Paul Allen  FACEBOOK

The heat in Charleston, SC, is like sex with a stranger: If you don’t have a clear exit strategy, you’d best not get into it.

Heat in Charleston is horrible. Day before yesterday, I was visiting a friend in the hospital. I know that place.

But I parked where I’m used to. Inside, I got turned around. Came out the wrong exit and couldn’t find my car or the parking lot. (I’m glad I use a cane now. People are more merciful.) Cop comes to get in his car, we exchange pleasantries. I knew where my car was but it was all the way around a large complex of hospital. He suggested I ride with him. He announces on the police radio that he was “taking an elderly man to help him find his car.” Dispatcher said that was nice. We went around the building and it was where I thought. Policeman had as white a hair as mine, “elderly gentleman,” but I had the cane and he was in his car.
We got there. Then:

Yesterday, I was picking Ryan up at a Roper Hospital facility in the Medical University Hospital maze. GPS lady was getting very pissed, so many blocked streets for construction, so many small streets that only she knew the names of (the people who make street signs must have given up years ago). Finally she told me I wasn’t far from the address. I just pulled into the parking lot of the VA and decided to walk. Even walking (and GPS set on walking) I couldn’t find it. Afternoon heat was horrible. If it were a bath, you’d pull your foot out and add cold water. I walked, asking directions for 40 or so minutes. My cane was starting to hurt my palm. I still have the bruise. Too much pressure, heat and time. Found Ryan.

But then we were headed back and he got ahead of me. In an alleyway behind a non-descript building I stopped to piss in the grating on the sidewalk. I made it to the VA, but knew my leg was done and knew the heat was a serious factor. I knew I couldn’t get around that hospital to the front. Tried a door in the back, but locked. So I did what all of us about-to-die people do, just sat down on the steps and waited for Ryan to backtrack and save me.

An orderly from the hospital was getting off work. He passed me. Then he turned his bike around and said, “Do you need help?” I said, “Yes, I think I do.” He told me to stay in the shaded nook where the locked doors were. He went back to the hospital. Soon Ryan had back-tracked to find me, hustled to our truck, grabbed some sparkling water and returned. It was hot, but never was I more grateful for liquid.

Then from several directions came the God-blessed orderly, two nurses, an ambulance pulling out their gurney, a nurse with a wheel chair, another nurse and two doctors. Ryan says he’d wished his phone was charged to take a picture, maybe 10 people total. I knew I was ok. I’ve been close to heat stroke before; that’s why I stopped. The orderly felt my arm, while others were asking if I had sunburn or my face was that red from current heat. Yep. The orderly told the nurse that my arm was dry. Skin dry? My clothes were sopping wet.

They put me in the wheel chair and that beautiful-soul orderly wheeled me into the VA. (I’d been there before to read poems and do a workshop.) They got me registered as a “humanitarian case,” since I wasn’t a vet. Ryan stayed with me and filled my sparkling-water can with cooler water from the fountain.

Waiting in the air condition and drinking water, I was less light headed, less worrying that my end-of-life care and will would not be located. They called me to the screening nurse. My blood pressure was up, but I take blood-pressure medicine and so it wasn’t up that badly. Vital signs ok. Screening nurse said vitals were ok and did I want to wait for a doctor. I thanked her, said “no” and left. I knew where my truck was, where by then Ryan had gone out to charge his phone and turn the air on.

We got home. But you won’t see me stepping out of the house today, unless it’s on fire.

I hadn’t shaved or bathed or brushed my teeth in days. They didn’t know what I could pay, if anything. Ryan was a little red-faced from finding me and hustling for water. Yesterday, I was nobody but a child of God suffering. And the world cared.