The recovery period is longer than I thought. Operation on a Tuesday, probably released on a Thursday or Friday, recovery period three weeks, which, I was calculating as the doctor was speaking, was more like one and a half, maybe two weeks at the most. "It's the appliance on the jaw," he continued. "You'll look pretty weird until we take it off, all black and blue."

Ah. He finally got through. Vanity. A little pain I can handle, but vanity? Wounded? I think not. So I'll work on my web page at the office over the phone from home for two weeks and maybe (finally) redesign this site too. I've been mumbling about it long enough, mentioned it once or twice, time to start. If I can't do it in two weeks, flat on my back or not, I can't do it at all.

(Well, actually I can skip any redesign effort altogether and maybe I will, I mean, I really don't know, but I hate to lose an opportunity to make promises I can't or won't or will keep in print and play the fool. Maybe, for two weeks, I'll just sit back in bed and watch the dust particles fall, pretend to read a book or yodel, yodel with a busted jaw and a paper straw and a refrigerator full of food. Lose my sense of time in redesign. Sure I will.)

I've never been to a real blood bank before. We gave blood in the army, of course, but we understood we had a direct interest in keeping the pipeline filled, so we laid down on folding cots set up in rows in a big hall and gave by the gallon, what the hell? Hut! bleed, hut! bleed too. Nobody was complaining. We were giving blood in Korea, they were using blood to the south. They gave us donuts and coffee and trucked us back to work. A nice little break in the day. Since then, with the internal bleeding, I've skipped giving blood altogether, so I was curious to see how it worked in this day of AIDS and, from what I read, everything else.

I asked the nurse, Mei-Ling was her name, how long she'd been working in a blood bank. "Fourteen years." So there was never a time when you didn't have to think about AIDS? "No."

I didn't have to answer all the questions. They knew where this blood was going, they knew who to contact if it didn't work out. If they don't need it during the operation, don't you keep it and use it for someone else? "No. They did that once, but not any more."

So, blood thinners intact, little particles swimming from a million different pills, wholesome, I think, and ready to roll, one unit of blood, sir, with another to go.

Mei-Ling, by the way, was intelligent, personable, attractive, interested in photography, and, too young. Being married and a new mother got in the way as well.