You know, I thought once Indy finished his weekly speech appointments, I’d have nothing to tell you.
But as long as Willie lives, I’ll have stories. Stories upon stories upon stories.
I spent two weeks with Indy and Willie, two weeks where they circled me like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, taking a peck here, a pound of flesh there.
First was Indy who, after his little hospital visit in January, needed to wear a heart monitor.
At home.
For a week.
I accompanied him to the cardiologist’s office on the day he picked up the monitor. I knew – just knew – this monitor would be the bane of our existence during its week with us.
The cardiology tech explained the equipment – a monitor Indy would wear around his neck, connected to three EKG leads on his chest, a Samsung smartphone he’d need to keep within thirty feet of the monitor, a charger, a case to store it all.
Indy listened, clearly stumped. Indy has never used a smartphone. Now he was supposed to use one to record his symptoms for a week? And that charger – one plug, with two wires coming out of it? Worse, each piece had different charging times. The Samsung needed to be charged daily, but the chest monitor was good for three days.
I brought Indy and the equipment home. Despite Indy’s ambivalence, this should have been a slam dunk. Willie was a cardiac nurse. And she uses a Samsung smartphone. She could run this thing in her sleep.
I explained the setup to Willie. I showed her how to record Indy’s symptoms on the smartphone. Willie lives with Indy. Like, twenty-four hours a day. She knows he not only can’t operate technology but that his Parkinson’s slows his thinking. She would need to handle the monitor for Indy. Charge the different parts. Put it on after his shower. Record his symptoms.
But as soon as I finished my explanation, Willie turned to Indy and explained it all to him.
“Willie,” I sighed, exasperated. “This technology is not Indy’s forte. You have to help him.”
“No,” Willie responded. “He has to learn to do it himself.”
“No, he really doesn’t,” I replied. “It’s only for a week. March tenth. It’ll come off March tenth. If you don’t help him, we’ll have to do it all over again.”
Willie reluctantly agreed, like Indy was that friend who never calls except at eleven at night to ask for medical advice, instead of her husband of five decades whom she promised to love in sickness.
I plugged in the dual charger – one cord for the chest monitor, the other for the smartphone – next to Indy’s side of the bed. I told Willie to charge the smartphone while Indy slept, the monitor when he showered. I said they should leave the charger plugged in next to Indy’s side of the bed for the week. There was no reason to move it.
“He needs to keep the smartphone in his pocket,” I reminded Willie. “Keep it in your pocket until you go to bed,” I told Indy. “Then Willie will plug it into the charger for you.”
“Why can’t he plug it in?” Willie asked. Because somehow, she didn’t know what I knew, which was that the charger with two cords coming out of it would be an adventure for Indy.
“And we have to do this for ten DAYS?” Willie lamented.
I corrected her. Seven days. Just seven days. Until MARCH tenth. Not ten DAYS.
That battle won, I showed Indy and Willie the Blu-Ray player I’d picked up for them. I showed them the box from Target had both the Blu-Ray and a selection of HDMI cables. My brother was going to install it that weekend.
“Just leave the box here,” I said, laying the box on the chest under their dining room window. “Everything he needs is in here.”
I left. It was eleven in the morning on Wednesday.
When I returned at four with their groceries, Willie was gone. A gentleman in her building requires dressing changes for his surgical wounds several times a week. Somehow, this fellow qualifies for the free medical care from Willie Indy does not.
I call him my future stepdad.
With Willie gone, Indy had gotten up to all sorts of hijinks with his monitor. The smartphone was beeping. Did it need to be charged already? Indy thought so.
Actually, the smartphone was beeping because it was too far from the monitor.
“Did you have it in your pocket?” I asked Indy.
“No,” Indy said.
“Keep it in your pocket,” I told him. “Just until bedtime. Willie will take it from there.”
“I’ll come back tomorrow morning and see how you’re doing with it,” I assured him.
But at 11:30 that night, my phone comically, tragically rang.
Willie wanted to know what I’d done with the charger.
