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The Earplug

Michael Golder

 

Some days New York City hummed along, the wailing sirens, honking horns, and jangling jackhammers nearly tolerable. Other days Baldasaro was forever sticking fingers in his ears, defending them against an aural onslaught. He had recently suffered a bout of tinnitus and on a visit to the ear doctor the audiologist told him he had lost some high-range hearing. A few of his friends, like him in their 60s, were already hard of hearing. Even with their high-tech hearing aids, conversations now required some adjustments. He had to remember to sit on the right side of this person and the left of another, and in a restaurant or at a dinner party, seating was no longer arranged boy-girl but good ear-bad ear.

Turning 60 had come as a shock to Baldasaro. By the time he’d gotten used to it, he was 66 with the even more shocking age of 70 on the horizon. He was still not wholly resigned to the “aging process,” which he understood to mean the process of falling apart. He hoped to avoid, or at least forestall, the need for a hearing aid and to sidestep other medical indignities that lay in wait like street thugs. He was proud to have retained all of his original packaging, even his wisdom teeth – which his dentist was itching to take out – and envisioned going to his grave some far-off day largely intact.

Stepping out of his building near Washington Square Park, Baldasaro was rudely greeted by the Con Ed project that had been tearing up his street for a week. A crew  wearing hardhats and safety goggles was waist-deep in a trench that exposed an intricate network of pipes and wires, reminding Baldasaro that what went on below ground in Manhattan was as complex as what went on above. He pressed on, fingers plugging his ears, shoulders hunched against the earsplitting pounding and drilling. When he rounded the corner onto West 4th St., he unblocked his ears and waded into NYU country, where the air was charged with youthful energy and promise. Head down to avoid being overwhelmed by the rush of fresh, earnest faces preparing to take over the world, he weaved through thickets of students, picking up snippets of chatter about exams and boyfriends and parents and roommates. As he sometimes did to screen out crowds, he pretended to be piloting an airplane, looking down at the ground from 35,000 feet. From that imagined height the sidewalk’s stains and cracks and clumps of trash were transformed into little towns and cities, lakes, rivers, and mountain ranges. Perspective was everything, thought Baldasaro, and distance often improved things.

A light rain began to fall and Baldasaro scolded himself for not having checked the weather before leaving home. He took shelter under some scaffolding and looked at the weather app on his phone. The forecast called for showers all day. He thought about turning back to fetch an umbrella but quickly nixed the idea. When you lived in a sixfloor walk-up and forgot an umbrella, you simply bought a new one. He’d lived in his tiny one-bedroom apartment for more than 30 years, and the recent additions to the stash of umbrellas in his closet attested to his increasing forgetfulness. The apartment itself had a pronounced pitch to the floors that caused everything to appear somewhat askew.

The pipes clanged, the heat was unreliable, and then there were those six flights of stairs, which were either keeping Baldasaro alive or killing him. But whatever its quirks and foibles, the apartment was, most importantly, rent-stabilized, a gift from the gods of New York real estate. The rent was far below market rate, enabling Baldasaro to live in coveted Greenwich Village among lawyers and doctors and finance types on only social security and his modest 401k. He had retired two years earlier after a series of lifesucking middle-management jobs, the last at a food service company with oppressively unrealistic sales projections. He had never married or had children and now, with no real obligations or commitments, he’d embarked on a program of cultural uplift. Lately, this found him at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he was headed today. During his working life he had only visited the museum a handful of times, usually to squire out-oftown guests. On those occasions he’d been dazzled by the Met’s grandeur and vast artistic treasures. But since retiring he’d become a museum regular. He didn’t understand much of what he looked at but benefitted nonetheless, he believed, merely by being in the presence of great art.

Regarding the rain from beneath the scaffolding, Baldasaro considered soldiering on sans umbrella. New York was eternally under construction and there was intermittent scaffolding all the way to Astor Place, where he would take the uptown 6-train to the museum. The rain wasn’t heavy, and if he stayed under the scaffolding he could make it to the subway without getting soaked. But he had no intel on the scaffolding or weather conditions uptown. Plus, after the Met, he might want to go for an autumnal stroll through Central Park where he’d be fully exposed to the elements. He could catch cold.

