A television keeps an elevated vigil in the corner. Four unoccupied round tables clutter the center of the room. A row of empty chairs is strung out before windows that reveal a patio strewn with more empty chairs. A fountain cycles a sunken pond’s water in the midground. Above the distant forest, the wan sky is cloudless. A rectangular hotel with an illuminated insignia mars the otherwise natural scene.
The television watches more than it is watched. Around the clock, it remains fixed on channels long since selected. A room full of adults ignore hours of children’s programming. Lifetime movies project into a space containing solitary men. Sitcoms provide distraction in fifteen second increments. From an abundance of nervous energy, the outdated magazines lining the end tables are haphazardly consulted. The narratives contained therein are never attentively followed. The readers, unable to concentrate sufficiently to construct meaning, settle for implicit visual conveyance. The pages lingered upon most are image-laden, those communicating wordless joy in a saturated spectrum.
A high-capacity coffee maker is the sun in the room’s solar system. It rests atop a cabinet mounted to a weight-bearing column. Above the Maxwell House header, a framed poster hangs. A woman is bent forward as though weeping. A man, softly lit, has laid a hand on her shoulder. In pastel blue script, “He heals the brokenhearted” is printed along the top. “And binds up their wounds,” is printed along the bottom. The instructions for the coffee maker are read with more credulity.
What frequently disturbs the audial pall of discomfort are laugh tracks and commercials. Here, you discover your brother is dangerously dehydrated while being exhorted to switch car insurance. You learn of a spouse’s punctured lung while a live studio audience chuckles at a boyfriend’s ineptitude. You find out your friend is going to pull through to the tune of a pizzaria’s jingle.
The good news delivered within is always relative. Hopes infrequently rise above stable. Stability is spoken of inside these walls as prosperity is spoken of outside. This is limbo’s outpost. This is the in-between land, the ravine between calamity and convalescence. In here, souls undergo periods of purgatorial torture without the consolation of a certain and edifying purpose.
People respond in kind, leaving the marks on a room that’s left its marks on them. The carpet stain near the tables is from a drink accidentally toppled by an on-edge teenager. The scratch on the north wall is from a pastor’s watch as he embraced a grandmother who risked outliving her grandson. The indentation behind one of the chairs is from a five year-old who was scolded for making a bad choice.
Whether in chairs or standing with crossed arms, people pass the time. Their minds wander to mundane concerns. Rented movies to watch. Groceries to buy. A friend to text back. The ominous high-pitch squeal the washing machine has been making. Whether or not to cancel cable or the newspaper. Who’s going to mow the grass? Then their minds snap back to the subject they’re here for. How is he feeling? Did they get all of it? Is the damage permanent? Should we have used olive oil? Why did I tell her it was no big deal? Will she make it? If she does, will she be the same? Is this the beginning of the end? Do the doctors have an obligation to tell you if it is?
Two of the available chairs, set off by themselves, are recliners. They’re intended for relaxation, angled as they are away from the closely monitored door. The weary people who gravitate toward either do so from exhaustion. Some of the longest days on record are passed in these confines. The drained fumble for knobs or levers with closed eyes. They thrust their weight into the recliners’ backs. The footrests kick out. Spines and muscles relax. Their respiration decreases.
Year round, the air is too cold to get comfortable. The slightest noises disrupt. The minds of the reclined recount the events that brought them to a waiting room. This time yesterday, the visitors-to-be were sitting at desks, typing emails or running errands. Or maybe the visitors-to-be were enjoying a picnic lunch, laughing about a video they saw. The patients-to-be were talking about vacations, making pitches for an Alaskan cruise next summer. Or maybe the patients-to-be were considering going back to school, investing in themselves so that in a few years they’d be out of retail. All parties involved in one way or another with emergency today were yesterday in love, or enmity, or alienation. In between, there was a funny tingling on the right side that wouldn’t go away, a ballfield collision, or a bodily fluid where it doesn’t belong.
Their respiration increases. Within five minutes, they surrender to the ambient unease. They sit up and reunite with the others adrift in suspension.
The standard interpersonal barriers can’t obstruct in rooms like this. A person’s presence is proof of membership in a beleaguered society. Everyone is a unique combination of hurt, numb, confused, anxious, indignant, tired, and upset. No one is here because he or she would have chosen to be. In such a setting, pretext evaporates. Strangers are free to become confidants without first becoming acquainted.
