Sunday, April 12, 2020

Every other chair in the dermatologist’s lobby has two paper signs, one on the back and one on the seat. Each sign asks patients to leave an empty chair between them. No one else is there. I don’t know whether we’re supposed to sit on the chairs with the signs or the ones without them. I sit on an unmarked seat to leave the most signs visible. The dermatologist is one of the best around. We have a mutual friend, who used to walk her beagles. She looks at my hands and asks me what happened. I hope she can tell me. It looks like I’ve been suntanning at Chernobyl. She prescribes some cream and a cortisone shot. I need to go downstairs, buy them at the pharmacy on the ground floor, and bring them back up. The shot costs one shekel, about 28 US cents. I vaguely recall having had trouble with topical cortisone in the past. The nurse tells me that the topical and injected cortisone work differently. I should wait there for half an hour after the shot. If I’m still breathing then, I should be OK. I am. Since the shot will suppress my immune system, I have to stay home, other than for a followup appointment. I’m prepared. I have the technology to work from home. I stocked up on two weeks’ supplies a month ago. I pass cheerful signs as I walk back. One sign, posted by the city government on an empty pillar that’s usually covered with flyers, says “We should only be healthy.” Another similar one says, in foot-tall letters, “It will be OK.” Our neighborhood graffitist, the one who keeps scrawling cryptic messages about “fourteen commandments” on bus stops, has written under it “only after people stop ignoring the Torah.” A large poster of the Rebbe says “Healing and rescue and he will redeem us.” I think of stopping at a produce shop for fresh fruit but decide against it. I head straight home. I can really use some coffee.