Baldasaro decided to play it safe. He ducked into a Duane-Reade and found a  display of umbrellas right by the store’s entrance, placed there at the first sign of rain, he suspected, by a contender for employee of the month. Near the umbrellas, below shelves of TSA-approved travel items, a pack of “Hear Today” earplugs caught his eye. Earplugs! Of course! After years of walking around the city sticking fingers in his ears, why hadn’t he thought of them before? The package boasted a “noise reduction rating” of 33 decibels, which sounded impressive to Baldasaro, though he had no idea what it meant. He paid for the umbrella and earplugs with such anticipation that when the cashier handed him his change and replied “no problem” to his “thank you,” he refrained from launching into a disquisition on how, because there had been “no problem” to begin with, her response should have been a standard “you’re welcome.”

Back outside, though the rain had stopped, Baldasaro opened and closed his new umbrella a few times to make sure it worked. Then he eagerly tore open his earplug sixpack and removed a pair. Following instructions on the package, he rolled an earplug between his palms to flatten it, then inserted the plug into his right ear and held it in place with a finger while it expanded. He repeated the procedure for his left ear. Instantly, the hubbub on West 4th St. and Broadway was reduced to something like a murmur. The same trucks were barreling through, the same taxis blaring their horns, the same sirens screaming – everything was as it had been a moment ago, but now, filtered through the miraculous foam cylinders, New York’s snarl seemed tamed.

Baldasaro crossed Broadway and sallied on to the Astor Place station. He felt invincible, like a superhero whose special power, paradoxically, was not hearing. On the subway platform, he watched an express train hurtle by, unfazed by its clatter and screech. Down the platform, he noticed a middle-aged woman blocking her ears, her eyes squeezed shut. Feeling magnanimous, Baldasaro strode over to her. When the train passed and the woman opened her eyes, she was surprised to find before her a stocky man with two earplugs nestled in the palm of his outstretched hand.

“On the house,” said Baldasaro, a glint in his eye.

The woman laughed and plucked the earplugs from his palm.

“Just what I need,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Baldasaro.

A moment later the 6-train rumbled into the station. Baldasaro and the woman boarded the same car and sat next to each other. He watched the woman roll each earplug between her palms, as he had done, and insert them into her ears. The tension in her face melted away and she closed her eyes again, this time in peace. The two rode companionably uptown until the woman’s stop at Grand Central. As she stood to get off the train, she gave Baldasaro’s knee a quick pat and mouthed, “Thank you.” Then she was gone, the end of another subway love affair.

Baldasaro got off at 86th St. He emerged from the station and oriented himself, then scurried across Lexington Avenue against the light, abandoning a knot of Japanese tourists on the corner who dutifully waited for the “walk” signal. In jaywalking Baldasaro had discovered one of life’s small pleasures. It gave expression to a recklessness in him that he otherwise kept in check. He especially enjoyed it when tourists were around to witness his bold defiance of pedestrian traffic laws. He wished to confirm for them the widely held belief, or so he imagined, that New York was a city of badasses and to demonstrate that he, Jay Baldasaro, 66, was as badass as anyone.

The rain started up again, harder now than it had been in the Village. Walking west towards Central Park, Baldasaro opened his new umbrella and congratulated himself for buying it, then berated himself once more for forgetting to check the weather in the first place. Self-praised and self-punished in equal measure, he continued along 86th St., which on an early Tuesday afternoon was clotted with delivery trucks and service people and nannies pushing strollers. It was a lot to take in, but thanks to the earplugs, not a lot to hear. When he turned onto Fifth Avenue the majestic Metropolitan Museum of Art came into view and Baldasaro picked up his pace. Fewer food carts and souvenir stalls than usual dotted the sidewalk in front of the museum, probably because of the rain, but the grand staircase leading to the main entrance was still mobbed with visitors. As was his custom, Baldasaro skirted the stairs and entered the museum at 81st St. through the ground level door that was used by tour groups and people in the know such as, he liked to think, himself. He preferred this entrance because its coat check and ticket counters were far less crowded than those on the first floor and because it had a little-used restroom.