I reminded her I’d plugged it in next to Indy’s side of the bed. She and Indy had watched me do it.
“Well, we have two cords but no plug,” Willie sighed.
“I’m on my way,” I grumbled.
Indy let me into the building, apologizing for needing my help so soon.
“You explained it. I just don’t know where the plug is,” he said.
I told Indy it was fine, because Indy is the best and perfect and never does anything wrong. Also because there are few things worse as an adult than seeing your dad in his pajamas hanging his head like a shamed child.
Besides, I knew exactly where the plug had gotten off to.
I first checked the outlet next to Indy’s side of the bed. But I knew it wouldn’t be there.
Next I went to the Target box, which now held the Blu-Ray, the HDMI cables, and the plug for the cardiac monitor.
Indy and Willie were both shocked the plug was there.
I wasn’t.
Here’s the thing about Indy. He’s a tinkerer. My whole life, he’s spent his downtime tinkering. When I was a kid, I’d ask him what he was doing.
“I’m making mickey doodles to catch yellowhammers,” he’d say. Except he’s from Delco so he says “yella” instead of “yellow.”
Yellowhammers are birds, which I only recently discovered. I don’t know what a mickey doodle is. Or why Indy was perpetually using them to catch yellahammers.
Yes, I’ve asked. But it took him forty years to tell Willie why he occasionally, randomly honks the horn when he drives. I probably have another seven or eight years to go before I find out about the mickey doodles and yellahammers.
So Indy and his tinkering. In the basement. In the yard. With his car. Indy loves to tinker so much you could slap a green dress and some wings on him and send him off after Peter Pan.
And like that other tinker, he hates Wendy.
Not me. The spelling. I’m Wendi with an “i”, which he put on my birth certificate and woe to the person who spells my name with a “y.”
So I knew Indy had conflated the Blu-Ray and heart monitor in his mind. They’re both electronics, irresistible to a tinkerer. He had taken apart the dual charger, then stored some of it with the other new electronic in the house.
The Blu-Ray.
That’s pretty much how it went for seven days.
Each day I went to Willie and Indy’s, Indy had taken apart one thing or another with his monitor.
Each day, Willie was pretty resistant to dealing with the monitor.
Each day, I fixed whatever had gone sideways with the monitor, then picked up some Starbucks. A consolation prize for losing the battle with Willie I’d thought I’d won.
As if I ever could win a battle with Willie.
She’ll probably outlive me.
This, of course, was not the only velociraptor-pecking – yellahammer pecking? – going on. Willie, who had failed her driving test, was in occupational therapy. The OT sessions were meant to break her bad habits, get her back on the road.
And I got to be her Uber, to and from the OT sessions.
I pulled up in front of Willie and Indy’s building, where I’d been so many times each day of that week.
No Willie.
When I pick up Indy, he’s always out front, waiting for the perpetually late me.
My tardiness is genetic.
I called up to Willie’s apartment.
No answer.
I waited, to make sure the apartment phone had gone unanswered because Willie was en route.
No Willie.
I called again. Nothing.
I’m sure you’ll be surprised to know this is usually how things go with Willie.
I parked the car and trekked across the parking lot. Filled out the COVID form with the front desk. Climbed the two flights of stairs to Willie’s apartment.
I knocked.
Yeah. You guessed it. No answer.
I used my key to let myself in.
Willie began shouting as soon as I walked in.
“I’m not Indy,” I sighed.
She was browning beef on the stove. Which, you know, is exactly what you should be doing when you have an OT appointment in twenty minutes and you’re thirty minutes away.
While I waited for Willie to get her act together, I collected Indy’s heart monitor. Mercifully, his week was over. I could return the heart monitor to the cardiologist while Willie did her OT.
I checked the kit. Smartphone, monitor, EKG stickers….
No charger.
This time, it was Willie who misplaced it. Which could only mean one thing…
….Yep. It was on the floor.
That week is over now. Willie is back to driving. Indy is monitor-free.
Don’t worry. It’s almost Cabin season.
More stories are waiting for us there.