Dora: A Headcase by Lidia Yuknavitch

recorder that looks pretty much like when cops talk to their shoulders at crime scenes. One benefit to the Olympus Mini? Its sleek and thin compactness. You’d think they’d be suspicious of him, but they aren’t. The trick is in the details. In the perfect 1970s brown blazer. And in the ever-so-slightly wrinkled button-down. And the shit brown and yellow striped tie. Also, shoes – if you get the shoes right, people will believe anything. You don’t have to be who you say you are. You only have to be what people have seen and come to believe on TV. Because we’re TV-headed now.
    Ave Maria has somehow commandeered a hospital gift shop cart filled with lame-ola shit. Shampoos and juice boxes. Artificial flowers and sad ass balloons on sticks. Stuffed animals and coffee mugs that say “Get well soon.”
    I’m in the ER waiting hall on a Naugahyde bench with my
arms crossed over my pink angora chest. My head’s down like I’m very, very worried about someone close to me. But really I’m just adjusting the levels of the H4n recorder in my Dora purse.
    Obsidian is down the hall a little mopping the floor. Like the Chief in Cuckoo’s Nest. No one even looks at her. She doesn’t even exist. Motherfuckers.
    Secured to her wrist watch though is the Aiptek Mini PenCam. Weighing in at only 45 grams and measuring 3 cm × 2.7 cm × 8.6 cm, it’s the world’s smallest and lightest megapixel digital video recorder. Her head jerks up from mopping and I follow her gaze down the hall.
    Our lead actor.
    Half walking, half scooting toward the ER incoming desk, comes my man Sig and his member. His head jerks left when two Filipino nurses seem to chuckle. Poor Sig – he has to explain his condition to a none-too-impressed RN dude wearing a crocodile tooth hanging from a chain. Sig’s pathetic. He’s all bent over. He keeps clearing his throat, gesturing toward the little commandant.
    I know what the Sig is thinking though. I do. He’s thinking the guy’s crocodile tooth is a masculinity talisman. Probably to ward off sexual impotence.
    What? I never said I didn’t listen.
    I whisper “Tiger one to Bat Boy-over. The chicken is squawking” into my Bluetooth. My voice shoots around the posse. Everyone is in position. Everyone knows exactly who they are. We are our technologies.
    Crocodile dude steers Sig to a stall and gives him a hospital smock and a blue blanket to cover himself with – talk about pitching a tent. Jesus. The size of that thing.
    The room on the other side of Sig is empty – the gurney all lined up with a shitty-ass hospital pillow waiting for the next victim. I’ve always hated these rooms. All the save a life gadgets and machinery looming above you like you are in the movie Alien. I bet it’s germ city, too. I know everything supposed to be
all sterilized but I’m guessing it’s like a fucking stadium urinal in there. I bet there’s dead skin cells and hair and you know, fluids everywhere. Like in hotel rooms.
    The whole place smells like someone shit air freshener.
    Ave Maria wheels her hope of tards cart close to Sig’s stall. I meet up with Ave Maria and pretend to look at things on the cart, fingering the mugs and stuffed rodents, dabbing my eyes with a tissue.
    Crocodile RN then puts an ice-pack on Sig’s wang and pushes and says, “Hold that down, sir.”
    Sig lets out a muffled little yelp.
    Various white coats come in and say serious things to Sig. Ask him questions.
    At Ave Maria’s cart, I put my hand on a mug with a mutant looking stuffed monkey attached to it. The monkey’s head’s too big. Like a Down Syndrome monkey. Who would feel better if you gave them shit like this?
    I point my Dora purse in the direction of Sig’s stall. We’re all recording – me, Little Teena, Ave Maria, Obsidian. We’re transmitting via Bluetooth to the laptop on the floor of the Jag in the parking lot. This, my friends, is how it’s done. Quiet on the set.
    Three. Two. One. Action.
    “Mr. Freud, have