Craig Lancaster - Edward Adrift (2 page)

One of the things I learned from Dr. Buckley before she retired—and that is another thing that makes this a shitburger year—is that when times are difficult, I need to work hard at finding stability and things that bring me pleasure. Dr. Buckley, who helped me deal with my Asperger’s syndrome, is a very logical woman, and in the eleven years, two months, and ten days that I worked with her, I came to learn that I should act on her suggestions. On that note, I guess I should focus on the brighter news that I continue to maintain my daily logs of the high and low temperatures and precipitation readings for Billings, Montana, where I live. I started keeping these logs on January 1, 2001, when it occurred to me that Billings, in addition to having wildly variable weather, has poor excuses for weathermen. Their forecasts are notoriously off base, so I’ve come to distrust what they say. I prefer facts. Every morning, my copy of the
Billings Herald-Gleaner
provides me with the facts about the previous day’s weather. I then write it down, and my data is complete.

For example, yesterday, December 6, 2011, the 340th day of the year, saw a high temperature of 34 and a low temperature of 16 in Billings. There was no precipitation, meaning we held steady at 19.34 inches for the year. It’s been a bad year for precipitation in Montana, and a lot of places have had floods, although not Billings. Scott Shamwell lives in Roundup, which is 49.82 miles north of Billings, and his town flooded badly. He said one time that he was going to start driving “a cocksucking rowboat” to work, but I don’t think he ever did. I wasn’t there every day that he was, as our
schedules didn’t fully align, so while it’s conceivable that he could have driven a cocksucking rowboat to work, I have to believe that he or someone else would have told me about it. Belief can be dangerous, of course. I prefer facts. We did have an oil spill in the Yellowstone River, which mucked things up, and last year a tornado blew down our sports stadium, so it’s not like Billings is getting off light as far as catastrophes go. I guess everybody is having trouble these days.

Anyway, tracking the weather data is how I maintain stability, as Dr. Buckley suggested. She also suggested that I find something that gives me pleasure. That has been more difficult, especially since I was involuntarily separated from the
Billings Herald-Gleaner
. I should just try harder, I guess. But how?

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2011

From the logbook of Edward Stanton:

Time I woke up today: 8:23 a.m. The 17th time in 342 days I’ve awoken at that time.

High temperature for Wednesday, December 7, 2011, Day 341: 37

Low temperature for Wednesday, December 7, 2011: 22

Precipitation for Wednesday, December 7, 2011: 0 inches

Precipitation for 2011: 19.34 inches

This year just keeps getting worse.

Harry Morgan died yesterday. I read about it in the
Billings Herald-Gleaner
.

It was a small story, on the bottom of page A3. I could quibble with certain things about that story. For one thing, it’s too short. Harry Morgan lived to be ninety-six years old, and he worked steadily in Hollywood from 1942 to 1999. It’s impossible to give a full accounting of that in a seven-inch-long article. I could also make a credible case that Harry Morgan’s obituary should have gone on the front page of the newspaper, but I will concede that this falls into the area of news judgment, and reasonable people and newspaper editors can disagree on that. The one unassailable (I love the word “unassailable”) point I would like to make is
that the newspaper editor made a huge error by running a picture of Harry Morgan dressed up as Colonel Sherman Potter from
M*A*S*H
. That was a nice role for him, don’t get me wrong, but it’s clearly secondary to Harry Morgan’s role as Officer Bill Gannon on the ninety-eight color episodes of
Dragnet
.

Let’s examine the facts of this situation:

Fact No. 1: On
M*A*S*H
, Harry Morgan’s character was a replacement after McLean Stevenson’s Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake was killed off at the end of the third season. If Colonel Potter was such a great role, why did it come second? (That’s a rhetorical question—I love the word “rhetorical.”)

Fact No. 2: Before Harry Morgan ever played Colonel Potter, he appeared on
M*A*S*H
as a character named Major General Bartford Hamilton Steele. Observant viewers, like me, have a hard time reconciling that. Both characters are clearly played by the same man. Did the producers of
M*A*S*H
think we wouldn’t notice? (That, too, is a rhetorical question.)

Fact No. 3: At best, Colonel Potter was the number three character on
M*A*S*H
. Officer Bill Gannon was a clear number two on
Dragnet
, and he was much funnier than Sergeant Joe Friday, so that made him memorable.

The facts are on my side. The
Billings Herald-Gleaner
blew this one.

I used to watch
Dragnet
on videocassette, one episode each night at 10:00 p.m. sharp (and then, after I started at the
Billings Herald-Gleaner
, at 12:30 a.m., because I worked nights). I’d start with the first episode and end with the ninety-eighth, and then begin again. That came to an end on April 19, 2009, when the first of my seven
Dragnet
tapes was severed in the guts of my VCR during the eleventh episode of the series, called “The Shooting.” Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon were just about to
put the pinch on two hoods who gunned down a fellow policeman when my TV screen went snowy and the VCR started making an awful noise, and that was the end of the tape. My friend Donna Middleton (now Donna Hays), before she moved away, showed me that I could still watch the episodes on the computer, but I tried and it wasn’t the same. I threw out my
Dragnet
tapes, even the good ones.

