You're on an Airplane by Parker Posey

Author:Parker Posey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

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The day that Jim stood outside my truck, I was in the passenger’s seat and slumped over in teeth-chattering pain, taking his hands to touch my head to console myself out of this and making his hands my own, alternately squeezing my wrist. “Hold my head tight with both of your hands,” I said. He did. “Now pet my head.” He did that, too. “Now hold my head with both your hands, please . . .” Which he did. I started talking about Homeland and evoking Brody to come rescue me. “Soldiers feel this pain and it’s so much worse.”

“You’re gonna be okay, punkin,” he said.

I said, “I’m not dying,” and we laughed a little. I said many “oh my Gods,” swaying to rock myself. The minutes in pain go by so slowly and so fast at the same time, but according to the clock, we waited half an hour for the ambulance to arrive.

They drove down the gravel driveway, which had needed repair for years now, and the paramedics got out of the ambulance unfolding the gurney and shot me up with morphine once I got inside, where the drive up the bumpy driveway had me bawling, but there was a new hero to hold on to: Indiana Jones. The ER team went through the protocol—“What is your name? What happened? How did you fall? What day is it?” They asked me the same questions again, minutes later, and I had to say it all over again. “What horseshit,” I thought. I said, “I told you already, ugh, I told you.” Someone asked if I was still in pain and I said, “Yes! Look at my arm,” and they stuck me with another shot of morphine. I asked for more morphine when they made their final stop to wheel me into the hospital because they were about to ask me, anyway.

The hospital, which struck me as sad, made me even sadder when I was told there was no bone specialist in the building. The doctor on call was animated. He liked that I was a celebrity. “I know who you are,” he said, and I cried harder. How could he know who I am? The presumption of that. “I’m not sure if you have any movies coming up, but you have a serious break.” Yeah, I know! I started to really wail, like Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Seinfeld, and looked around for a laugh track. Then he said, “We can’t do anything about it here”—hold for laughter—“except remove that blue tape around your arm to try to get an X-ray.” I knew what he was saying, that he was going to break my wrist back into place.

“I know what you’re going to do!” I cried. I wasn’t born yesterday.

He waited a beat and said, “Do you need more morphine?”

Of course I did. “YES!” He gave a nod to the nurse and I reached out with my good arm and we high-fived.

Jim was there for that show, and

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