April 22

It started out like every other morning this week, except that I somehow managed to get out of bed in time to catch the earlier train into Manhattan. (And I only had to run a little bit to do so.) On the way in to work, I finished reading Janni Lee Simner’s Bones of Faerie, which I started on Monday. I loved the book’s opening chapter — which you can read in full at the Amazon.com preview linked above. It’s dark and sinister and poetic, and in just a few paragraphs it sets up what promises to be a very interesting world. And then the book lurches forward, with too much happening too quickly, not enough happening overall. I liked the characters, but the book never lived up to that first short chapter for me, never took the time to slowly develop its world and history.

When I got to the office, it was time for a change of pace, with an art therapy book currently on my desk in development. Of course, that didn’t last too long, because a little before noon I decided to call my doctor’s office and see if I could schedule an appointment, and they asked if I could come in, in a couple of hours. For the past couple of weeks, my throat has been bothering me; I haven’t felt particularly sick, but it has often hurt to swallow, and there’s been a scratchiness I just couldn’t shake. I thought, if I was lucky, they’d be able to see me sometime tomorrow, but they had at least a couple of slots still available for today. So that’s how I ended up leaving at noon and taking half a day off from work.

I’m pretty much okay, and the doctor’s appointment went by fairly quick. It’s mostly just a lot of post-nasal drip, with possibly the start of a sinus infection, that’s irritating the back of my throat. He prescribed five days of antibiotics, gave me a spray for my nose (complete with a talking brochure), and recommended an over-the-counter allergy med like Claritan or Zyrtec. With luck, I’ll start to feel a whole lot better soon.

Other than that? There was a brief moment on the train ride home when things threatened to get a little weird. An elderly gentlemen sitting a few rows behind me was, from his conversation with the ticket collector, obviously confused about where the train was headed and about the fact that he had to pay for a ticket to get there. He wanted to go to a local hospital, not on this particular line, and apparently had no money. The two of them seemed to reach some kind of understanding, namely that the man needed to transfer in Queens, but he became quite agitated when she came back through at that transfer stop.

“Sir, you need to get off this train,” she said, not at all rudely.

“The only thing I need to do is die!” he shouted.

And then she likely threatened to get the police involved, because the next thing he was shouting was, “Go ahead! Call the cops!” She went off to do just that, and then he wandered off the train, headed who knows where, and we were kept sitting there for another ten or fifteen minutes. Thankfully it never escalated into the sort of fistfight I’ve actually seen on my commute, and hopefully the police were able to help the gentleman get back to wherever he belonged. If I had to guess, from just his appearance and his attitude, he was suffering from some kind of dementia and needed assistance.

I can’t help but be reminded of this story from a recent Radio Lab podcast.