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JANUARY WAS WELLNESS MONTH at the hospital, and HR sent us daily reminders to take time for lunch, to join a small group for free afternoon yoga. We were sent meditation packets, samples of chamomile tea, and email surveys about our health. Do you feel physically able to work? Do you feel mentally fit to work? On a scale of one to ten, what is your level of well? I found the last question confusing. Was ten the well or one? Because for patients there was a similar scale: in every exam room a series of cartoon faces morphed from happy to sad, from one to ten for pain and well on that scale was a one, while ten was exceedingly not.
Before the monthlong dedication took hold, it had been wellness week. Before that it had just been a day. I didn’t mind Wellness Wednesday or Week; I found the alliteration catchy. But wellness month had no alliteration, and given the slow trend toward more, wellness year was next.
What was wellness anyway? Was it anything like Loch Ness, like a seemingly placid lake with an unknowable monster hiding inside?
The seminars throughout the month focused on nutrition and healthy eating, ergonomics and injury prevention, stress management versus productivity. I saw the director at the last one, in the very back; his mouth hung open as if he were watching a bad magic show. Put your workers’ productivity into a black hat and watch it disappear. Put your own productivity into a box, now saw it in half.
For a week, Reese became the center of gossip. He had been scheduled to work that week but failed to show up. Difficult poetry went unattended for a morning, acute chaos followed, and a temporary attending had to step in. Madeline and I tried to call Reese, but no response. We emailed him and no away message had been set up. The director even swung by the shared office, just to look around.
Has no one been keeping tabs on him? he asked. How does Doctor Baby-Blue Eyes just disappear?
The mystery was solved when HR informed the director, who then informed us, that Reese had requested and been approved for a wellness break that would extend to the end of January. The director was told only after the fact, because, with both mental health and disability, an employer shouldn’t and couldn’t meddle. These breaks were built into our contracts to be taken anytime from anywhere. A perk of the job that I never thought people actually used.
As I was leaving one evening, so was the director, and we crossed paths in the atrium long after its café had closed. The collar of his coat was inside out, his snow boot shoelaces were untied. I asked why he was still here so late when someone of his caliber could leave as early as 4:00 p.m. My wife, he said. She was visiting her sister for a few days upstate, and whenever that happened and he was on his own, he could stay at work for however long he liked. It reminded him of his younger days, and he relished that. Then he asked me, not necessarily as my boss, he clarified, but as one concerned colleague for another, if Reese was all right, and had he been acting strange before he requested the leave. Did he say anything to you about me?
The director avoided making eye contact. I heard footsteps around us, but it was just one security guard pacing and another walking over to throw a soda can away.
I said Reese had seemed sensitive lately, but he’d always been pretty sensitive.
Would he, for instance, file a complaint?
Complaint, sir?
Against me to HR.
For?
Being too harsh.
The director was still avoiding eye contact and had hoisted his left leg up on a side ledge to tie his laces. When he bent down, he groaned. Like that of a T.rex, his head was too large for his frame and he had disproportionately short arms.
I said Reese and HR did have a special bond that I never liked to ask about or get too involved in, but in practice, I didn’t see what was so scary about HR, the department seemed decently run and staffed by competent people. HR wasn’t nearly as bad as the IRB, which was our internal board of review, or ethics board. Any kind of human research, any consult with or blood draw from a study subject, had to pass through them, and while HR was ever present, almost omniscient, no one really knew how the IRB worked or who worked there, much like the IRS.
The director said both departments were overregulated, but HR more so in that they could involve themselves in your personal life.
I said, I’ve never had a problem with them.
But once they find a discrepancy, game over. Never give them a shred of doubt.
Doubt about what?
The director finally straightened up and looked me in the eye. He put a finger to his lip, though I never knew him to be paranoid.
I said if he was worried, then should I be? A few weeks ago, I’d taken a page out of the director’s own phonaesthetics book and told Reese how a hypothetical woman might tell a hypothetical man to fuck right off.
The director’s mouth twitched; his pupils became two black dots on two white spheres. You what? Fuck right off and not just fuck off? But that could send someone over the edge, couldn’t it? A person who was already unsteady.
He seemed fine with it, actually, I said. He didn’t know what I meant.
Even worse, replied the director.
We stood near the exit doors of the atrium, far enough that they wouldn’t open automatically but close enough that we could see the breath of the people walking outside.
Oh well, he said, out of our hands now, it is what it is, and the cards will fall as they may. When the director resorted to idioms, I knew he was at his linguistic limit. What’s the opposite of kill two birds with one stone? he asked me.
I said, Huh?
The opposite. As in we’re the two birds that might have killed a third one with our stones.
I explained that birds can do lots of things that humans can’t, like fly, but birds can’t pick up stones and throw them like projectiles, so no such idiom exists.
The lack of a perfect English phrase for our predicament seemed to frustrate him and the director made a grr sound.
* * *
—
IF I WAS IN my apartment, the television was on. I didn’t always watch, but the sounds of people talking at low volume were nice, soothing, even if it was for seemingly an hour of commercials.
When I finally heard the name Jerry, I came out from the kitchen where I’d been waiting for water to boil, to pour into my Cup Noodles. On-screen, I saw a short funny-looking man call a tall funny-looking man Jerry. George and Jerry. They were in Jerry’s apartment, and then right on cue, another tall funny-looking man with fluffy hair, in an oversized plaid shirt, barged in. He had a shaky way of moving and talking and, out of the three, seemed to have mismanaged his nerves the most. Something funny was said by Jerry, then George, then Kramer. The laugh track played and played.
More booklets came for me in the mail. Several vacation catalogs for ski resorts (to the mountains!) and all-inclusive tropical escapes (book now, why wait!).
A magazine called Awake! The header said that a stress-free life is possible. Subheaders and the first page: What causes stress? Divorce, death, illness, crime, job loss, natural disasters, the hectic pace of life. How to deal with stress. One, don’t hold two handfuls of work. Two, kill your stress with kindness. Sixteen pages.