Walking with the Poor, or Hep-B: The Final Injection, Part 2

My mission that morning (December 17th) was to receive the final of 3 injections for immunization against hepatitis-b. I can't say it was doomed from the start, but it was destined for revision, and probably for my own good. For one thing, if I imagined that I was walking with the poor, my own mode of transport was something of a contradiction--cruising along in the heated cab of my car, sipping a cup of fresh coffee, checking my sheet of directions from Google Maps. I had even left in plenty of time, so no worries. But I was impervious to these thoughts as I drove along, sipping and turning and merging, relaxed, feeling proud--almost noble--that I could resist the urge to steer with my knees, whip out my cell phone and text my wife some critical memo like "b back 4 brkfst."

Somewhere along Vietnam Veterans Boulevard I misunderstood a direction for a slight right and exited too soon. Lost, I pulled off the highway and stopped at a used car lot for directions. Some guy I presumed was the janitor gave me quick directions and I jumped back in the car. Then my wife called and asked if I were there yet. "No," I said and began to complain to her about the directions I had looked up and printed. She had my list of public health clinics and was kind enough to call the one I was attempting to reach, just to be sure I was going the right way, even though I knew exactly what I was doing. As I was pulling back onto the highway she rang back and told me that the clinic I was driving to was out of hep-b vaccine. My momentum got the better of me. "Impossible--why would they make an appointment for me to take this shot if they didn't have the vaccine?" "Well, that's what they said." She's been around me too long to think I would just listen to reason. "Okay, well, I'm this close, so I'll just go by to be sure. Otherwise, I'll have to pay more." I had been encouraged by the fact that their pay scale was based on income, and part of me was saying, "yes, but you could afford to pay the full price." I drove on.

After another wrong turn I discovered that I had turned off of Long Hollow Pike too soon and was headed away from the clinic. A nice Indian lady pointed me back in the right direction. Then I was looking for Blythe Avenue and was paying close attention to the directions for turns and distances. No Blythe Avenue. Several intersections later I stopped at an antiques store and went in for directions to the clinic. (At least I was in the right town.) Upon walking in I realized I had entered a slower environment. The first person I asked directed me to a second person, a woman behind a counter. She explained that I had missed Blythe Avenue because that street had been renamed for a woman named Dorothy Jordan, a school teacher who had been murdered. The woman giving me directions objected that Google Maps had directed me through the housing projects, and so she began proposing an alternate route up the highway, but then, unsure of herself, she led me to a third person, perhaps the manager or owner, who completed the directions. At one point all three people were offering suggestions. I felt like bolting out of the store now that I had what I wanted, but I thought about the fact that they had stopped what they were doing and had bothered to try to help me.

As I drove following the new set of directions, I began to wonder who Dorothy Jordan was. Up the highway, I turned left as advised and with a park on my left and a graveyard on my right drove down toward the clinic. I passed a church with a sign by the entranceway: faith is not a leap into darkness but a step toward light. That hung on me as I turned right and then into the clinic parking lot. I checked in, twenty minutes late for my appointment and worried that I would have to come back another time for the final injection. Few people were in the waiting room. After about 15 minutes the nurse called my name and looked at the chart. "Oh, are you the one whose wife called? We're out of hep-b. Sorry. We ran out yesterday afternoon." And that was it--no free hep-b today.

As I was driving back out of town, I began to recognize some places that I had seen before. I had been here before but didn't recognize it at first because of the direction I was traveling in. And my brief contact with the woman giving me directions made me wonder again, who was Dorothy Jordan, and what senseless thing had happened to her here. And as I passed the housing projects, I noted how large an area they covered and wondered why this little town had need of such a large tract of public housing. Although still in need of the final injection, I began to feel ridiculous for driving so far with such determination to pay less for a shot than I needed to, and even when I was asking other people for directions and they were giving them to me, I wanted get what I wanted and bolt. The Big Mo was gone. I slowed down.

By mid morning I was driving in to Nashville with Lynn to try again for hep-b #3. At the clinic ( first come first served) in case I hadn't learned my lesson to slow down and take things as they came, I walked in and presumed that an empty waiting room meant a shot in about 3 minutes. No, the clinic was closed for lunch until 12:30. So, we went for lunch and decided to chat until 1. When we returned to the clinic, the waiting room was crowded. Lynn and I were just about the palest people there, and much of the English spoken was either with heavy foreign accents or incorrect grammar or both. There was a smell of body odor...my own. Some of the people in the waiting room were visibly sick. Most of the adults looked stressed and preoccupied, and at least some of the young children, some of them crawling around on the floor, seemed more or less happy to be there--curious about each other or caught up with a toy. We waited about an hour or so and then went in for the shot: cost $35 bucks. It was over--the final injection. And I felt ridiculous for having rushed around thinking I was walking with the poor by going to get my hep-b shot at a health clinic.
I had a long way to go yet on the road to perfect bliss.

Just to keep things honest, that photo of me cringing during an injection is really from a few days later at a local drugstore clinic where I got a shot for the H1N1 virus: what a man!