In a Subway restaurant located in Springfield, Virginia sometime in 2016, ten years after the incident, I guide my mother to a two-person table in the corner of the store in order to avoid any awkward stares from other customers. It's an ineffective strategy that I continue to try despite many years of failure. As she lowers herself into her seat, she tells me what she wants on her sandwich. Each ingredient's name is accompanied by a new noise produced by her cane hitting something different with each of her attempts to fold it up and put it away. I look around at the people looking and nod my head at my mother to show acceptance, despite her not being able to see it or anything at all. Then I turn around and head for the line.
My mother is always conveniently hungry after a doctor's appointment at the nearby Kaiser Permanente. Her accident was never fully explained to me until I started taking her on these visits. Some trips end with sandwiches at Subway, others end with nuggets from McDonald's, though if I'm having a bad day, they can end in a silent drive back to the house with leftovers on the menu. This is a move I hate to make, but after some overwhelming news from doctors, I can fall into a state of lost hope. I suppose this is what I get for living at home during my years at grad school. My dad has replaced rent with responsibility over my mother and unless my grades start to see a negative impact, I will have to continue these trips.
I order my mother's sub and watch as the employee carefully constructs their work of art. I have come to associate Subway with hospitals by this time. It seems like these visits are the only occasions I ever eat here. The outside of this subway has grown to look like an extension of that Kaiser. The parking lot offers little amount of space, like its sister building. Its sign is always fully lit like the well-financed insurance company's. Every newly hired employee that greats us as we enter the establishment resembles the many new faces of each different doctor we meet with. And of course, the one guaranteed thing that comes with each trip, the constructed sandwich or what I can only see now as: the story of what really happened.
Taking a page out of their sheltered children playbook, my parents figured that avoiding any discussion of the situation would help us better cope with it. Now it's something I have to relive during each doctor's appointment, somehow discovering a new piece of the story with each visit. As I watch the Subway employee put together the sandwich, I can see a part of the story relayed to me, in a secondhand kind of fashion, with each added ingredient. It's something some people wouldn't want you to see, but Subway intentionally flaunts it in front of you. This construction, the retelling, makes me squirm each time. By now it's a tale I'm used to, but that does not make it welcoming. Instead, I try and put my attention anywhere else in the room. But it doesn't work. I feel uncomfortable and saddened as I stand by and listen.
First, the bread. A stationary food, waiting for something to happen to it in order to make it something completely different. One visit to the doctors to make sure my mother's body is functioning well after the surgery. A routine check-up with a doctor we have never met, sparking the retelling of the incident. A conversation that is meant for two, but I become an accidental third wheel, unable to ignore it all because the room is so small and none of the nurses feel as comfortable as I do with the blind. My mother, immobile due to a routine surgery to have some varicose veins removed. Her inability to move, to get up from the bed, and her body reacting in a mysterious way, without her knowing. I only regain the ability to hear something else after hearing the doctor speak, so I stop listening to him after he says: "You're."
Second, the ham. The heart of the sandwich, the reason for its construction. The catalyst that sets everything in motion. One visit to discuss why my mother now has insomnia, a fresh symptom to an already addressed issue. But sure enough, this new doctor must ask the same question, as if the information wasn't in front of her on file. A blood clot forms in her leg. My mother knows something is wrong but because the clot is in the same leg that had the surgery, her pain gets associated with the procedure instead. Despite complaint calls to the doctor, no concern is shown for her. She is left helpless, waiting for something to happen. The doctor responds and my ears start to block sound waves, only allowing myself to hear: "Lucky."
