Varicose roots 1

Last week tonight I was in a precarious situation. 

I used to think deadlines were stress. They are nothing but transparent, movable, artificial bait. Nothing like the deadlines imposed by the heart and soul of your true family. 

I had just left my father in the hospital. He was suffering from a vein blockage and about to undergo a risky angioplasty in his leg. I was also facing a company suing me for $7.000 in court, and I was my own lawyer. 

Fuck. All in all, a lifetime worth of potential disaster concentrated into a 3-hour space on the morning of March 16, 2015. 

Talk about sweat...

I came out of the lawsuit unscathed, but for a few nicks on my Metro Card and a dry-cleaning of my suit. Dismissed with prejudice. I told my Mom and my sister Katie (the DOJ lawyer) later in the day that I felt like Matlock. 

But then there was the true, unbreachable realization of Dad going under the knife.

In the state he was in while I spent two nights in the hospital over the preceding weekend, I was not convinced this would be a simple, physical procedure. Indeed it was not, as Dr. Buch, the vascular surgeon explained. 

The balloon might work. If not, a bypass. If not that, an amputation. (Remind me to call my friend Dan).

His mental health was over the cliff and crashed on a rocky seashore with the tide pulling out. That’s all I was focused on at the moment. My Dad was a wasted friend who had taken bad acid. Laying in a hospital bed. Not as immortal as I was conditioned to believe.