Parasitosis

By Aparna Ragupathi

 

Jane’s loafers were killing her. She had bought and returned two different sizes of the same pair until she finally settled on a size 6½. They looked great and felt fine when she tried walking around her kitchen in them. But every time the sidewalk sloped downhill, her feet slid a little too far into the front of her shoes, her toes jammed together, and she could feel the backs of her shoes let go of her heels. Those backs would slap on and off her feet as she walked and she had to bend her knees ever so slightly with every step so that she wouldn’t fall. She thought about going home to change, but she was already too close to the clinic and she didn’t want to be late to her sixth day on the job.

She stopped at the crosswalk in front of the bodega and took a breath, readjusting her feet. They just needed to be broken in more, she thought. There was no chance in hell she would return them a third time. The light changed and Jane made her way across the empty street.

Jane pulled open the first set of doors to the clinic and pushed open the second set. She said good morning to the police officer sitting at the security desk and walked past the rows of patients, trying to will the limping beat of her footsteps into a brisk, staccato pace. Maybe smiling would help, she thought.

It was always hit or miss when Jane smiled at the waiting room patients. Sometimes a mom with a sick kid would return the smile and other times, a man’s forehead wrinkles would tell Jane to Go Home. She punched in the door code and wondered if this was the moment the waiting room patients realized she worked here. Jane delivered Good Morning to the receptionist, Hello to the social worker, and a beaming Hi, How Are You? to the nurse on her way to the coatrack. Jane took off her peacoat jacket and hung it on her coat hook next to the social worker’s puffy black Calvin Klein knock-off. She reached into her pocket and checked her phone. The default sunset wallpaper lit up. No messages.

Clipping her ID to her belt loop, steno pad and pen in hand, Jane took her spot on a folding chair in the hallway. She readjusted her feet in her loafers. The receptionist’s acrylic nails clacked at the keyboard and a nurse rustled through a patient’s chart.

Jane let her back slouch for just a second. She was sitting at a crossroads in the hallway with a perfect line of sight to the soiled linen closet on her left and within earshot of every consultation room on her right. There was a general movement of staff in and out of the hallway, but Jane couldn’t pin down what exactly anyone was doing. But they were all so busy, even the janitor didn’t have time to give Jane a second thought when he walked past her.

“Ven, ven conmigo.”

A nurse in green scrubs and an Abercrombie zip-up walked in front of Jane, leading two toddlers, who looked like they were about to topple over their own legs. She pursed her lips and nodded at Jane. It was her signature Hello, It’s Only Wednesday.

A young white man who was neither tall nor short walked out of an office in the hallway. His brown leather shoes clashed with the speckled floor tiles and his white coat hung self-consciously on his thin frame as he breezed through the hallway without looking at Jane. He was probably one of the new residents.

Jane flipped her steno pad open to the next new page and set it down on her lap. She uncapped her blue ballpoint pen that wasn’t really hers and pressed the cap onto the back of the pen. Running her thumb over the scratchy edges of the cap, she heard footsteps from the consultation rooms and leaned forward to see who was coming. A white tail disappeared into a consultation room and Jane leaned back in her chair. She noticed the fresh pen mark on her favorite pair of dress pants.

“Could you help me?” said an older doctor, poking his head out from a door down the hall.

She nodded two times fast and quickly made her way to the consultation room. Her left loafer skipped a beat and reminded her to slow down. Following the doctor into the consultation room, Jane closed the door lightly behind her, not letting go of the handle until she heard a soft click in the doorjamb.

Jane had been in this room a few times before. The walls were pale blue but had a seaweed tinge because of the lights. There was an exam table in the middle of the room and counter with a sink and computer against the right wall with cabinets. A swivel stool for the doctor sat in front of the computer and a chair settled next to the counter for the patient, like an empty set waiting for its actors. Jane’s spot was next to the sink, face to face with a poster on the cabinet telling her how to manage her diabetes.

The stool shrieked as the doctor sat down.

“Buenas, soy la interprete,” Jane said as she walked past the patient to her sink-side station. She bowed her neck a bit as she said it, thinking a show of respect would make up for what was about to happen. Jane didn’t get to see much of the patient, except for her scaly scarlet handbag and the crepe paper hands resting on top of it.

Jane placed her steno pad on the counter and went to uncap her pen, but it was already uncapped. With a side glance, she could see the patient’s chart opened on the computer. The date of birth told Jane she was going to be speaking for an elderly woman, around her grandmother’s age. Had Jane really looked at the patient, she would’ve realized that the only difference between her own grandma and this abuelita was the pattern of wrinkles on their foreheads. But she didn’t get to know all that. They told her during her orientation that if she looked at the patients, it would break their relationship with the doctor.

Jane knew how this worked. The doctor would say something to the patient and Jane would chew it before spitting it out in Spanish. The patient would tell Jane to tell the doctor something in Spanish and she would, well, dile in English.

The Spanish kept her lips moist and hung like hoops on her ears. In her head, everything was in English.

Jane waited for the doctor to speak.

“Alright miss, I’ll be taking care of you today. How are you feeling?” he said.

Well, Jane said.

“Good.”

“That’s good.”

The doctor swiveled and squeaked to face his computer and typed a note. Must have been important.

“What brings you to the clinic?”

“The girl I live with drove me here.”

Jane felt the doctor look at her. It wasn’t her fault that wasn’t what he meant.

“Miss, what’s the reason for this consult?”