Once inside Baldasaro dodged lively packs of school kids, whose teachers barked at them like border collies. The din, muffled by the earplugs, was like the roar of the ocean through a seashell. After checking his coat and buying a ticket, Baldasaro made a quick stop at the All Gender Family Restroom by the gift shop. Then he took an elevator to the first floor to begin his afternoon of cultural enrichment. As usual, he didn’t have a plan, preferring to wander willy-nilly through the galleries, letting his mood take him where it would. He sauntered through Greek and Roman Art then slalomed through the congested Great Hall into Egyptian Art, where he joined a tour in progress. He was having a hard time hearing the docent and then remembered the earplugs. He pulled the plug out of his right ear then wiggled a finger into his left ear to dislodge the other one. But instead of loosening the earplug, he seemed to be pushing it deeper into his ear. He tried coming at it from various angles, but couldn’t quite grasp the slender piece of foam.

He forcefully tapped the side of his head, as though trying to displace water after a swim. This drew some glances from members of the tour, and the docent herself shot him a quizzical look.

Baldasaro stepped away from the group and stood by a mummy to assess the situation. He took a few deep breaths. Okay, an earplug was stuck in his ear; this much was clear. Less clear was how to get it out. He needed a new tactic. Baldasaro extended his right arm across the top of his head and pulled up on his ear, hoping this would present a better approach to the plug. He maneuvered the index finger and thumb of his left hand toward the plug, trying to snag it in a pincer grip. In the midst of this operation, Baldasaro grew aware of a young boy of about five openly staring at him. The boy apparently found the spectacle of an old man with his arm splayed across his head digging into his ear more entertaining than a nearby sarcophagus. He pointed at Baldasaro and babbled something in French, getting the attention of his mother who had been absorbed in deciphering a wall of hieroglyphics. She took one look at Baldasaro in his cubist stance and quickly deciphered him as loony. Grabbing her son’s arm, she marched him away against his loud protestations. This caused others to look at the boy and then, following his stare, at the source of the commotion – a grimacing, contorted Baldasaro, seeming to wrestle with his own ear. Suddenly conscious of the many eyes on him, and not himself wishing to be an exhibit, Baldasaro withdrew his fingers from his ear and pivoted to examine a large, cracked vase on which a battle scene raged. He pretended to study the vase, as if searching among the warring charioteers for Kirk Douglas or Charlton Heston, but his real focus remained on the earplug now beating time on his eardrum.

Baldasaro knew he should give the earplug a rest. He knew he should just walk around the museum, take in the art, let himself be transported by the splendors at every turn, by the magnificent building itself. He should allow himself to be charmed by the art lovers swirling past him from all corners of the earth. Maybe he could make someone’s acquaintance, perhaps a woman with an enchanting accent. They might share a cup of tea in the café overlooking Central Park, a woman he would later text and invite to dinner. She’d be from a faraway land, curious to know how a six-floor walk-up in Greenwich Village compared to her own apartment in Paris or Buenos Aires or Tokyo. Then, snug on his couch, savoring a bottle of wine, listening to Miles and Coltrane, other curiosities might be explored. He could deal with the nettlesome earplug later. He knew all this. But it didn’t matter. The earplug had to come out.

Attached to Baldasaro’s key ring was his trusty Swiss Army knife, which he considered essential for meeting the demands of urban life, be it a loose thread, a bottle cap, a speck of spinach between his teeth or, as was now the case, a stuck earplug. He would use the knife’s tweezers to extract the earplug, a procedure he thought best undertaken in the privacy of a restroom lest it be mistaken for performance art. A guard directed Baldasaro to a men’s room behind the Goddess of Sakhmet who, according to the placard next to her lion-headed body, represented “the forces of violence, disaster, and illness.” A more formidable restroom attendant Baldasaro could not imagine. The restroom itself was busy, with a line of men awaiting their turn at a urinal or stall. This was not the place for a discreet earplug extraction. Baldasaro did a quick about face. He supposed all the restrooms on the museum’s main floors would be similarly crowded, so he decided to return to the little-used restroom on the ground floor. Blinkered against the art and its craning devotees, he trekked back through the Great Hall and Greek and Roman Art. Then, too impatient to wait for an elevator, he darted down the stairs to ground level where he found the All Gender Family Restroom, as he had hoped, unoccupied. He entered the restroom, bolted the door and paused to catch his breath.

