The emergency room seemed oddly familiar to Candy. She didn’t realize what it was until she noticed the elderly man with the stomach cramps lean over and attempt to cop a feel from his attending physician. That was exactly what Haines’ character had done to her character on the first of her three ill-fated episodes. The Tricounty Hospital was so much like St. John’s Arms! It even had that incessant ”beep! beep!” sound that seemed to come out of nowhere. She wondered if it came off a CD called "Medical Mix" like it had on the set.
Her crushed hand was killing her, but since her situation was not life threatening, she had to wait in a turquoise plastic U-shaped chair next to a kid covered in spots whose neurotic Mom kept making him stick out his tongue every five seconds. What was more, she had lost the cat, and her Mom had insisted in picking her up from the hospital even though she was really fine. The truck, on the other hand, looked like it was permanently being seen through a fun-house mirror. After wandering around in the ditch for a half-hour calling for Snuffy, she had walked to Myers’s place and called Buck to take her to the hospital.
Buck had to go back to work, and with her hurt hand, they wouldn’t be able to out to the 5th Ace, but they still agreed to meet up and get the car unstuck and do the roast thing. Then her Mom had messed everything up by insisting that she could dig the car out by herself and that she’d bring dinner in to the hospital and take Candy home. "I’ll fix something for Bart, too, and take it by the grain elevator."
Candy winced. For some reason, her mom thought that by putting the courses of a leftover meal all in a plastic bread bag and separating them with graham crackers, she had invented a fancy new kind of vertical TV dinner. Little did she know that those horrid little sacks of slop always went straight into Candy’s garbage can. Which reminded Candy, if her Mom came over unexpectedly, she would be sure to notice that Candy had torn up the bathrobe she had received for Christmas and was using it for dishtowels.
Her hand throbbed. “I could use a hair burning treatment right now,” thought Candy, and smirked at her own joke, regretting that she had nobody to tell all her weird stories to.
Three hours and several painkillers later, Candy was back at her apartment staring dumbly at the bread bag dinner. She had managed to lose her Mom at the doorstep by pretending she was working on a surprise and didn’t want her mom to see it. She realized what an ugly low-down lie this was, and resolved to start knitting something for her Mom as soon as her hand healed. The doctor had told her that if she was lucky the cast could come off in as few as six weeks.
Half in a stupor, Candy got out a steak knife and slit the belly of the hideous bread bag to take a peek inside. She was just about to consider poking a fork into the mess when she noticed a piece of paper lying on the floor. It was her reply to hair burning man. She must have dropped it when she was stuffing envelopes.
Candy absent mindedly read it, recalling the time she had gone to a medical museum in Minneapolis and had the bumps on her head read by a phrenology machine. Different quadrants of the head were supposed to represent different parts of a person’s personality. The theory had been defunct for nearly a hundred years, but it had been fun to believe that the little scroll the machine had printed had accurately profiled her personality. She enjoyed believing that she was born to be a leader of men and that she had a strong compassion lobe. Those little things can give you confidence. Healing is a funny thing, she thought, feeling very philosophical. So much of it is in your head.
“Maybe the itching is all in the lady’s head,” she pondered. “Maybe I’ll just change this letter and give them some hope.” Now she was giggling a little. She flipped up the cover of the laptop and heard the familiar chord as it started. She typed as rapidly as she could with one hand, chuckling to herself every now and then. By the time she had it printed out she was so pleased that she read it over and over, each time being more amazed at how clever she had been. She would tack it up on her refrigerator to amuse herself. But right now she was feeling sleepy, so she flopped onto the couch.
“You were so tired that you didn’t even eat your dinner!” Candy’s mother said sunnily. “I guess I’d better throw it out. You know they say that deadly bacteria can breed in a matter of minutes. So how is your hand, Punkin?”
Candy opened one eye. The good news was that the dinner was no longer a threat. The bad news was that her Mom was dangerously close to the kitchen towels.
“Mom, you know what I’d really love is a latte. How would you feel about grabbing me one at Sunny J’s?”
Candy was horrified at her own deceptiveness. As soon as her mother was out the door she would dash around, hiding any traces of thankless daughterhood, and be back on the couch before the milk was even steamed. (Sunny J’s was just across the street, but it was owned by an old man who found running an espresso machine akin to landing a lunar module.)
“I knew you’d say that! I hope you like almond.” Her mom said, bending down to set a now tepid latte on the table in front of Candy. Apparently she had been here for hours, watching Candy drool on her pillow and messing with her personal stuff.