There was a pause. The woman was waiting for Jane to look at her. Jane switched her weight to her left leg and realized the muscles in her neck and shoulders were tense. She fumbled with her pen cap. She wouldn’t have to look at the patient if the doctor did. The woman would speak if the someone just looked at her.

“I have these little, black dots all over my scalp.”

Thank god, thought Jane.

“I see. How long have you had them?” The doctor was looking at the computer.

“A few years now. No one is doing anything about them.”

For no particular reason, Jane scribbled Years on her steno pad.

“I see. It says here you saw a specialist last year?”

“Yes, she’s the one that sent me here about the spots. I know I have problems.”

“What did she tell you?”

“I know I have problems.”

Jane heard her the woman’s sweater rub against the upholstery of the chair.

“But this is something wrong with my skin and no one’s doing anything about it.”

The woman ended her sentence with a sniffle. Jane ended hers with a sniffle too. She wasn’t sure if the woman was crying or had allergies. Either way, the doctor ought to know.

“Alright, why don’t you take a seat over there so I can take a look?”

The doctor lifted his hand off the computer mouse to wave toward the exam table.

The woman set her handbag down on the chair and made her way to the table. The white paper crumpled and crackled like parchment when she sat on it.

The doctor typed a note on his computer and swiveled closer to Jane. When he got up, the stool squealed.

“Excuse me,” he murmured to Jane.

Jane shifted to the edge of the sink as he reached for a drawer handle. A spot of dark purple grew on the cuff of her dress shirt and she felt water on her wrist. The doctor leafed around in the drawer until he brought out a pair of latex gloves and forced them on.

“Can you show me where you see the spots?”

The woman pointed to a few places on her head. The latex rubbed against the coarse, bristly hair on the woman’s scalp.

“Hmm. I see.”

“They move sometimes. I can feel them.”

The doctor continued to pick through the woman’s hair. Jane prayed she heard her right.

“It’s horrible. Sometimes I can feel them crawling all over me. And then they latch on and I feel like screaming.”

Two sniffles. The woman was crying. Jane had heard right.

“Oh, you have to help me. I also have them on my feet. Can I show you?”

“Yes. Take off your shoes and socks.”

The woman tried reaching for her dangling feet. The doctor wrenched out a metal footrest from the body of the exam table. The jimmy and clang startled Jane.

“They crawl all over me all day and every night. I have to kill them one by one, otherwise I can’t sleep.”

Jane could feel the tag on the inside of her shirt rubbing against her skin. The chiffon shoulders and cuffs of her dress shirt felt tight and itchy.

“Can I put my shoes back on?”

“Yes, you can put your shoes back on.”

Jane nodded when she said it, as if someone besides the diabetes poster was looking at her. She straightened her back and pushed her cuffs up to her elbows. She could feel the fabric crawling, trickling all over her arms. The tag was scratching against her side.

He walked over to his computer, pried the gloves off his hands and typed a note. He clicked away at some charts and dropdown menus. Jane could feel the woman’s eyes on the back of her neck.

“Why aren’t you looking at me?”

The doctor whipped around to face the woman, resting his lower back on the curved edge of the countertop.

“I can show you some of them.”

The woman’s shoes jimmied the metal footrest back into the exam table. The leather upholstery sighed and the white paper cackled as the woman slid herself off the table.

She walked to her bag and snapped open the clasps. A whisp of the woman wrapped itself around Jane’s face like smoke tendrils. She reeked of camphor.

Jane could hear the lights buzzing. She wanted to untuck her shirt and rip off her chiffon sleeves. She felt the backs of her shoes rubbing against new blisters. Someone was crinkling thin plastic.

“I picked these off my scalp this morning just to show you.”

“Miss, these are—”

The woman cut Jane off. Jane pushed a deep line into her steno pad. She pressed the metal rings of the note pad into her thumb to try and focus. She wanted to turn around and see what this woman was talking about. She wanted to understand.

But Jane was holding the woman’s sentences in her head and if she turned around, she was worried she would drop them.

“You have to help me; I can’t stand them anymore. I’ve had them with me ever since I left my country and they’re real, you’re looking at them. Please.”

“Miss, please sit down.”

The woman crushed the plastic in her hands and sat down. Jane couldn’t tell if it was her or the woman that sniffled. The doctor typed a note on the computer and scrolled through half a page of something.

“I need to speak to my supervisor, give me a few minutes.”

He walked to the door and swung it open. Jane turned her head, only to catch a glimpse of his white tail leaving the room.

There she was.

Her hands were trembling as she hid a plastic bag in her purse. Her shoulders slouched forward and she held the purse close to her chest like it was holding her up.

Jane capped her pen and rubbed her thumb over the rough edges. They told her she wasn’t supposed to be alone with the patients or they might start talking to her. Jane.

If Jane stopped breathing, she could hear her shirt rubbing against her shoulders and her shirt tag screeching against her skin. She wondered if the woman could feel it.

The woman looked at Jane. Her skin sagged and wrinkled with the little weight she had on her. She was balding but through the tufts of hair, Jane couldn’t make out any black spots on her scalp.

The woman gave up on Jane and looked down at her feet, which were a little too swollen for her leather shoes. The shoes seemed fine, Jane thought. But they were killing her.

 

Aparna’s Bio: 

Aparna Ragupathi majors in Biology and Journalism with a minor in Spanish at Rutgers University. Her hometown is Howell, New Jersey. When she graduates, she’ll be attending Robert Wood Johnson Medical School as part of their 4+4 Program in Global Health. She aspires to bring storytelling and empathy to her career in medicine.