The restroom’s single toilet ensured privacy, but there was no telling when someone might knock, so he got right to work. He turned to the mirror above the sink and slid the tweezers from his knife. Carefully guiding the tweezers into his ear, he fished around for the elusive earplug. He struck what he thought was the plug’s tip, gripped it and gently pulled. It wouldn’t budge. He poked and prodded and tried different angles, but try as he might, he couldn’t dislodge the earplug. Frustrated, Baldasaro dug deeper and nicked the delicate skin inside his ear.

“Ouch!” he yelped.

Just then someone rattled the door handle and, finding it locked, knocked on the door.

“Just a minute,” Baldasaro sang out. He returned the tweezers to his knife and ran the tap a few moments just for show, then he noisily grabbed a few paper towels, also for  show. On the other side of the door he could hear a baby begin to fuss. He took a quick glance around, noted that the toilet seat was down, then opened the door.

“Omigod!” said the young woman standing there.

“What?” said Baldasaro, resisting a reflexive urge to check his fly.

She was a tall blond and Baldasaro couldn’t help but notice that she hadn’t waited for the sanctum of the All Gender Family Restroom to nurse her baby.

“Your ear,” she said, wide-eyed. “It’s bleeding.”

“Oh?” said Baldasaro, as if a bleeding ear was par for the course. He took out his handkerchief and dabbed at his ear.

“Must’ve cut myself shaving,” he said, examining the handkerchief. The splotches of blood unnerved him, but he forced a smile. “Pesky ear hairs, they’re the worst.”

Maybe it was the ear hair remark, or maybe the canned smile, or maybe the peek at her breast, but as her baby nursed, the woman brusquely edged past Baldasaro and into the restroom.

“Excuse me,” she said, coolly.

“Of course,” said Baldasaro, though the door had already closed.

Next to the All Gender Family Restroom was a standard men’s room and Baldasaro went in to clean up. He saw, gazing back at him in the mirror, a ghoul with blood oozing from his ear. As men around him zipped and unzipped, a few tossing uneasy looks his way, he moistened a paper towel and blotted up the blood that had pooled in his ear, then he wiped away a red rivulet meandering down his cheek. He ran his handkerchief under cold water and pressed it to his ear to stanch the bleeding. After a minute or two, when it had finally stopped, Baldasaro splashed some water on his face.

He looked in the mirror and concluded that he was presentable enough to rejoin the world.

His ear now throbbed painfully, whether from self-mutilation or the earplug still  buried somewhere in his ear, he wasn’t sure. One thing was certain: the wonders of the Met could not be enjoyed under these circumstances. Baldasaro gathered his things from the coat check and, feeling defeated, left the museum. All he’d really seen was one fierce Egyptian statue and a couple of restrooms. Worse, he had utterly failed to remove a wee bit of foam from his ear. He had to admit, reluctantly, that medical intervention was called
for.

The rain had tapered off to a drizzle, nothing that called for an umbrella, and the streets looked freshly washed, slick and shiny. Cool air with a hint of damp leaves drifted in from Central Park. The breeze felt good on Baldasaro’s skin but did little to cheer him. Walking back to the 6-train, he fretted over whether he’d done serious harm to his ear, whether the earplugs – which had seemed like a godsend a short time ago – were even safe, whether he now had an infection worming its way to his brain.