***
Two clumps of people occupy separate sides of the hollowed room. Trays loaded with soft drinks, once-bitten sandwiches, cellophaned brownies, and nondescript salads doused with dull white dressing are evidence of a third clump lately departed.
A girl plays a game on her mother’s smartphone. The sound effects cheaply jangle, marking her progress. Her little brother prods her for his turn. Their mother commands them both to knock it off. Across the room a woman with graying roots relates, “I know how that is!”
The younger mother shakes her head. “I don’t know what I was thinking. We were in a rush. I should’ve grabbed the tablet or something.”
“I remember when my own were their age.” The older woman looks to the adjacent man, who declares his sonship by fidgeting. She continues while speaking to the man. “The toys were different, but the fights were the same.” She turns and winks at her new friend.
“I bet.”
The adult son and the younger mother exchange clipped smiles. They understand.
He takes his eyes off of her and focuses on the phone mounted on the central column. On a plastic sign is etched, “For Patient Information, Dial 4557.” The man considers the directive’s irony. The only time he has called, the answering employee was anything but patient. He could not decide whether her terse pronouncements were motivated by compliance with HIPAA regulations or weariness with the incessant, uneducated questions she was required to field.
“How is he?”
“He’s still in surgery.”
“I know, but, I mean, how’s he doing? How’s the surgery going?”
“The surgery is progressing as it should be.”
“Okay, but, is he going to be—is he going to make it? His wife wants to know. In your experience, I mean, is he going to come out of this fine?”
“Sir, all I can say at this time is that the surgery is progressing as it should be.”
The man’s recollections are disturbed by his mother calling out, “Who are you here for?”
“My sister...stomach cancer—” She breaks off to address her bickering children. “Adey! Let your brother play. Do you want to watch TV? Ask that man if he minds changing it to something you’d like.” She reengages with the older mother. “Stage four.”
The woman’s wrinkles pop into relief from her raised eyebrows. “Oh my! Bless your heart! I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s been ten minutes!” protests the boy. The girl yanks her arm free from the boy’s clawing hands.
“Enough!” says the younger mother. “Adey, I’m not telling you again.” The girl surrenders the device. Her brother jerks it away. The younger mother rolls her eyes and shakes her head as if to dislodge her annoyance. She adjusts her bangs.
More composed, she explains, “Layla’s been to the ER three times in the past four months. Three. She keeps on coming down with these terrible fevers. She’s turning the color of a banana and her legs are swollen like tree trunks. You should see ‘em. She can hardly keep anything down. She tries to sleep but can’t for very long. Sometimes all she can do is moan. The pain pills do as much damage as good on an empty stomach. My brother-in-law and I take turns bringing here her for the IVs when it gets really bad like it has been the past week. For whatever reason when we brought her in Tuesday, they ran some extra tests or something and found a mass on her colon. She’s having some other test, now, actually. They booked her for the O.R. first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Oh dear. I’m sorry to hear that. I can only imagine.” The older mother communicates compassion with her body language.
“Yeah. Well.”
***
A tune plays overhead for the second time in an hour. A new life has been delivered into this world. Great relief and joy are proximal, two floors up in the maternity wing of the East Medical Building. There is no correlative dirge for a life departing. The news is not broadly dispatched but specifically delivered. When the waiting room phone rings and the voice asks to speak to you by name, when you identify yourself and the voice asks you to please wait in the nearby private room down the hall and to your right, when you ask what’s wrong and the voice refuses to elaborate, you can surmise there is one less heart beating in the world.
The recipients of such calls hang up slowly. They gather their belongings—their purses, sweaters, books, Get Well Soon cards, bouquets, or balloons—and do as they’re told. They make one right, walk, and make another. They enter a softly lit cell. Inside, there is no guise of normality, no accoutrements of modern life. The room’s motif is nondescript but memorable all the same. An unidentified speaker transmits tranquil piano solos. Bereavement brochures and contact information for the resident chaplain are neatly stacked beside a table lamp and for the taking. The visitors shut the door and commence a different kind of waiting.
