thanks for putting your last post together, ben. that ment a lot to me.
i had got in late from playing a show in fredericksburg, VA at the school and needed to get some good sleep and prepare for that nights next show before getting to the paper at noon. a friend woke me up at 7:30 needing me to take her to the hospital, so after trying to get my head straight and trying to remember all the right gear i needed to replace for that night's show and throwing on some sorta stage outfit, i found myself in a college health clinic parking lot trying to nap a bit and waiting for my friend to finish up when i got a call from buzz. he was hurtin so bad. his cathiter was stopped up and he couldn't pee, he sounded terrible. buzz's stays at the hospitals had become more frequent in this last year. he wanted me to drive down south of the city to pick him up and take him to the veterans hospital. now with buzz you sometimes just never know, like: why does ben have to walk around dupont circle dressed like black-jumpsuit elvis? but in this case i knew he wanted me to take him to the hospital, this was an emergency. i said, "buzz let's get you an ambulance down there and get you here fast, i'm way across town by the veterans hospital already" but he said, "no. i would really like you to come pick me up and take me" so i told him it would take me about 40 minutes to drop off my friend and make it down to his house. ben and i always wondered what buzz's house was like. he never wanted us to visit there, "my father, he's invalid" he'd say about his 94 year old father who lived there with him. buzz would often make me n ben meet up with him at this crappy italian resturant next to the male strip club for some sort of 11am itailian buffet on saturday mornings. i got down to that part of town as fast as i could with morning rush hour traffic settling down. as i found myself on buzz's road i was thinking, "wow, look at these houses...this is like a normal uppity clean neighborhood. if buzz lives in one of these fancy ass mCmansions, ben's gonna shit." but buzz didn't let us down. i found a little trashy pool house-like home with the 3 junked-out cars out front and cats lickin themselves and pulled into the driveway. i was sorta freakin out as to what buzz's condition was and started towards the house when i saw him comin through the side gate. i never seen him so pale and with such an intense howl of a face. he was movin real slow and was cursin his cathiter. "it's clogged! oh shit...i wanna pee so bad, jason. mother fucker!" he took a few steps and leaned against one of the junked cars his head against his forearm and the other fooling down his soiled sweatpants. "it's ok, jason, i stuffed a roll of paper towels down there...fuckkk" so we made our way towards my truck. he said, "i need you to make a flower arrangement". "buzz", let's get you to the hospital, no messing around", but you can reason or say no to this man. so he directed me, as he always does me and ben, and i got inside his chevy suburban (filled to the roof with junk) and found this old bucket, some ugly-ass bright blue fake dew-dropped flowers, and two bags of nasty dried out spanish moss. so while buzz leans against the suburban i try to frantically make these flowers, moss and old bucket to look like something beautiful. buzz of course still giving me orders, "hey, i need you to crawl up to the front and you'll find some real roses...put them in there, too." i'm trying to do all this as fast as i could cause i scared of these waves of pain he was going through. so i got them roses in this bucket with the moss and them ugly blue flowers and put it in my truck and got my passenger seat ready for him. his belly and body was horribly filled with fluid, which made him appear obese, and i tried to get him up into the cab, but it just wasn't working cause my truck is sorta high off the ground. i put some newspapers in the seat for him to sit on and had a pillow for his back, and grabbed a bass amplifier head from the back of the truck for us to use as a step, which actually did work to get this big guy in there. now i knew the direct and fast way to get all the way back across the city, but buzz said, "i know a shortcut...ONLY 4 LIGHTS!" "well...ok, buzz" and we took off in a weird direction and next thing i knew we were headed west to virginia not north east towards the city. buzz urging me that we'd get there really fast. so we headed up through old town alexandria, va and up towards arlington, va. buzz said, "the lights are synCHRONized...and it doesn't count if the lights are green!" well, i was sorta cheating this lights game for buzz, as there were plenty of red lights ahead that i would slow down for. so we kept count of the red lights and i did my best to make sure there weren't more than 4 stops during our "shortcut through virginia". we finally did get to the veterans hospital, the scary hospital ben and i and others had visited buzz before. it was raining and we used the bass amp technique to get him out again, i got him leaned against a pole under an outside roof holding that ugly-ass flower bucket and i ran to park and ran back to help get buzz inside. he never was scared to talk, or ask, or mess with anyone which was often embarrassing, so buzz shnaggled a wheelchair from an old man while i was