in a minute I was accelerating onto 30, merging on 405, joining I5, watching my fellow travelers tailgate and brake-check each other at 75 miles an hour.

All day long I see kindness and connection. Sure Anthropologie was tough, but the exception proves the rule. Kindness everywhere you look. Then these same people get in their cars and it is war and chaos. It’s not an original thought to suggest that the anonymity the auto provides is the problem. Remove the connection, the trust evaporates and the kindness goes with it.

But these are problems for another day and a different blog. Right now, imagine Tanja, deep in sleep, sending dreamy pep talks to her resting limbs. Tomorrow she gets to work.