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to give me some pain pills.”
    “We can’t do that. Your primary care physician will have to do that,” she said.
    “But I called here and you said the doctor would write me a prescription.”
    “I said no such thing,” the receptionist said. “It must have been the person who answers the phones while I’m at lunch. She told you wrong. You’ll have to go to your primary care doctor.”
    “But I came here by bus,” the old man said, about to burst into tears. I was grinding my teeth, listening to this conversation.
    “You can stand there and whine, or you can get on the phone and do something about it,” she said. “There’s a pay phone down the hall.”
    “Can I have change for a dollar?” the man asked, resigned.
    “No. I’m not a bank. You’ll have to use the change machines in the cafeteria. Follow the yellow lines down the hall.” She left him to shuffle and stump his way through the endless hospital corridors. I followed him out and gave him my pocket change. When I went back to the waiting room, the inner door opened and Georgia came out, looking pale and shaken. “Get me out of here,” she said.
    “Me, too,” I said. I couldn’t wait until we were out of radiation oncology. Even the air in the hospital hall seemed fresher. The atmosphere was certainly less poisonous.
    “What a vision of hell. Are they as nasty inside as they are outside?”
    “Worse,” Georgia said. “I’m stuck in a
M*A*S*H
rerun. They joke around like I’m not there. I’m lyingon a chilled table with my mutilated chest exposed to complete strangers and they’re swapping jokes and talking about their hangovers. It’s like I don’t exist. It’s horrible.” For a minute, she seemed about to cry. But she didn’t. I couldn’t get used to this new Georgia, who was so often close to tears.
    “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone goes postal and takes a machine gun to that place,” I said. “It’s the meanest department in the hospital. They were really nice in X-ray, and the chemo nurses are angels. But this place seems to attract every sadist in the hospital.”
    “Well, if anyone loses it and starts shooting, a jury of their peers will give them a medal,” she said. “Especially if I’m on it.” That sounded more like the old Georgia.

3
    “Do you know who I am?” the massive man demanded. He was irate that he had to stand in line with the rest of us at Uncle Bob’s Pancake House. Breakfast goers were lined up out the door into the parking lot, but this guy was the only unhappy one. He was about the size of a rhino and just as mean. I figured anybody that big had the stamina to endure a ten-minute wait.
    “Who is he?” I asked the brunette behind me in line. She shrugged. “Beats me.”
    Her twelve-year-old son was shocked by this ignorance. “Mom! Don’t you recognize him? He’s with the St. Louis Blues. That’s the hockey team,” he added in case we were too dumb to recognize that, too. “He’s …”
    Before we could learn his name, the rhino’s voice grew louder and more insistent, drowning out all other conversation: “I SAID, DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”
    The hostess was seating a party of four in the back room. Marlene, the waitress, appeared to deal with this emergency. “No, sir,” she said politely, “but wecan call some people at the state hospital who can help you find out.”
    The rhino angrily charged through the crowd, rudely shouldering his way out the door. “Sorry,” Marlene said, but she wasn’t really. The crowd cheered his departure. The Cardinals’ Mark McGwire would have been recognized immediately, but even he would have had to wait in line at Uncle Bob’s. Everyone did. The line was a handy place to gossip, network, or eavesdrop, depending on who you were. The mayor stood in line at Uncle Bob’s. So did aldermen, congressmen, police, city attorneys, assorted crooks in and out of office, and lots of hardworking citizens.
    For me, Uncle Bob’s was a combination