Wit's End

Wit's End is an isolated and nearly abandoned ruin of a town that you reach when your patience and money have finally run out and you are too angry to waste time on courtesy or reason.

It's not the battery, I told the service manager for the third time in as many weeks, It's not where I bought the battery or who installed it because your's didn't work any better than the first three. Something else is going on and no one is listening to me. And now, as if that's not enough, it's overheating. This is not acceptable. This time there was no patronizing smile, no pat on the head or suggestion that the fault might lie with me. She frowned, apologized, took my keys, and called the car rental company for me. I left, somewhere between despair and rage, feeling - as I had the whole weekend when I'd not dared to drive the car - a clear and violent urge to break something. I no longer felt particular about what.

Trouble finds us no matter how well we hide and there comes a point when fighting back, reprehensible as it may be, is the only option. Raised voices still unnerve me and when it's my own, shrill, shaky and primal, I feel as if I'm fighting for my life against dark forces. I say things I regret and can't take back, take stands I can't always defend,

and become too emotional for my own good. I was feeling precariously close to this kind of break down moment as I walked into the workplace, expecting the new offices to have been made ready over the long weekend as we'd been promised. Instead, I discovered controlled chaos - the painters were still at work, the floors weren't finished, no fixtures were in place. The old office was a shambles of overturned furniture, stacks of paperwork laying about in no discernible order, medical charts in boxes, leaning in piles against the walls, and stacked on every available flat surface, cartons of supplies and medical equipment spilled into the narrow hallways, closets were half emptied, their contents strewn about the exam rooms. Neither the xray machine nor the telephones nor the computers nor the fax machine nor any of the printers had been moved. In a nutshell, neither office was functional nor looked likely to be in the immediate future. I found myself wondering how fast and how far I could get away in my newly rented car.

By noon, it became clear that nothing could be accomplished while the new office was still full of workmen who were already tripping over each other - the telephones and computers had been shut down and a new water line would have to be installed to accommodate the xray processor, the paint wouldn't even be dry until the next morning. I agreed to be in by seven and fled the scene, desperate to put as much distance as possible between me and this wretched nightmare.

I tell myself tomorrow will be better. They will discover the electrical glitch in the car and fix it permanently. The new office will be ready and everything will work properly. Pigs will fly.