pleading with hospital services if i could check one out officially. "ok jason, to the third floor. we gotta find mona, she's my friend!" on the third floor we got to the urology dept. and found the door locked. wow. buzz in the wheelchair sending me running around trying to find a way inside, hoping to find this mona lady. "i don't know buzz, maybe she's at lunch, it's noon" "ok, to the cafeteria! i know a shortcut!" so there we were me pushing buzz speeding down the hallways and elevators me wearing my dumb "stage clothes" for that night's show and buzz lookin like an old hobo in his stinky nasty sweats and little blue beanie, holding that stupid bucket of ugly fake flowers with the real roses riding up by his face. we made it to the basement cafeteria in what must have been record time, as far as i know, and we started slowly rolling down the aisles looking like a circus to all them sad sick and tired patients and families and workers eating that bleak food down in that bleak fluorescent orangy tan cafeteria. "is that mona, over there?" "no..." buzz barking orders to me as i drove him around every eating soul in that room. buzz was not giving up and urged me to charge through the "doctor's only" dining room. so we launched through the door into a room full of surprized white coats eating salads and talking. we stationed ourselves at that exit and scanned that small room looking for this mona lady, the lady who was gonna make everything better. we slowly made our way to the center of the room and buzz yelled out to a table of doctors in mid-bite, "hey, can you change a cathiter???!! CAN SOMEONE PLEEZ TAKE OUT THiS CATHITER! IT'S STOPpeD uPPP!" silence. then nice doctor lady#1 said, "sir, urology is on the third floor..." "the door's LOCKED", buzz said, "this damned thing is stopped UP, i need mona, do you know mona?" "sir," she said nice doctor lady#1, "go to the OR on third floor they handle overflow from urology." so buzz got the names of all the doctors at the table and thanked them individually and me, all red-faced, did my short wave and then we were off again speeding down the hallways, fake dew-dropped flowers and real roses blowing in the wind. in the OR we faced some red-tape from the two crow-faced ladies running the checkin station. "they sending us urology again?" "sir, do you have an appointment?" buzz was freakin and i handled the crows with the long painted fingernails. "he's looking for a nurse named mona, he's her patient, but urology is locked and ya'll have a line of vets waiting in line around the corner over there," i said. finally nice lady doctor#2 who was listening said, "mona is scubbed right now, sir and is assisting, but i'll tell her you are here." crow-faced ladies were trying to get us to come back tomorrow, but nice lady doc#2 made it happen. so when young attendant in white coat came by and said, "you two know you are in the OR?" buzz and i said, "yes...we are waiting for mona!" and then there she was.
here came this pretty black lady with a great great smile and kinky hair and pastel scrubs walking towards buzz. and i swear it was one of them slo-motion scenes as buzz saw her and knew everything would be fine. he raised that stupid bucket of flowers high up into the air all child-like, and she said, "oh, mr. chambers, these are soo pretty, thank you mr. chambers." buzz grabbed an orange note paper square and a pen and said, "oh, i forgot the card! i have a card for you." i saw him scribble, "to my angel, mona". and she was soo touched. i could tell she had had a ruff morning and that this gift of appreciation ment so much to her, she got a little misty in front of me, buzz, and the crows. as she showered buzz with many many, "thank you, mr. chambers" she pushed him to urology and unlocked the door as several vets who were waiting outside were also very relieved to see that door finally opened. "you can take him on into the back" she said, and buzz showed me too, although it was pretty obvious. i saw mona take that big ugly bucket of flowers and place them right in front on the checkin desk and start logging in some of the patients. buzz and i went to the back room which was next to a smaller green-tiled examining room. buzz said, "mona's the understands my condition, she's very gentle, it takes lots of strength to pull this tube out. anyone else might rip something because of all the calcium buildup, and if something wrong happened in there, i might die, cause i can't be operated on because of my heart, you see." i told buzz how much i thought mona appreciated the bucket, and that i was so glad we found her, and that i would need to get to the paper cause i was hours and hours late. he wanted me to get ben to come out to the hospital, but ben really didn't have a way out there. so i promised that once he got back home and felt up to it we'd go to that that crappy italian restuarant he liked to much. buzz gave me a handshake and hug and told me he loved me and benjamin, and thanked me and said he was fine now and that he could get back home in a taxi. it was so sad when i turned back to see buzz in that back room waving at me with a smile as i headed back to the front of the room. mona saw me coming and said, "you're not leaving him here alone are you, sir?" and i said, "no. he told me he was in good hands now."