When the younger mother receives one of these calls tomorrow, she’ll bring her children with her because she can’t leave them in the waiting room by themselves. The children will protest until they read the expression on their mom’s face. She’ll tell them gently to please be quiet and give her their hands. They’ll exit one room and enter the other in the same connected manner. The younger mother will pick a middle seat and the children will take their places at each side. She’ll put her palms out wordlessly. They’ll oblige. She’ll squeeze a boy’s hand in her left, a girl’s hand in her right, and a tear in the corner of each eye as she pieces together for the fifth time already what it means to be in the private waiting room. This is a gas chamber by another name, a place filled with the air that will be drawn in by an unfamiliar man with a doctorate, and will carry on it word of death that kills a part of the others who hear. The doctor, who is sorry for your loss like a mechanic is sorry your engine can’t be repaired, who has spent upwards of a thousand hours slicing through human flesh and bone and hundred of minutes explaining post mortems in clinical detail, whose answers of how so inadequately account for why, will conclude by asking with practiced placidity, “Do you have any questions?”
“What?! How could...Oh...Was she...was she in pain?”
“No. She was sedated...Do you have any other questions?”
“Was there…anything...else we could do—have done?”
“No. Not at this stage. The gastric carcinoma was inoperable and had metastasized, as I said, to the liver, kidneys, and, colon. The symptoms you noted upon Ms. Foley’s admission were evidence of renal failure, the shutting down of the kidneys. We were taking emergency palliative measures and encountered unforeseeable complications...Do you have any other questions?”
“Did we wait...I...I can’t believe...Where’s the...body?”
“Our nurses are prepping the body currently. You can view it shortly if you so choose. One of our staff members will be around to discuss final arrangements with you...Do you have any other questions?”
“God yes! A thousand but...I’m. They don’t matter. I just. God. A month ago, she was doing better. She’d gained five pounds, you know? We were doing so good. I can’t...Is this? How could this? I...oh God.”
“Do you have any other questions?”
“No. I...no.”
“As I said, a staff member will be down to discuss final arrangements with you. Wait here.”
He’ll stand tall and slender, a figure dressed in white. He does not initiate physical contact. He retreats. Before opening the door, he communicates his sorrow in a way that clarifies the loss is hers, not his or theirs. He leaves. The door closes. His silhouette crosses before the frosted windows and his footsteps decrescendo. The three are left alone.
The children look to their mom for translation. She’s not ready to explain. Instead, she squeezes their hands tightly.
***
An incomplete puzzle is arranged on one of the dining tables. The gray laminate tabletop fills the area the sky should. The adult son thinks the still life is somehow symbolic but doesn’t pursue the line of thought to determine how so. He scans the pieces’ boundaries, curved and straight.
He recognizes he should be more upset than he is. He frankly feels okay, though he doesn’t dare tell anyone. The last person he’d tell is his mother. She embraced him when he arrived a little over an hour ago. She looked into his clear eyes with bloodshot eyes of her own and thanked him for coming. She went on to express her admiration for his strength. He writhed under her praise and said it was nothing, which she interprets as modesty. What she calls strength, he calls apathy. These things happen. What else is there to say? That pretty much sums it up. These things happen. People get sick. Some die right away. Sooner or later, we all do. The terms of life have a frankness to them the son finds almost soothing.
He glances at his mother. Her eyes are shut and her lips twitch with silent pleas. The son can’t relate. She’s inscrutable to him like sanskrit, lizards, and newborns. Unlike her, the son has an easy time thinking of his father as dead. Dead = gone, permanently. He simply deletes the father from the space he occupies in the son’s brain. The background is unchanged. All the other parties he’s associated with still mingle about, only there’s no dad to bump into.
The most jarring part of his father’s imagined nonexistence is the practical fallout from the disappearance. The to-do list will be lengthy and the son will be relied upon to address the majority of it. There’s the issue of informing everyone else about the death, speaking to barely remembered distant relatives and family friends and accepting condolences that don’t have the desired effect because in this instance the bereaved isn’t really grieving. There’s the negotiations with a florist, a caterer, some religious official, and a mortician and the gang’s shameless nickle-and-diming predation. He’ll have to feign a stiff upper lip for hours in front of a closed casket as he shakes the cold hands of people who project sadness into his blank face. He’ll have to cobble together a plagiarized eulogy, step up to the podium, and relay fictionalized stories that will mean more to the audience than the author.
