Make Lemonade

Make Lemonade

It’s the lavender cardigan that catches my attention. She wears it each time I visit, and its buttons pull the buttons’ holes until they squint.

It’s hard to look away because she rests a mauve clipboard on her pot belly and taps it with a hand tipped by purple nail polish.

She calls patients’ names clearly and is the brightest thing in this office dampened by beige and chronic pain. The fatigued furniture mirrors the patients’ postures,

yet this nurse flits like a hummingbird from office to waiting room—everyone looks up from magazines when she enters, Dr. Piernine’s Tinker Bell.

In a voice even brighter than her outfits, she talks with patients. She sweetens chit-chat with pleasantries from youth: a stitch in time, Mr. Smith; really,

Mrs. Jennings, the early bird does get its worm; now, Barney, you know a penny saved is a penny earned. I play a game where I guess which turn of phrase she’ll use before she slaps

the swinging door with her palm, leads a patient to an exam room. When it’s my turn, my crutch catches the jamb, and I fall to the floor. My first thought isn’t profane or apologetic

—I find myself in a terrible tangle wondering what wisdom or comfort this woman might give me. It takes the edge off my pain, this game. She doesn’t help me to my feet right away.

She squats, lavender sweater straining across her bosom, and sets her clipboard on the floor to hold open the door. “Now Elizabeth,” she says, “we’ve gotta try to make lemonade,

right?” And, I breathe in her Lilac offer to pull me to my feet. “Up we go.” Settled on a padded table, I wait for Doctor Piernine, wait to be squeezed tightly, wait to be sugared and transformed

into something lovely, something to sip, something to desire.