"Tiny Dancer" • Sir Elton John (by Casey Jo Graham Welmers)

This guy waking up from anesthesia is so agitated – not the usual limb thrashing agitated that gets us cracked across the face or kneed in the gut, but vocally agitated, tossing his head side-to-side on the operating table, moaning, repeating the same line of gibberish until his lips quiver and go purple. He’s jacked, covered in tattoos, head shaved. He may or not may have spent time in jail, a militia, a motorcycle gang. My left foot is planted in a small puddle of his blood and fragments of his tibia. We tilt collectively toward his face, as if closer proximity to his mouth will allow us to decipher his ranting. 

“Inyancer inyancer inyancer!” 

Romancer? Chancer? Prancer? Is he asking if he has cancer? I pull the oxygen mask off his face.

“Do want this off?” I ask. He appears to care less, launches back into his incantations.

“Inyancer inyancer incancer!” 

I snap the mask back in place, shake my head. I’m about done playing post anesthesia translator with this guy when I crack the code. Jesus. I do believe this burly dude is asking for Sir Elton John.

“Are you saying… “Tiny Dancer?”” I ask. “Do you want to hear that song?” 

He stops shaking his head, starts nodding his chin. A fat tear squeezes from the corner of one eye, snakes toward his beet red ear, runs toward a tattoo on his neck. Something like a small moth flutters against my sternum. We all just kind of freeze and stare at each other for a beat, our mouths hanging half-open or hiking up into crooked pirate smiles beneath our masks. 

“You heard the man, cue it up.” I elbow my co-worker. 

He fumbles through his phone as do two others, a race now to see who can pull the song up first. Someone runs over to the radio, turns down the holiday music that’s been playing, almost slips on a piece of tissue. So this is Christmas.

“Yeahhhh I got it!” says my nurse anesthetist. A flimsy sounding “Tiny Dancer” curls around the empty operating room, the piano small and tinkling. The guy on the table goes stock-still and relaxes like we’ve just administered the world’s best drug. 

I mean, maybe we have? 

It’s what we all want, isn’t it? Just someone to understand our small, demented ramblings. To care enough to respond despite our sinning and crashing and breaking our bones. We’re belting the lyrics now as we roll the guy to recovery, counting headlights on the highway, or overhead lights in the hallway, or just lights, any of them. All of them.

Casey Jo Graham Welmers holds a BA in English, Language and Literature from The University of Michigan and practices written and healing arts from the Great Lakes state. She has some other new stuff about songs published or forthcoming in Hobart and Farewell Transmission. Say hi at caseyjo.carrd.co and @ca5eyj0 on X and Instagram.