I’ve been dreading today since November 15, the day I made an appointment to go see Dr. Rex Helton, my primary care physician at the St. Vincent Healthcare clinic on Broadwater Avenue. When I had my physical a year earlier, on November 15, 2010, Dr. Rex Helton told me that I needed to lose some weight and that my glucose levels were beginning to alarm him. He told me that I should get more exercise and eat better. The spaghetti that I eat nine times a week had to be reduced, he said. He also said that a quart of ice cream a week was not good for me and that I should try some sugar-free gelatin or some fruit.

For a while I did well at heeding Dr. Rex Helton’s advice. I bought a scale and weighed myself daily—which made for an exciting new entry in my logbook—and took walks and tried to eat more lean meat and vegetables without going so far outside my comfort zone that I became “a granola-eating fucknut,” as Scott Shamwell called me one day when he saw me with a salad at work. By February 1 of this year, I had dropped my weight from 283.8 pounds to 266.3. But February 1 is also the day that Dr. Buckley told me she would be retiring, and (while I hate to admit this, I have to acknowledge that it’s true) I didn’t do a very good job with my new routine after that. I haven’t stepped on the scale
since March 8, and I would be afraid to do so now. There are three quarts of ice cream in my freezer right now. The numbers can’t be good. That’s informed conjecture, which I’ll concede isn’t as good as a fact.

I leave my house on Clark Avenue promptly at 11:15 a.m. for my 11:45 appointment with Dr. Helton. Broadwater Avenue is the next big thoroughfare to the south of my house, which is nice because it means I can get to the clinic by making nothing but right turns in my car. Right turns, statistically, are less risky than left turns, so whenever possible, I plot a course that includes them. I don’t want you to think I’m a freak or something, though. I do make left turns; they’re unavoidable sometimes. But I prefer right turns.

As I turn right on Broadwater, the R.E.M. song “Losing My Religion” comes on the radio, and I’m reminded anew of the shitburger year. R.E.M. is my favorite band—or, I should say, they were. They are no longer together. On September 21, R.E.M. said it was disbanding. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t, but yet, if I turn on my computer and do a web-engine search for R.E.M., this will be confirmed: the band is no more. I don’t understand it. Earlier in the year, they released a new album, and it was one of my favorites. Michael Stipe, the lead singer, said something about knowing when it’s time to leave the party, which is a euphemism. I can’t begrudge Michael Stipe doing what he wants to do, but I wish I had some way to convince him to keep the party going.

At the clinic, I simply tell the receptionist my name and sign off on my list of medications. The only medication I take is eighty milligrams of fluoxetine daily. Dr. Buckley gave me that medicine twelve years ago, as part of my treatment for Asperger’s syndrome
and its associated obsessive-compulsive tendencies, which were ruining everything. I’m forty-two years old, and taking fluoxetine is now just part of my life, like breathing or recording the daily temperature readings.

Once I’ve cleared the paperwork, I set about my usual business. I go from table to table and arrange the magazines by title and edition number. I have to do this every time I am here. The other patients do not take good care with such things, and while that is frustrating, I’ve learned that there is no way to stop it. I do what I can to offset the damage they’re causing.

Here’s something that bothers me about seeing Dr. Rex Helton: My appointment time says 11:45, but experience tells me that it could be 11:48 or 11:55 or even 12:01 before my name is called. That never happened at Dr. Buckley’s office. With her, I had a 10:00 a.m. appointment every single Tuesday, and she never failed to have me in her office by that time. I can only conclude that the Broadwater clinic isn’t as interested in precision as she was.

Here’s another thing that bothers me about seeing Dr. Rex Helton: When the nurse finally calls my name, at 11:47 a.m., and after I’m weighed (290.2 pounds—holy shit!) and my blood pressure is taken (138 systolic, 92 diastolic—holy shit!), I’m placed alone in a room at 11:51 a.m. and told that Dr. Helton will see me shortly. (I don’t like a word like “shortly.” It’s imprecise and owes too much to individual interpretation. Dr. Rex Helton’s “shortly” and my “shortly” could be two completely different things.)

When Dr. Rex Helton finally comes in—at 12:02 p.m.—he says “Hello, Edward,” and then he gets right to it. Directness is the only thing I appreciate about Dr. Rex Helton.

“I’ll be blunt. It’s not good,” he says. “It’s not good at all. It’s not just the weight, which you know is going in the wrong direction.
We’ve seen the results of the fasting plasma glucose test you took a couple of days ago, and you’ve tipped into type two diabetes.”

“What was the reading?” I ask.

“Well, your six-month average is two hundred and twelve. It’s far outside normal.”

Holy shit!

Dr. Rex Helton goes on. “I’m also worried about your blood pressure. We need to get aggressive with this. You have to eat better, you have to exercise, and you’re going to have to go on medication.”