Feather River Hospital and Tabitha’s Skull

I came across this sketch today. I apparently jotted it down some time after a hospitalization. (That year I had six surgical procedures.)  The hospital mentioned is Feather River, closed, for now, after being engulfed by the Camp Fire. The hospital itself became a “consumable,” I suppose. This study, and the details of the fire I continue to consume and sift through,  fit with my fixation on contrasting the micro and the macro:

Hospital staff during the Camp Fire evacuation.

The nurse told me I could take anything from the hospital room but the bed. So now their white plastic oscillating fan sits on my stereo speaker, atop a pile of components waiting for a new place to be after we had taken C.T.’s Food Not Bombs filing cabinets to his storage unit. The air has crisped up and now my hot flashes are a relief. The fan sits, pointless, unplugged.

Tabitha’s skull is on the window sill, looking out, her eye socket (side-facing prey eyes) pondering the woods where mule deer pass. Her horns still locked in and menacing. She was my first goat. I made all my first mistakes with Tabby Lou. I failed to teach her not to perform her goat greeting on humans. I remember her repeatedly flattening 200-pound Michael, who never learned to keep his eye on her.

“These are for the next yard sale,” C.T. said, tossing a package of neon colored pipe cleaners on my cluttered desk. A week ago. He buzzes, high RPM’s and task lists. I’ll get to it eventually.

My tea’s gone cold, in the nip of fall, and the sweater on, then a hot flash and the sweater off. But there’s some comfort in the tea, even cold, always available.

A pet goat is kind of slow motion consumable. Tabitha endured me, tortured visitors and then died, ancient at fourteen. I had to possess her phallic crown. I can’t think it’s any more odd or sad than the two cedar boxes on my shelf containing ashes of departed dogs. I had to keep her power, a woman discounted by men who lived to regret that, pondering their circumstances, flat on the ground.

The nurse told me I could take anything but the bed. Butte is one of California’s poorest counties. They’re used to patients who could make good use of random supplies. After six procedures in a year, I already had a drawer full of tready hospital socks. I didn’t need the sectioned plastic meal trays or the measure-your-breath toy. I had read all the magazines. All I could think of to pilfer was the little fan they brought me for hot flashes.

Seasons, ages, stirring the soup of stuff and souls. Arrived, regarded, gone.

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