Skin

I am leaving France under a cloud, under a gun, and under a shower.

I have been trying to extract some deeper meaning from the latter.  But the more I try, the more I feel like some ancient practitioner of necromancy, poking around the entrails instead of just giving up and letting them be, well, entrails.

In fact, the more I think about it, the entire scene is pure Samuel Beckett.  I have rolled my wheelchair up to the edge of the Novotel shower.  This shower and, in fact, this hotel have been chosen for this very purpose.  Modernity, wheelchair access, safety.  So, it's easy to drop my legs over the edge of the bathtub, carefully position both - one leg moving under its own neurological steam, the other shoved into place like a department store mannequin -- then grab the one hand rail opposite.  By sliding my butt to the very edge of the wheelchair, leaning forward and grabbing the hand rail, I can stand.  I am now vertical, in the bathtub with its hand-held shower head on a stainless steel cable, my soap on its accustomed rope on my hand.  All quadriplegic systems are go for wash.  Turn on the water.

The showerhead is, being hand-held, currently sitting very low on its convenient perch.  The spray is pointing sideways, toward the front of the bathtub, the gentle water washing along the tiles, down the wall, and over my feet.  What happens, in the way of such things, is that the gentle turns.  It turns hot.  It turns that way, because I have just twisted the faucet control slightly to the left.  The water has leapt from tepid to scalding.  My limbs are leaping too.  They are leaping because they are neurologically out-of-control.  I have only one small hand rail to hold onto.  I have to make an immediate decision.  Let go and try to control the temperature, i.e., turn the water off -- and in so doing, possibly fall.  Everything is leaping and jumping, my limbs are trying desperately to flail and toss and knock me off balance.  It's a long way down, and at the bottom it's all porcelain.  My arm is burning, my foot is burning.  I am holding on for dear life.  I cannot control this.  I have to end it.  I scream for help.  I scream again, "help." 

Marlou is there in seconds.  "Turn it off," I say.  Unfortunately, my body is in the way, and so is my wheelchair, and Marlou has to maneuver around both to get to the water.  It's off now.  And so, it seems, is much of my skin.

My left arm has achieved a deep lobster color.  And my foot?  It feels that something is terribly amiss, but no, Marlou takes a look at it, and so do I.  The foot seems okay.  The arm?  Not so okay.  About as not okay as a bad sunburn.  Which isn't reassuring, actually, because all these events have occurred in the neurological haze of quadriplegia.  I can't really feel what's going on in my skin, yet I have to live in it.  My skin, that is.  What to do?  Well, nothing much for the time being.  Marlou and I have some sightseeing to do, after all, and I try to calm her worries, sooth my doubts, and get us both out the door.  To one of the glorious hill districts of Provence. 

After all, Marlou is equipped with a certain amount of first aid gear.  And after a spray of this, and a bandaging of that, we are underway.  In fact, in the pharmacie de l'ocre we buy additional bandages.  The pharmacist offers the traditional French advice.  That is to say, I roll up my sleeve and show the woman the reddened skin.  She doesn't flinch, but suggests this bandage and that one.  We have had an authentic French experience, have purchased some EU approved first aid antiseptic and are on our way.

We had what, for Provence, passes as a modest lunch.  Instead of the pull-out-all-the-stops gastronomie of the previous day, I settle for some roasted Provençal peppers and a lasagna.  Still, I feel that I have eaten what I normally ingest in approximately three days in California.  Never mind, for this repast has been more or less light by my travel standards.  We load the wheelchair back in the van -- that is to say, Marlou does -- and I marvel at how all this wheelchair schlepping has worked out. 

Down the autoroute, back to the hotel, and Marlou makes my electric wheelchair walk the plank for the absolute last time.  Later, I try to have something light in the hotel dining room.  The menu sports a page of healthy alternatives, with an introductory paragraph extolling the virtues of grilling on a plank.  It's a wrought iron plank, and if you believe the copy, "almost no oil is required" to prepare your very healthy meal.  I order the shrimp with mixed vegetables.  What can I say?  There's plenty of Provençal olive oil, some deep-fried vegetables, and some sort of artisan sauce that may be the archetypal precursor to tartar sauce. 

It's gone in an instant, and I would be too, except that it's 10:30 p.m. and my cousin Bob has just blown in from Paris, via the TGV.  We have a delightful drink, the three of us.  It gets late.  I go back to my room, slip off my shoe and stare in horror at the enormous white blister that has risen along the side of my foot.  We call Bob in his room.  We three stare at my foot.  No one likes the look of my arm, either.  I am half resigned to seeing a doctor the next day.  It will make Marlou feel better, and the next morning Bob says it will make him feel better, too.  Being a worrier, a little medical attention will also make me feel better.

Instead, we take the easier course.  The following morning, we have the usual spectacular assortment of bakery goods, accompanied by coffee, and followed by, yes, another visit to a pharmacie.  Actually, this marks our third.  Bob has been out early that morning and purchased a healing balm.  Now we need more bandages, I produce my arm one more time, and both Bob and Marlou cluck approval.  The redness has gone down.  Less lobster, more rapidly improving sunburn.  As for the blister, we now have an entirely second opinion from the second pharmacist of the day: leave it alone. 

After some screwing about, we hit the road again, wheelchair loaded, Bob somehow loaded into his own seat in the back (thus the miracle of our Renault Kangoo) -- and we now have a lunch that does considerable damage to what is left of my body.  Provençal beef stew.  And followed by one of the most imaginative, and utterly decadent, chocolate desserts on record: a sort of chocolate satire on Vietnamese spring rolls.  They even have a dipping sauce (ginger).

Thus the gun, and the cloud, and the shower.  We've been traveling for almost a month now.  My body has had it.  The shower thing?  Just a reminder.  I don't live here.  I live there.