I’ve been thinking more and more about toothpicks lately. I keep wanting to count them, but I can feel that it isn’t right to be this attentive. After all, they’re only toothpicks, what do I care if they get taken? But, two days ago, I counted every set of toothpicks in my toothpick holder at Julian’s. I hated to do that to them there, I like to eat at Julian’s a lot, it’s close to work and the manager is really nice. He lets me bring my own utensils and order a little differently from other customers. I do so like to eat at Julian’s, I don’t have to worry about making food right because I’ve seen the sanitation grade there. That’s right, they have an A plus. So, I don’t have to worry about everything being just right because they are obviously very good at what they do there. Roger, that’s the manager, also assures me that everything is done just right when I give special directions. I like it so much there, I don’t even ask for the bill. I just leave a crisp fifty dollar bill creased to a forty five degree angle long ways in the center of the table. I find I like it a lot better to not think about uneven change. Roger understands this, so we can agree to never talk about uneven change. I love Julian’s.
Maybe five is my real problem. I like five too much, I think. That’s what I was doing with those toothpicks; I was counting out fives and throwing away the rest. Five seems so right. I should have told Laura I loved her five times, that would have kept her. There are just too many things in this world that aren’t divisible by five. That’s one of the reason I stopped eating hot dogs. They come in packs of eight and the buns come in packs of six. I can’t believe people live with these uneven numbers, and they aren’t even the same number! Not to mention that there isn’t any way to know about what comes in that hot dog. I have looked very closely at these hot dogs, and I can’t find any trace of something recognizably edible anywhere inside them.
I don’t know what to do about Laura though. I don’t know if I should be thinking about her more or thinking about her less. I should probably think about her more, after all, I was the one who had her taken away. I was the one who hadn’t told her that I loved her even once, much less five times. I was the one who was anchoring her to this world with regularity and attention to detail, but I wasn’t attentive enough. I just didn’t get it right, and now, because of me, she’s been taken. I miss her so much. Maybe if they would just let me have her back I could fix my problems. I can’t be that far gone, she only died two months, one week, and four days ago, and I could still recover from that, couldn’t I? I wouldn’t ever do anything wrong again.
That’s my problem really; I can’t do everything just right. Just like the toothpicks and five and the hot dogs, I just can’t do things right. I find myself redoing more and more things until I get it just right, so it won’t be taken like Laura. That part of me wasn’t always this way, though. I started slow. When I started to realize what isn’t just right is taken, I started to organize. I think CD’s were first, and I moved on to the pantry, the cleaning, the closet, and now washing. I can’t even listen to CD’s anymore, the music is too unorganized. It doesn’t have the right beat, like the pulse of Laura’s heart, but Laura’s gone now because I didn’t do it right.
I tried to organize the CD’s alphabetically by song, but that wasn’t right, so I did it by artist and then by song, and then I had to do artist and then album and then song. I try not to reorganize them too many times. But, I can’t even believe the way I kept the pantry when Laura was around. The first time I reorganized it, there were pots and pans in the same cabinet and cereal boxes and soup cans were next to each other! I can’t imagine what might have been taken if I hadn’t put a stop to that. I spent something like thirty seven hours making that right. And when I started cleaning, I couldn’t believe what I had let that go to as well. I started needing to vacuum every day, and sweep, and dust, and wash clothes twice, and get rid of pocket lint especially. The closet is still the hardest thing to make right. It is so difficult to find the right way to organize it. I am using the largest to smallest item of clothing method right now, but I’m not sure if I should be organizing something by color. I think I will reorganize by size and then by color tonight. I might have to skip a little bit of sleep for that.
I have been trying to do what my colleague said; I’ve been trying to stop thinking about it. But, I can’t even try to stop now. I just need to do it exactly right, or it will be taken. He said to start with my hands. My hands! If I don’t wash them right, they will be taken, and what is a surgeon without hands?
That’s what I’m doing now, actually, I’m practicing one of my favorite exercises. I finished my surgery an hour and twelve minutes ago, but I’m still washing my hands. I just can’t get it quite right. There is always something left on them after every time I wash. I don’t want to care about that microscopic bacteria, and I know as a doctor I’m being excessive. But, I also know that if I don’t do it just right, my hands will be taken, just like Laura, and what will I do then? What can a man do without love or hands? I know once I finish here, I can go back and finally reorganize the food cabinets; I haven’t done that in almost a week. But, until then, I’ll wash my hands until I get it right.
I have also been thinking about seeing a professional psychiatrist. But, I know he would tell me to “straighten up my life” and to stop “paying so much attention to detail.” That is simply ridiculous, if I were to stop paying attention to detail, I would effectively unstraighten my life! As my experience clearly shows, most professionals don’t really know what they are doing sometimes, and I don’t think a psychiatrist would really help me. I guess my sanity is just one more thing I need to get right, or it will be taken.
My life pretty much goes this way most of the time now. I used to be for the most part a normal surgeon, if you can call surgeons normal for the most part. But then, two months, one week, and four days ago, she died. My beautiful wife, Laura Elizabeth Hoffman, just didn’t come home from work one day. I made it a point to tell her that I loved her before I went in to work most days, but March 2, 2004 just wasn’t one of those days. I didn’t think much about it that day really, I just ignored the flaw in my schedule that day, I used to do that a lot. But now, things are different, and I will never leave out another single detail, I can’t.
“Robert, honey, I love you,” she said to me, and all I replied was “See you tonight hun.” That’s why it happened, I know she was taken from me because I didn’t do it right, I did that piece of my day wrong. I won’t ever do that again, I can’t ever do that again. I will make sure everything is perfect so nothing else is ever taken away again.
I just can’t get it off my forsaken hands! I have been washing them for two hours and eleven, no twelve, minutes, and I still can’t just move on. I just want to go home, but I can’t until I get this hand-washing down just right. I need my hands. Without hands I won’t have anything. Without hands I will be even worse off than I am now. Laura would tell me to stop being silly and go home. But Laura never did know that you had to do everything right. I only found out when she was taken. But I won’t let anything else get taken. I can’t let it happen. I can’t let anything else be taken from my life just because I didn’t do it right. Laura is the last; I won’t let anything else get away.
“Doctor Hoffman, you needn’t wash those hands anymore.” That was Amanda, one of my most capable nurses. I hope she hadn’t noticed me talking to myself. She took my hands out of the sink and into her own. From this close, she looked a little bit like Laura, but different in her own way and in a way I could get used to. I had an inexorable impulse to bring my hands back to the sink for a moment. But, then, with her looking into my eyes and holding my hands gently back from the brink, I didn’t have to. I looked back into her eyes, and I didn’t need to make everything just right, it already was. But could I really live without getting it just right?