If only it ended with the funeral, but list of offenses associated with that is merely the starting gun to a marathon of headaches. Bills will start piling up on his mother’s kitchen counter and she won’t have the courage to reach for the letter opener. After the creditors’ calls get so disruptive she unplugs the phone, she’ll show up uninvited on his doorstep. The solution is as obvious as it is onerous. His parents’ house will have to be sold. The prospect of boxing up his parents’ belongings and making the house presentable is more dismaying than his father being gone, permanently.
The overnight nurse warned the son back when his dad was admitted it would be upsetting to see his dad post-op. She suggested he take a minute before he pulls back the curtain to prepare himself for seeing a loved one unconscious and on a respirator. He should be aware that the incisions are commonly longer than six inches and it’s not unusual for them to still bleed a little. While she talked, the son didn’t listen. He knew the sight wouldn’t be an issue and he won’t need to take a deep breath or anything like that. Not that he doesn’t love his dad. He loves his dad like the foot loves the ground, a sure thing to push against. It’s complicated. There’s a whole history between them and, for whatever reason, his dad being critically ill just doesn’t strike him as that big of a deal. Admitting that to himself makes the son sound inhumane and maybe he is, but that’s the truth. That’s how he is or how he feels.
Is there something wrong with him for feeling that way? He can almost hear his mother reassure him that everyone grieves differently. Emotions aren’t good or bad. They just are. She has said that before. He wants to retort with how he has a glaring lack of emotions, but that would only confuse her. It’s best to sit silently by her side and offer to buy her a bag of chips or a deli sandwich every so often.
Nobody thinks of the son as being cold. They put a nice spin on his flatness. They call him stoical, resilient, brave. He doesn’t see the point in correcting them. He’s aware he plays a role. His family and his friends need him around to be the pillar, the one who won’t freak out or cry when things go south, the one who’s steady in a crisis. He can be that. He can handle these sorts of expectations. He’s the hero so long as he shows up, which he consistently does. No one suspects that the hardest part of showing up is the inconvenience, the disruption to his routines, and the reminder that maybe he’s messed up emotionally for not being a mess when his mother calls him blubbering about how Carl collapsed in the yard and for not even misting up when he thinks of his dad being buried.
So be it. He can certainly handle the loss. He’ll keep on handling it because it’s not so much to bear—not for him. If anything, he’d like to get on with it. Whatever happens, good or bad, please happen soon so that we can sooner return to something like business as usual. Surely there’s nothing wrong in wishing for speedy resolution. The son is comfortable articulating his wish that the calamity not be prolonged. His impatience is construed as mercifulness by those who hear him.
What the son ponders for a long time is whether he’s self-involved for thinking all of these thoughts while his father is on life-support or whether he’s a good kid for keeping his mom company.
He can’t decide.
***
A different woman enters wearing a hoodie and pajama pants. She notices one of the two groups but doesn’t acknowledge them. She drags a chair back from the table, sits, and picks at the tepid leftovers. She eats without relish, simultaneously frowning and chewing. The food is fuel to sustain her for the hours of helplessness that lie ahead.
She stabs the salad and wonders what can she do? It’s in the doctors’ hands now. She has to put her faith in them. Everybody’s got to trust these strung-out professionals who’ve got their attentions pulled in about twenty different directions to see to it their loved ones get better. Whenever you ask them anything, they give smartass answers like, “She’s been through a lot,” and, “It’s normal to be so tired.” We know. We’ve a sense of the new normal. We know full well how to be realistic.
She sips the soup and asks herself who are they to speak to Fran in that way? She’s not stupid. She can hear them. Shouldn’t they be able to figure out her hearing is fine? But they’re professionals. They know what they’re doing when they raise their voices like they were telling a dimwit what’s what. Could the medicine be making Fran stupid?
She pinches a corner of the brownie and thinks of Sick Fran. Sick Fran has been with us on and off since ‘97. Sick Fran hardly opens her eyes. They say she won’t remember this round of treatment, but what about the rest of us? We’ll remember her sad moans and her pale color. We spoon fed her applesauce like she was a baby. She puckered her lips like an infant for milk when we brought the cup of juice with the straw near her face. Her ID bracelet says Billings, Fran but that’s not right. Fran wouldn’t recognize herself, so how can we?