On the downtown-6 subway platform, Baldasaro distracted himself with a game of “Rat or Train.” Which would he see first – a rat or a train? If the train arrival clock showed a wait of longer than two minutes, he usually went with rat. But time of day was also a factor, rats being more active at night. In the middle of the afternoon and with the train clock posting an arrival in roughly three minutes, Baldasaro chose train, figuring that most rats, save the overachievers, would be napping. He scanned the tracks for any movement, wondering, as he often had, why rats weren’t electrocuted by the live third rail. He knew rats were clever. Perhaps they had learned to avoid touching the third rail and passed down that skill to the younger generation. Besides being clever, he’d read that rats were empathetic. One study showed that rats would forgo food to help a fellow rat in distress, exhibiting a selflessness that would be marveled at in a dog or a dolphin or, for that matter, a human, but did nothing to burnish the image of rats. Such were the inequities of life, mused Baldasaro. At the end of the day a rat was still a rat, a loathsome thing to be shrieked at and poisoned.

A whoosh of air from the tunnel announced the arrival of a train. Baldasaro privately cheered his “Rat or Train” triumph and took a mental victory lap around the station. As the train approached, he stared into its hypnotic headlights, averting his eyes only when their brightness grew too intense. It was probably dangerous to stare into those mesmerizing orbs, he thought, like looking directly at the midday sun. The car he entered was empty, unusual even for the middle of the day. But no sooner had he sat down than an overwhelming stank accounted for the emptiness. At the far end of the car what he’d mistaken for a bundle of trash shifted in its seat. Baldasaro realized with a start that he was looking at a man reeking of shit. He moved to the opposite end of the car, his revulsion mixed with shame at his revulsion. He thought about holding his breath and handing the man a dollar, but then the train doors opened at the next stop and he hurriedly changed cars. The new car was packed, probably due to other refugees from the one he’d  just fled. He found a handhold on a pole deep in the car and held on as the train rattled its way downtown.

At Astor Place Baldasaro watusied off the train and climbed the station stairs into the gloomy afternoon. A sudden need to pee struck him, and he chastised himself for not doing so before he left the Met. He had been so preoccupied with the earplug that he had broken one of his cardinal rules: never miss an opportunity to empty your bladder. Looming over the Astor Place subway entrance was a Starbucks, the de facto public restroom of New York City. But after gauging his degree of urgency, Baldasaro decided he could hold out until he reached his destination, the nearby CityMD, where there probably wouldn’t be a line for the restroom, and it was certain to be cleaner.

He was surprised, when he arrived at the clinic, to find the waiting room empty. Maybe the doctor had a bad Yelp rating, he theorized, or maybe it was a particularly healthy day in the neighborhood. The young woman at the reception desk looked up at him through smudged glasses that Baldasaro wanted to clean.

“What brings you in today?” she asked, brightly, as if he might be in the market for some new, trendy disease. She had, Baldasaro observed, not a mole above her upper lip but a tattoo of a mole.

“Something’s stuck in my ear,” he said, pointing to his left ear. “An earplug.”

“Okay,” she said. “Have you been here before?”

“I have,” said Baldasaro, recalling a mishap with a hammer. He gave his name and the receptionist opened his file on her computer.

“Still on Sullivan St.?” she asked, typing on her keyboard.

“Yes,” said Baldasaro. “You still take Medicare?”

“We do,” she said. “Have a seat, Mr. Baldasaro. It shouldn’t be long.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” said Baldasaro. “No one’s here.”

He gave her a moment to respond, but she continued typing, eyes on her computer screen.

“Could I use your restroom?”

“Down the hall, first door on the left.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course.”

Unlike “no problem,” Baldasaro considered “of course” an acceptable response to
“thank you.” He thought it conveyed a certain gallantry.

In the bathroom the sight of the toilet triggered in Baldasaro a nearly uncontrollable urge to pee. He frantically unfurled, aimed and fired. As he blissfully relieved himself, he resolved to increase his kegel reps to strengthen his urinary tract. He washed his hands then looked in the mirror to study his face. Sometimes, if he looked in a mirror at length, it seemed as though he could actually see himself aging, spots and lumps popping up like mushrooms after a rainfall. He was relieved not to see any fresh protrusions or new additions to his constellation of age spots. He was pretty sure, though, that he had looked younger at breakfast, but decided to chalk that up to the harshness of the bathroom light.

