Devils Do

 Halloween is big on Capitol Hill: monumental-scale skeletons, witches, and all sorts of other scary stuff lurk everywhere. One whole street gets blocked off, allowing kids to enter a haunted scare maze. Eerie sounds, smells, live monsters, ghosts, and spiders jump out, eliciting screams of Halloween terror. For days before the holiday, Jim and I listened to descriptions of how costumed people come out in droves to fill the District's streets with seasonal revelry. I had surgery scheduled in Boston on the Monday following Halloween to remove the hardware from my ankle, which broke a few years ago. After consternation, and a bit sheepishly, we decided to slip out the back, Jack, and leave town on Halloween night.  I wanted to be calm and ready for surgery. For us, spooks and o'lanterns could wait for another year. 

Once in a while, I trick myself into thinking I've got things under control, that I know what paths to walk, and which to avoid. There are times, though, when unseen forces jump out to suggest otherwise. For starters, our flight got cancelled a few hours before takeoff. Winds? The government shutdown? I'd been anticipating the surgery for months, so regardless of the cause of the setback, terror seeped in at the thought of missing it. Flights were not an option, so we secured a night train - somewhat frantically - and rattled our way through the northeastern region, arriving in Massachusetts in the early hours of the morning. The platform was empty when we disembarked, and we joked about the spookily apt setting, given that we were in the shadow of Halloween. We were beat, but relieved to be in proximity to Boston—no need to worry about missing Monday's appointment. Or so we thought.

We'd both brought good books and on Sunday took a good, long walk in the woods. That and enjoying meals with friends and family provided us with ready distractions over the weekend. All we had to do was ensure our alarm went off on time, which it did. And yet, and yet. 

A strange sense of tranquility had seeped in and settled over us. Looking back, we floated in molasses. The morning of the surgery, we both managed to rise on time, but as we got into the car, a wave of dread washed over me. When I looked at the clock, it squinted back - a menacing trickster. Shouldn't we have left earlier? MapQuest assured us we'd arrive on time, but something felt off. I've never been trapped in a fish tank, and I've never been in any proverbial ring of hell with flames, the devil, and pitchforks. But you know those dreams where everything seems to be in slow motion, and you can't move an inch or make any progress? That kind of torment is what the trip to the hospital felt like. 

Somehow or freaking other, we traveled through parts of Boston that we never knew existed. Traffic slowed and stopped, then slowed and stopped some more. Some goblin had gotten into the MapQuest works and took us on a route with so many traffic lights that my eyes bulged, my neck tightened, and I shrieked while counting. In disbelief, I watched as our arrival time got later and later. Despite our planning, the unthinkable - missing my surgery - was unfolding. After the hospital called to ask about my whereabouts -  I'm sorry, Ma'am, unfortunately, you might get bumped - I went twilight-zone-insane. Fear poisoned my blood. Disappointment, the dream-crushing monster, kalumphed towards us in the flesh, imposing its menacing ways. 

When my granddaughter, Mary, detailed her experience of running through the Halloween scare maze in DC this year, she giggled as she told me she wasn't afraid and had even run through it twice. I'm happy to report that, although I was late for my appointment, I was still accommodated, and I ultimately had my surgery as planned. Unlike Mary, I do not giggle as I tell this tale. 

Ironically, we had left town on Halloween, side-stepping the night the world indulges in rehearsed fear, only to land smack into our own terrifying real-life ordeal. Before the surgery, I hadn't had time to focus on pain and the blood-gore reality of being cut back open. Anyway, I'm not a wimp, so why would I want to do that? When I think about it, though, the idea of the devil having its due comes to mind. Logistics masqueraded as all-important in my surgical drama, by scary hook and crook, Fright showed up. The actual surgery went well, and recuperation was pretty straightforward. Yesterday, not even two weeks later, I walked, albeit slowly, a whopping mile and a half. 

Some things in life are scary, and surgery is serious business. Fear didn't steal the show, but by showing up on our harrowing ride, it demanded its moment on center stage, took a rightful, frightful bow, and got me to scream in horror.

Some things in life are scary . . .