Katie Darby Mullins | Dr. Phil and I Watch My Husband Play Guitar in a Packed Bar

Katie Darby Mullins teaches creative writing at the University of Evansville. In addition to being nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net multiple times, she’s been published or has work forthcoming in journals like The Rumpus, Iron Horse, Hawaii Pacific Review, BOAAT Press, Harpur Palate, Prime Number, Pithead Chapel, and she was a semifinalist in the Ropewalk Press Fiction Chapbook competition. She is the Executive Writer for Adam Duritz & Friends’ Present Underwater Sunshine Fest, a twice-a-year music festival that showcases new musical talent.

Katie Darby Mullins's Website

Also by Katie Darby Mullins: How to Become a Tiger The Poem Where Dr. Phil and I Have Lunch The Poem Where I Can See a Ghost, but Dr. Phil Can’t

September 2019

Katie Darby Mullins

Dr. Phil and I Watch My Husband Play Guitar in a Packed Bar

Be careful what you wish for friend/ Cos I’ve been to hell and back again And I feel all right, I feel all right

— Steve Earle

Andy was worried about me making the trip; I hadn’t left the house much since stroke rehab, and someone still needed to hold my right side so I didn’t slip left — My body that is made, at least half, Of Monday mornings, half of well-slept Saturday afternoons, moving foot After foot as if it were natural. So strange. But by this time, I needed to move, surrounded by dying hospital flowers and friends who had clearly worried I was also dying. I was out of the eye patch. I wasn’t on the walker. And Dr. Phil kept reminding me, “Your husband is right. You have to push boundaries to know where they are.” That didn’t make it easier for Andy to tip the bartender to monitor my pupil size, to know if I was too tired. Buoyed with Mexican soft drinks in glass bottles, Dr. Phil and I sat through warm-up, both enjoying the Steve Earle cover. But it was late in the set, wobbling on the smooth barstool, and I was digging in my Aladdin Sane bag, praying I’d brought something to make me less dizzy. I swear I could feel Phil try to comfort my right side, the confused sensation of burning and freezing, wondering why, at 31, I had to say the word “stroke,” so often. It’s like the record didn't scratch, like Andy never flung that Telecaster closer and closer to the amp, the feedback, the high pitched sound tearing me down the middle, I scream, and Phil nods back. “It’s like always: you look normal, so people don’t understand why you are the way you are, what’s wrong with you.” “Sometimes I want to grab every person I see and scream, ‘You have no idea what I’ve been through.’” Phil popped open another glass bottled-Coke. I prayed he wouldn’t say something stupid like we’re all fighting our own battles or what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. We look at each other and I know he can tell that I’d punch him as hard as I could with my good side. “I feel all right,” he sings along with Andy’s high harmony. I take the melody. I feel all right.

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