Back in the waiting room, Baldasaro was musing over a Men’s Heath cover featuring “Shredded Abs,” a winning breakfast cereal for cannibals, he thought, when his name was called. He returned the magazine to a pile of other magazines he never read and looked up. Another young woman – but they were all young now – needlessly scanned the empty waiting room, perhaps out of habit, before her eyes alighted on Baldasaro. In a slight Spanish accent she introduced herself as Monica and led him to a small room where Baldasaro hoisted himself onto the examination table.

“Something is in your ear?” asked Monica, slapping a blood pressure cuff on his arm.

“Yes,” said Baldasaro, feeling the cuff tighten. “An earplug.”

Monica checked the BP monitor and wrote on her clipboard.

“What is it?” Baldasaro asked.  “160 over 90.”

“That’s high,” said Baldasaro.

“Yes,” said Monica.

“It’s because I’m nervous,” said Baldasaro. “Usually it’s very good, like 110 over when I check it at home. But at the doctor’s it’s always high.”

“We can check it again after the doctor sees you, if you want, and see if it went down.”

“Thank you. I also talk a lot when I’m nervous, as you can see.”

“Dr. Patel will be right in.”

“Is he a good doctor? I noticed the waiting room is empty.”

“It’s a slow day. Don’t worry, Dr. Patel is excellent.”

“Of course you’d say that. You work here. What else are you going to say?”

“Well, that’s what I think,” said Monica, calmly, “whether I work here or not.”

“Sorry. I told you, I get chatty when I’m nervous.”

“No need to be nervous. Dr. Patel is great. You’ll see.”

As if on cue, a smiling Dr. Patel gave the open door a courteous rap and breezed in.

“Hi, I’m Dr. Patel,” he said, pleasantly, and dealt Baldasaro a brisk, crushing handshake.

He was a string bean of a man, well over six feet, but even with his height and doctor garb, Baldasaro thought he looked about fifteen. “Monica here has been singing your praises,” he told the doctor.

“Well, that’s to be expected,” said Dr. Patel.

“Because she works here, right? That’s what I said.”

“There’s that,” said Dr. Patel. “But she’s also my fiancée.”

“Is she!” said Baldasaro, wheeling on a blushing Monica. “You didn’t say!”

“She considers such disclosures unprofessional,” said Dr. Patel. “I’ll pay for that, I promise you.”

Monica rolled her eyes and slammed the clipboard into Dr. Patel’s chest, prompting him to chuckle and feign injury, and prompting in Baldasaro the unsettling thought that he was in the hands of children playing doctor.

“So, an earplug,” said Dr. Patel, now all business. He handed the clipboard back to Monica. “Stuck in your ear?”

“Yes, my left ear,” said Baldasaro. “I can’t get it out.”

“Let’s have a look.” Dr. Patel snapped on a pair of gloves, then dropped his bony frame onto a stool and swiveled over to Baldasaro. He unclipped a penlight from his lab coat and trained the beam on Baldasaro’s ear.

“It’s been bugging me all day,” said Baldasaro.

“Mmmhmm,” purred Dr. Patel, peering into the ear. “I see some scratches. And a little dried blood.”

“Yes, I tried prying it out with some tweezers.”

“You should never put sharp objects in your ear,” Dr. Patel said.

“I was desperate,” said Baldasaro.

Dr. Patel abruptly skated away and pocketed his penlight. He stood up, a beanstalk, and looked down at Baldasaro.

“Nothing in there,” he pronounced.

“Excuse me?” said Baldasaro, not sure he had heard the doctor correctly.

“Some scratches. A little blood. That’s all.”  Baldasaro felt his face redden. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” said Dr. Patel.

“Maybe,” offered Baldasaro, “it’s way in there, deep inside.”

“Not possible,” said the doctor. “The ear canal is much too narrow for an earplug.

It wouldn’t fit.”

“Let me understand this,” Baldasaro sputtered. “You’re saying there’s nothing in my ear?”

Dr. Patel nodded. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“With all due respect, doctor. I beg to differ.”