“I mailed that letter for you too.” Her mom casually thumbed over her shoulder toward the kitchen counter. “You forgot and left one on your printer, so I hustled up an envelope and tossed it in the mail.”
“Thunk!” went Candy’s casted hand against the coffee table as she threw out both her arms like a person who had tipped too far back on a kitchen chair. It hurt. Crunched up in a ball and moaning, the vague memory of her comedic editing job started to come back to her. Full of false hope, her eyes darted to the refrigerator door, but there was no funny hair burning letter there.
“Be careful, honey!” her mom warned, as Candy started banging her head against the table. Her hospital bill was going to be in the thousands, her car was nearly totaled, her hand was broken and hence she would not be able to answer fan mail very efficiently, her Mom had penetrated her citadel, and she had unintentionally sent an innocent man bogus medical advice under the identity of Anne Johansen.
“Fuck this lucky jacket!” she screamed, as she struggled to free her clumsy plastered paw from its sleeve.
Her mom stood in the kitchen dumbfounded. “Well you don’t have to curse, Carmel.”
This truly infuriated Candy. Her mother only called her by her given name when she had been a naughty girl. Not only did she hate the fact that her mom was still trying to mold her character, but she could not stand that her mother refused to admit was her real name really was.
The legal name that Candy’s bills and tax returns came to was Camel White. Not Camille, or Carmelle, but Camel. All of her life she had endured childish jokes about having one or two humps, and yet her mother always pretended that it was a typo on the school roles every year, in every class. Apparently her mom had written the name kind of messily on the forms in the hospital. When the printed birth certificate arrived mom hadn’t noticed the typo, which was forgivable, but not the cover up! Not the ridiculous charade. That was just stupid!
“That was so clever of you to cut up that bathrobe that I sewed for you and make it into dishrags,” her mom broke into her reverie. “Would you like me to hem the edges of them for you? I could just get out your sewing machine and do that right now while you take a little happy-nappy. Now wouldn’t that make your arm feel better? I’ll get you some crushed ice in one of these rags you made from your bathrobe and you can just lay your arm on it and that will help with the pain and the swelling.”
Candy felt like a gopher trapped in its hole while the ammonia was being poured in the other end. She knew that if she couldn't think up a suitable errand quickly, her mom would camp out nursing, cleaning, and redecorating until at least time for Jeopardy.
“Mom, remember when I was little. If I was sick you used to make me a special lunch tray with little cheese sandwiches cut into the shapes of stars. And you’d open a can of black olives. And make homemade chocolate pudding with that skin that forms on the top.”
“Yes, honey. I say most illnesses can be fixed with a little comforting food and some time to relax and watch a few of your favorite TV shows.”
“Well, how would you feel about going home and making me the special lunch and setting up the pillow palace to watch TV from. I really have a craving for that chocolate pudding. You could call me when its done and I could see if Buck will drive me over.”
“Okay, dear. That’s just what we’ll do. It will take me awhile to make the pudding though and then it has to cool quite a while for the scum to form.”
“I’ll be alright here by myself until its ready.”
“Okay, and I will just take these dish rags and hem them up the right way for you. Toodle-oo.”
“Bye, mom. And Thanks.” The pain in Candy’s head was a growing tide that almost matched that of her arm. She felt like her brainpan was being used to store too much wet laundry. Her arm shrieked an off-key song of pain, like a never-ending beginning clarinet solo. She felt a combination of fear and nausea. She knew her mother had not really been pleased with the towels. She fretted over the hair-burning letter. She took two more of the little white pain pills. Perhaps they would soothe her jangled nerves, certainly more so than the impending pudding luncheon. Candy reached over with her good arm and grabbed the laptop. She would see just what she had written. Maybe she could find a remedy to the situation.
Dear Frank:
Caring healers like you are needed to join the medical revolution in patient care and relief through the scientifically proven hair burning treatments. St. John’s Arms is having a special this month only on the home hair burning kit. For the small investment of $50 you can get all of the supplies you need to begin as a healer! (Or $1,500 for the beginning level franchise.) Here’s what you will receive by return post once we’ve received your check:
2 Hair separating probes
Plastic sheeting
Cotton thread
Alcohol burner
Safety matches
Zippo lighter
Detailed map and instructions.
Free tortoise shell comb and brush set
You’ll hear comments like these.
“Hair burning cured my overgrown toenails.”
“I spent over $2,000 on hair burning treatments and boy was it ever worth it.”
Order now to prevent delays!
Sincerely,
Candy White
Director of Product Development
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