She swigs the Pepsi and remembers Healthy Fran. Healthy Fran played tennis. Do the professionals realize that? Healthy Fran was a great cook and whenever you needed a kind word, Healthy Fran was there for you and ready with one. Do these doctors and nurses get that? Who are they to speak of her like all she is is sick and tired and maybe dumb? That’s not our Fran. Our Fran is going to recover. Our Fran is trapped inside something else, something that can get sick and rot, that can turn against itself and tear itself apart.
She slides her chair back and imagines telling the nursing staff to stop calling that thing in there with the tubes jammed in all over, weird boots on her feet, yellowy bruises from who knows what, and rash on her face Fran. As she walks to the trashcan, she tells herself to take it easy. They’re doing their level best, the nurses. She has a friend who’s a nurse. She knows they’ve been taught to humanize their patients by using their first names. Don’t take it personally. It’s better than calling her The Patient. It’s better than not calling her anything she tells herself as she swipes the remnants off her tray.
She has a hunch the staff don’t know much more about the situation than she does. They say dumb things like, “Everyone’s different,” and “It takes time.” No shit. We’re well aware of that. We’ve been watching the disease take it’s sweet time with Fran’s time, thanks. Sixteen torturous years. Shouldn’t they have more of a clue than she does? When’s Fran going to get better? When’s the medicine going to do more than make her dizzy? “Sometimes it takes a while.” That’s a medical opinion? You have to go to school for how long to tell us that? What a joke!
She stares out at the pond and remembers how for the longest time, back when this all began, two different doctors just thought Fran had mono. Fucking mono! Tell me, doctor, how is it that a grown woman can catch mono? Mono is the best you can come up with when her headaches are so terrible she pukes? It’s not a virus if it lasts for months! Geese waddle toward the water as she concludes the physicians are all a bunch of idiots.
To the woman with the pair of kids, she says, “I’m sorry to say this but I hope to God I just go in my sleep and not wake up. Throw a blood clot or something.” She snaps her fingers. “You know what I’m saying? Nice and quick.”
The younger mother nods. “I hear you.”
“These people here,” the solitary woman says while gesturing around, “they can’t save you. They draw it out is all.”
“I‘ve been there. You sound like me a few weeks ago. It’s frustrating.” The woman strokes her daughter’s hair. The daughter tilts her head away. “But when you think about it—it’s our only chance. If whoever you’re here for comes through this, you could have another… I don’t know. More time is my point. It’s a struggle, but I’m telling you it’s worth it. What else are you going to do, give up?”
“It’s just that it’s not up to me. She was in so much pain, but dragging her to the E.R. doesn’t do much for her in the long run… I just want her home with us. I want her to have some peace. This is too much. For all of us.”
“I hear that, honey. It is a lot. I don’t think folks get how much it is for all of us unless they’ve sat in rooms like this, trying not to think about what’s happening and getting ahead of yourself. Folks think there’s sick and there’s healthy. But we’re a third group. We’ve gotta stay positive so that the sick stay positive. If they give up, it’s over. But the pressure and fear sorta makes us sick, like emotionally or spiritually or whatever.”
A hushed commercial for detergent fills the silence.
The other mother chimes in. “How many times have you been in?”
“For Fran? It’s not been too bad lately. She has lupus. This is the first time in months, but we’ve been dealing with it plenty at home. ”
“Oh. I’m sure. I’m sure. My husband, Carl, he has advanced heart disease. He’s fresh off bypass surgery. He’s recovering now.”
“It’s just that I don’t think the doctors have a clue. It’s pretty much guesswork. Do you get that feeling?”
“Sometimes it is I think. We’re human. But their guesses are better than ours, don’t you think? You’ve gotta trust they have more of a clue than you do. If it weren’t for Dr. Osmond and all the staff here, Carl wouldn’t be with us anymore. I just think about how bad it could’ve been, if he’d been on one of his business trips on the road. He’d’ve crashed into the median or plowed into a ditch.” The older mother is swept up into terrible visions. Once calmed, she asks, “Who’s your doctor?”
“Fran’s rheumatologist is Dr. Chaganti. Something Chaganti. He’s foreign.”
