A dumpy, blond woman of around 30 stood in front of the hospital arranging a dozen 40 gal bags. I could see it all in an instant. It would take me 15 minutes to both load and unload the cab. She'd go three blocks and would have a voucher. I'd neither be paid for my time nor get tipped.
A nurse came over to help her and they both turned toward me as I walked over from the taxi.
"What's this?" I asked, " a cruel hoax?"
"You don't have to help if don't want to," said the woman heatedly.
"Oh, lighten up Mary," the nurse said with exasperation. "He's just making a joke."
"Come on," I said as I grabbed one of the bags, "show me how you want it packed."
The nurse kept smiling at the stupid jokes I kept making while I loaded the car. Mary quietly chatted to herself as she re-arranged every sack I put in.
When we finished she told me, "They stole my husband from me."
The nurse folded her arms and looked at Mary with deep and helpless sympathy.
On the way over to her new half-way house, I got to listen to Mary's chatter. They used to call it "word salad" - words tossed about without subtext, context or meaning. But it wasn't that simple. Most of it did sound like disconnected gibberish but it obviously meant something to her.
Besides, some of the things she said made perfect sense. She was moving across town to Bernal Heights, one of the most complicated neighborhoods in the city. She gave me precise and exact directions on how to get to her place. The bizarre thing was that her instructions were wrapped inside of rambling clauses and seemed to have nothing to do with whatever else she was saying.
Other things that she said make perfect sense and were insane at the same time.
"I'm really Mary Queen of Scots," she told me. "It was Elizabeth that took my husband because I'm beloved of the people and she isn't."
She continued the chatter while she helped me take her bags up a few dozen steps to her porch. I wished her luck and was about to leave when she said, with deep and pathetic despair,
"I only want them to give my husband back to me."
I kissed her on her forehead - the seat of her manic, twisted, disconnected world. I couldn't have done her any harm. Nothing else had helped.
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