Bradley Philbert

California has fog like this. 

Geography – and food – are what I miss most.

But that should be people, right?

I had a 12-hour workday yesterday. I’m still tired.

It is 7 am.

This Calabrian doctor is convinced my heart shouldn’t be how it is. I’ll see him in a few hours; I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to drink any coffee this morning. Does he want me caffeinated before the EKG and blood pressure check in? Am I supposed to eat? A complicated question.

Fluffy brown robe matches my slippers. The brown-tan-red red stripes remind me of Burger King. Just some water and I let the cats crawl on me while MC showers. They’re working from home today, but I won’t see them much. I shower after they finish.

Burn on my left wrist, the size of a small stick of gum. I was careless pulling naan out of the oven and seared myself. A week later, still pink and weeping. I dress quickly. It’s 8:30 and I need to go.

Lindbergh to 61st, past the auto yards, to Oregon. Google Maps because I can’t remember where to make the U-turn on Oregon and don’t want to miss the building in the fog. Google insists my cardiologist works from the abandoned lot between the ShopRite and the dollar store. I’m sure I’ve missed the building until, too far along, I see it on my left. There’s a spot right out front.

I check in right as a nurse tunes the TV to Live with Kelly and Mark. It’s December, and a new episode, but they’re discussing fireworks right away? There’s a phyllo-thin veil of contempt between them – Kelly talks about fireworks with the glee of a pyromaniac teenager, though her voice has the much older, microplane rasp of a different disorder entirely. Mark doesn’t like the fireworks, or her, but he’s also a wet blanket with veneers, come to life.

The only other person in the office is in scrubs and Crocs. He’s handsome, bearded, and twitches his leg up and down, nervous, watching videos on his phone without headphones. I can’t see his hospital ID. Could be a nurse. Is it a good sign or a bad sign that he’s here? They call me back to see the doctor, so I don’t have to think about it for long.

My weight is less than at my last visit. My blood pressure is about the same. That last visit was the week UArts closed, and my blood pressure reading required explanation: “See, I’m a leader a citywide union, and we’ve been in the streets and holding meetings and I’m running our media operation, too, and also I worked there and loved the people at that place, and it closed because a job can’t love you back and because, sometimes, the human centipedes that run these institutions, in their cowardly and jagged-limbed grasping, latch together to make themselves into an ouroboros, first-mouth-to-last-ass, and by the time anyone questions them, it’s too late.” Doc was more understanding on that visit.

This time, he’s speaking so fast that I’m sure I’ve missed something important. He offers to look at the burn on my wrist once we’ve gone over the test results. I need more Vitamin D. More exercise. Daily fasting. He focuses for longer than seems necessary on what kind of olive oil I should be using (I already use it, but don’t say so), and about as much on my weight as I expected. These are the risks of carrying around what I carry. This is what it does to my heart. 

He reviews my test results. These are, he says, the best available tests. And there’s one more test left to be sure of what we’re looking at, that we’re not missing anything, but it’s not covered by any insurance.

He starts asking more about food. I tell him I cook all the food in my house for my husband and myself, six days a week, multiple meals a day. (This is true.) Yes, including weekends. Especially weekends. No, I never drink soda. (This is a lie). He stresses that the only drinks he recommends are water – he takes notes on everything he says, and here he marks down H20, which feels like he’s trying too hard – coffee and tea – but “virgin, no milk. Unadulterated.” 

He tells me that the only ways to lose weight, like I don’t know already, are increasing calories burned, which I don’t do enough, decreasing calories taken in, which I must not be doing, and increasing food quality. He asks where I buy my food.

“A supermarket.”

“Which one?”

“Is there one that’s better for my heart than others?”

He doesn’t laugh. “What do you think your weight should be?”

“I don’t think it should be anything.”

“A range, then.”

I tell him I’m not interested in an arbitrary weight goal, and why I feel that way. The appointment goes quickly after that. He never shares the notes he took, and he doesn’t end up looking at the burn on my wrist, either. I go into another room and set up the final test on a conference call with a nurse and a scheduler from a different hospital in Philly. This last test will cost less than I expected. It’s after 10 now.

I've already decided I resent this cardiologist too much to stick with him and, once I get the test done, will find someone new to watch my heart for me.

I want a coffee and something spitefully fatty. The drive back across Oregon takes me by a McDonalds, a Burger King, and a Wendys, but two of these are on boycott lists and none of them are still serving breakfast. I get home before 11 and put a kettle on for coffee: A pour over, desanctified with oat milk. On the still-hot stove, a pan with a knob of butter, three eggs, and tear up some ham and cheese for an omelette. I finish it with sriracha and chili crisp.

MC has their own morning doctor appt. After they leave, I put on the audiobook of HMS Surprise. No Multiethnic Lit today because of the cardio visit. With the audiobook still going, I review notes for my last African American Lit lesson – on Sun Ra and the parallels and resonances of his Afrofuturism with elements of Black Arts and Black Power – and dress for work. I have time to sketch out the final exam and sit with the cats some more before I leave.

I try to put on some of Ra’s music on the drive over, but I’m too upset for the challenging intervals, so Kamasi Washington is the stand-in that carries me across the Whitman and out to Rowan. Once again, there’s a parking spot waiting. It’s 2 o’clock.

Last lesson goes well. Not a surprise, at least for this section, and there’s the bittersweet last-day-of-school feeling with the handful of gregarious or bookish or sentimental students who hang back on the last day to keep talking: Where’s the line for Ra between the intellectual, the abstract, and the woo-woo? Should anyone get into Space Jazz, and if so, should they ever bring it up unprompted, and if they do, will they ever have sex with the interlocutor, or ever again? And is Chain Gang All Stars as good as people say? 

I’m done just before 4pm. The class after mine meets intermittently if it ever meets at all, so no need to rush anybody out after class ends. 

On the way home, I finish HMS Surprise. The Captain and the Doctor always drowning in coffee, hot and strong, so I make another cup once I’m back in the kitchen and, again, adulterate it with oat milk. 

I spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning my office as a way of not grading papers for my classes at Penn State and CCP. WBGO jazz in the background. I sit with the cats some more, this time on the giant pink office pillow. I do grade the papers. I make dinner: Salmon rubbed with mustard. Rice. Curried cauliflower. I use the right kind of olive oil.

After dinner, MC and I watch MasterChef and, before bed, share some decaf and cookies that – 10 non-fasting hours before – I said I never ate, and certainly not after dinner.

I double my Vitamin D. It’s between 9:30 and 10:00.

We prep for bed and climb in naked.

I fall asleep listening to Desolation Island on audiobook sometime around 10:30, my new husband beside me, warm, in the brushed flannel sheets.

Bradley Philbert is a writer and professor. He moved to Philadelphia in 2020 to live with his now-husband and their two cats. His work appears frequently online and in print, though usually under someone else's byline.