A Portrait

This is "BC Boogaloo" by the Canadian artist Murray McDonnell. I love it because it captures so beautifully the miracle of light at the water's edge. By the other miracle of how legal tender works, I now have this stunning canvas in my home.

A convention of routine day surgery is that no post-op patient may leave unescorted. 

Bruce needed an escort sometime after 10:00 a.m. on Monday morning. I didn't know how much time after, so I got to Toronto Western at 10:30. That turned out to be an hour and a half too soon. The nurses at the patient pick up station told me they would call me when Bruce was ready.

TWH has a big, bright atrium on the ground floor with a food court with lots of seating and unhealthy things to eat. I grabbed a stool at a counter in front of the Booster Juice franchise and connected to the office on my iPhone.

I was feeling happy, comfortable and productive when a man - small, thin, heavily bearded, sporting an impressive shiner on his left eye - tried to squeeze his walker into the space between the counter I was at and the one next it.

He vocalized a bit, saying something like "Will I fit through here?" I figured he wanted someone to talk to, so I looked up, smiled and commented that he seemed to have lots of room.

He got himself onto the stool at the counter next to mine and started to talk. He said his name was Mike.

Mike told me about how he had gone to a friend's stag party and was surprised that the guy keeping track of who paid the $25 admission charge needed him to sign a piece of paper but then he won the lottery! He went to the store with his lottery ticket and he won! Three hundred dollars so he was going to put some of it in the bank probably two hundred dollars and not spend it all on drinking which he doesn't do a lot of. His drink is vodka and orange juice and he will have one or two but no more than that and when he walked past the pub on the way to the bank there was a guy there who said "Hi Mike!" and Mike was surprised and asked him how he knew his name and he said you bought me a drink last week so they sat down and had a drink but Mike didn't stay too long because he has this cough that he can't get rid of so he goes to the hospital to get some cough medicine but they only give him one dose so he has to go back to the hospital the very next day. They should give him the whole bottle ...

I picked up my dark, silent iPhone, looked at it and said, "Mike, I gotta go. It's been nice chatting with you. You take care of yourself and have a good day."

Mike said, "It's been nice talking to you. What's your name?"

"Stacey," I said.  

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen