Metamorphosism

The World Analgesia Association

It was late, Clark the Orderly With One Leg Shorter Than The Other had just wheeled out the last client of the day, into Recovery and I was spraying air freshener around the evaluation room when Professor K. came onto the intercom and asked to see me.

“I’m next door in the control room,” he said. Strictly speaking he could already see me, since he was sitting on the business side of a floor-to-ceiling one-way mirror, but I couldn’t see him so okay, I went next door. He was alone in the room.

“You did the evaluation all by yourself?” I asked.

“Short on staff today,” was all he said. See, the rule was pilot and co-pilot to keep an evaluation from getting out of hand. None of the controllers had gotten carried away, but we’ve all heard of the studies where mild-mannered psychology students discover they get a charge out of inflicting pain on other students. It was a strict rule at the DQI, but here was K. all alone. It was very flaky.

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

“The World Analgesia Association is having a conference in Seattle in a few days and I want you to attend. The focus this year is ‘New Approaches in Pain Assessment’,” he said.

I asked why he didn’t attend himself.

“The WAA and I haven’t, eh, seen eye-to-eye in the past. All I want you to do is report on things, collect the documents and handouts. Who knows, maybe I’ll go if I have time.” Then his voice sort of faded out., because I was remembering the conversation, retracing my steps, wondering how I’d ended up at this convention of pain experts. I was in a huge hall. It was warm, too warm. The speaker droned on and on. Something about kangaroos and a swing. Then my head bobbled down to my chest and I woke, jerking my head back up so fast someone must have seen.

I looked around and sure enough, one person, a woman about eighty, was observing me with an amused look.

Jesus, kangaroos, I thought. How’d they get into my subconscious?

I looked at the notepad in my lap. My handwriting, I had written about three lines at the top of the page – today’s date, the name of the conference, subject of the lecture, and what the person seemed to be talking about – My handwriting sort of devolved into an illegible scribble as I’d fallen asleep. My notes seemed so childish as I looked around at stuff other audience members were writing, highlighting stuff on handouts, scribbling in margins… I turned the page and tried to take more legible notes. I doodled a little graph.

The room we were in, as I’ve said, was very large. It was the largest hall at the conference center, with gigantic Dale Chihuly glass sculptures standing here and there and enormous textile-art-not-badly-done-tapestries of salmon and Indians and other Northwest iconic stuff, bears drinking espresso possibly. And this hall was full of pain experts from around the world. Who would have thought there were so many. About seventy-five to eighty percent had white hair. It was like being on a cruise, only better because no failed singer/actors were running around trying to cheer you up and make sure you enjoyed yourself.

“Every year,” the speaker droned, “more than seventy million visits are made to doctors’ offices because of pain.”

Wow, I thought. Big business.

“The quantification of pain is one of the great challenges of our profession,” the speaker went on. “Pain is complex and subjective, which makes this difficult. Its various dimensions include intensity, time course, quality, personal meaning and impact. It is subjective and different for each individual and…”

The most interesting part, I thought, was how a kangaroo managed to hold on to the ropes from which the swing swung with those little upper arms it has. But this one was doing a great job. It used not only its powerful lower legs to swing, but its large tail as well, which was cool. It received a warm applause.

“Lunchtime,” the kangaroo said.

Not sure what I said. Huh? Or, What? Someone was shaking me awake. It was the old woman who’d been watching me battle sleep. “Get something to eat and some coffee. Stabilize your blood sugar.”

She stood up and marched out of the hall, never turning around to check if I was following her.

We ended up in one of the restaurants at the conference center, at a corner table. She was watching the other diners, I was alternating my gaze between her and watching an office building on the other side of the street.

Her eyes were the brightest blue I had ever seen. Her thick, spiky white hair made them seem even more piercing. Very um influential eyes. Very persuasive. She asked me a question and I answered it. “How long have you been involved with pain?”

“A year now,” I said. “I’m studying the psychological aspects, quantification, that stuff.” I asked her where she worked. She rattled off some acronym. I tried to decipher it. “International Analgesic…”

“International Atomic Energy Agency,” she said. “I am a physicist. I worked in their physics research lab. Half-lives. Good work – very precise.”

“But you do pain research?” My gaze drifted above and to the right of her shoulder, out the window, to the office building across the street, where a woman about thirty years old stood alone in an eighth-floor office, looking out the window and removing her coat.

“As you age, pain becomes more of an issue for most people. When I retired, I needed something to keep busy, I got involved with a research project using radioactive markers. One thing led to another.” She turned her head to peer out the window, trying to see what I was looking at. The office I’d been watching was empty, though, and her attention shifted to her baked grouse with pasta.

I watched her eat. She had an unusual aura. She did not seem tired or in discomfort, as other old people I’d known always had. She was actually paying attention to her meal. She attacked her food with interest, as if it were her first meal, rather than with greed or nostalgia, as if it were her last.

She was also beautiful. I glanced over at the office building again. The woman was back in the office again, naked to the waist, standing with her back to the window. I must have reacted somehow, because my table partner looked out the window again, but the other woman walked back into the office away from the window before she was spotted.

Where was I? Beautiful. This woman at my table… what was her name, anyway? “What is your name? I’m Greg,” I said.

“I’m Elisabeth,” she said. “I told you before.”

“Sorry, I’ve been distracted.”

“I noticed.” Anyway, we exchanged business cards.

Beautiful. Erotic, actually, in a sensuous way. I won’t say sexy, because that involves actual physical sex which implies reproduction, and Elisabeth was, as I think I’ve said, at least seventy-five years old. At that age, you can’t rule out sex, of course, but the eroticism and sensuality of her charisma was born more out of a love for life, including but not limited to the body. I found myself attracted to her in a way I could neither quantify nor qualify.

Two tables away, two old guys began shouting at each other. Jesus Christ, I thought, what is with all this white hair. It went like this: they’d been arguing under their breath for some time, until one lost his cool and began shouting, and the other was sort of yelling for him to quiet down. “You have absolutely no idea,” was all I could understand at first, and, “it’s okay.”

“The data is entirely spurious,” the first man shouted. “The accusations are entirely groundless!” He knocked over a pitcher of water and waiters swarmed his table.

The day had started out sunny, but now a light rain was beginning to fall. The office building across the street had totally changed color and was now more of a dark green than grayish as it had previously been. The sky was darker and the lights in the building seemed to shine more brightly. The office containing the woman was empty, but as I watched she walked briefly into view, now completely naked, and apparently hit a switch because her lights went off. The rain picked up and water ran down her window first in individual droplets, then in countless rivulets. I watched as she pressed herself up against the dark pane.

“Dessert?” a waiter asked. He was a short Mediterranean type. He was pushing a dessert cart covered with various cakes and pastries.

“Have you got fresh fruit?” Elisabeth asked. Before a waiter could clear her lunch, she removed a full-sized roll of Saran wrap from her bag and carefully dissected the remains of her grouse, and tightly wrapped the thighs in the Saran wrap. "Waste not want not," she said.

“The cheesecake is very good,” the waiter said.

“I’ll have that,” I said. He was right, it was very good. It was an orange-themed cheesecake, with grated zest on top and it had little slices of tangerine in it.

Elisabeth finally decided on a pomegranate, a fruit I disliked because they are so hard to eat without making a mess, and I find the taste of that pulpy membrane holding the seeds disgusting. Elisabeth tucked a napkin in her collar like a bib and ate the pomegranate like an apple with one hand, juice running down her chin.

She picked up my business card and re-examined it. “Who runs the DQI, anyway?” Her eyes narrowed when I told her Professor K. ran it. “How much pain can you stand?”

“What?”

“I’ve heard of you. What an absurd idea. Wait until you’re old, you won’t need any test to discover your pain limits.”

It was only two in the afternoon, but outside it may as well have been sunset, rain was falling so hard. No one appeared to be in the office, but it was had to say for sure on account of the rain.

“I have to run an errand,” Elisabeth said. “Save me a seat in the conference hall, will you?”

“Sure,” I said. She got up and left, I stayed at the table finishing the largest espresso product the restaurant had on its menu and staring out the window at the rain.