Baldasaro caught Dr. Patel exchange a quick look with Monica. He detected a little smile, a smirk really, that the doctor was vainly trying to suppress. Ah, these senior citizens, the smirk seemed to say. They’re like children. True, they don’t put straws or crayons up their nose, but they imagine things in their ear and poke at them with sticks.

“Could you take another look, please?” said Baldasaro, unable to contain the plaintiveness in his voice.

“Sure,” said Dr. Patel, somehow without a sigh.

Baldasaro saw Monica’s small nod of approval and understood that Dr. Patel was doing this for her. This is why she loved him, her young doctor who would go the extra mile to indulge an old man.

Dr. Patel sat back down on the stool and with his penlight once again peered into Baldasaro’s ear. After a thorough, unnecessary re-examination, he sprang off the stool and put away his penlight.

“Nothing,” said the doctor. “Absolutely nothing there.”  “You’re sure,” said Baldasaro.

“One-hundred percent sure.” Dr. Patel stifled a yawn.

Baldasaro was unable to look at either Dr. Patel or Monica. He stared instead at a framed anatomy chart on the wall, for some reason compelled to identify the precise location of the liver. Finally, seemingly from another room, he said, “Thank you, doctor.”   “My pleasure,” said Dr. Patel. “Enjoy the rest of your days.”

“Day,” said Monica.

“What?” said Dr. Patel.

“Enjoy the rest of your day, not days. You said, ‘days.’”

“Did I?” said Dr. Patel, amused. He turned to Baldasaro. “My bad. I meant day.”

Still fixated on the anatomy chart, Baldasaro had moved on from the liver and was now trying to pinpoint the spleen. Dr. Patel looked at Monica. She flicked her wrist towards the door and he slipped out of the room.

“It must have fallen out,” said Monica, helpfully.

“Excuse me?” said Baldasaro.

“The earplug,” she said.

Baldasaro felt himself re-inhabit his body, only then realizing that he had been away. He turned from the wall chart and faced the nurse.

“The earplug must have fallen out just before you got here.”

Such a kind girl, thought Baldasaro. He looked into her warm brown eyes. He wanted to dive into them and swim.

“Would you like me to check your blood pressure again?” she asked.

“No, that’s alright,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Monica. “You’re all set then. You’re good to go.”

After she left, Baldasaro lingered on the examination table. He stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it around. How could he have imagined this? Then he noticed that the pain that had irritated him all day was gone.

The sky had darkened and a fog hung in the air. Walking home, Baldasaro fell into step with the after-work crowd and wondered, had he been obsessing over an earplug that wasn’t even there? He was nearing a pizza joint on Washington Place and realized he was starving. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast. All he had at home was week-old tuna salad and an aspirational bag of spinach, which, like its predecessors, would likely remain unopened until it spoiled and found its way to the trash. It had been a trying day and Baldasaro felt he deserved, no needed, some comfort food. He stopped at the pizza place and ordered a grandma slice, comfort food incarnate. Maybe Monica was right, he thought, while waiting for his slice to come out of the oven. If the earplug had fallen out just before he got to the clinic, as she suggested, then he hadn’t imagined it. Then the pain caused by the stuck earplug would have been real. He would be more than an amusing story for the young doctor and nurse to trot out at dinner parties. With the hot slice in hand, Baldasaro doubled back to the clinic. He paced back and forth outside its doors as passersby bustled around him. Head down, chomping on the pizza, he searched the sidewalk, straining his eyes for a quarter-inch of compressed foam, so focused that the car horns and rumbling trucks on Broadway barely registered. He told himself he would search until he finished his slice. But half an hour after he had taken his last bite, he was still out there, walking back and forth, muttering to himself as night closed in.

~0~

Michael Golder is the recipient of the ABC-TV Theater Award, the Charles MacArthur Award for Comedy, and a Massachusetts Artists Foundation grant in playwriting. His recent fiction has appeared in Gemini Magazine. He lives in New York City, where he teaches at LaGuardia Community College.

Judge Clare found Michael’s entry to be  ‘a brilliantly observed and sympathetic story, both amusing and poignant.’

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