“I haven’t heard of him, but I’m sure he’s good. This’s a highly regarded hospital. I’m sure she’s in good hands. Give it time. The body can heal in amazing ways. I’ve seen it.”
“Thanks.”
The younger mother asks, “Where’re the others you came in with?”
“I told them they could go home. No sense in us all waiting around. The swelling could last all night.”
“Oh. Well it’s good of you to stay with her. I’m sure she appreciates it.”
“For now, she’s too drugged to notice.”
“Well.” The younger mother tries to be encouraging. “Then I notice. It’s good of you to be here.”
“Yeah.” The woman in the hoodie examines her shoes and rotates her ankles. “Thanks.”
***
Months ago, Carl’s cardiologist explained the heart is an amazing organ. He said it does all it can to keep on delivering blood to where it needs to go, that when blood vessels start to become occluded—clogged—the heart’ll just beat more strenuously and push the blood through wherever it can, taking the path of least resistance like all liquids do. Even though the heart’s efficiency’s diminishing, the patient won’t notice because it’s so gradual. Plaque accumulates over years. From the patient’s perspective, he feels he’s getting older, which is true, and he’ll take more frequent breaks because he’s tired because he’s aging. Every now and again, though, he’ll work all the harder because although he is older, obviously, he doesn’t have to give up, which is also true. Then one day, on a day the patient is revved up and pushing through his fatigue, his heart’s going to give up despite him. It quits. Perversely, heart tissue is some of the first to be damaged by the resulting lack of oxygen. No one knows exactly why that day’s the day. There are theories. Maybe there’s a critical mass of plaque in the veins and arteries. Maybe there’s an upper limit to the number of beat a heart can endure in the distressed range. Whatever the reason, the heart quits. It seizes up like any other muscle cramping. That’s basically what we call a myocardial infarction and you call a heart attack.
The older mother grabs her book. She removes a yellow sheet of paper she stuck in it yesterday. She unfolds the paper and reviews the outlines of the heart, its major veins and arteries. She focuses on the blue ink blobs the doctor scribbled within the lines to represent blockages. There are so many. Next to each set of marks are percentages. 80%. 85%. 95%. 98%. These are bad numbers, suboptimal the surgeon said. The woman holds in her hand a representation of what’s in Carl’s chest. This is his heart. It is an organ, a drawable thing, in his chest. It pumps his blood in secret.
Last month, she held a similar sheet with a diagram of a sedan on it. The mechanic drew an X on the exhaust manifold. That’s where the sound was coming from, a breach in the rusted piping. Now, her Carl has a problem with his piping. It’s strange, the unseen effects on the seen. She had never seen under her car or inside Carl’s chest, yet those were where the malfunctions came from. A person’s body can malfunction like an automobile. A person’s vitality can be sketched and enumerated. It caused her to consider what was inside her. How restricted were her passages at this moment? What about Shawn’s? She lets go of the paper with one hand and puts it on Shawn’s knee. Shawn places his hand on top of hers. It’s warmer and softer than her own. In her head, she asks what don’t we know so many times it becomes a statement. What don’t we know.
She folds up the paper that visualizes the hidden. A woman wearing scrubs walks by the waiting room threshold and the older mother ponders what she has seen. None of us are pretty on the inside, huh? We’re all reds, pinks, and dull whites, so much fat and stringy stuff. It all works together, does all that it can to persist, but it’s ugly and prone to breaking down.
A custodian enters with a styrofoam cup in his hand. He rifles through a wicker basket and extracts a few packets. He pinches them together and flaps them quickly back and forth. “We’re fresh out of creamer in the breakroom,” the custodian says to the son he notices eyeing him. The mother tells the custodian to help himself.
“Was that lightning?” He motions to the windows. “S’posed to rain.”
“Oh is it?” She cranes her neck to check the sky. “We’ve been cooped up in here all day. I haven’t heard the weather. Frankly, I don’t even know what time it is. I forgot my watch.”
“Going on nine,” he says as he shakes a wad of sugar packets.
“Nine? Goodness.” She asks her son, “Your dad should be ready for visitors soon, don’t you think?”
The son shrugs.
The custodian stirs the contents of his cup. He drops the refuse into the nearby can. He takes a cautious sip, ducking his head down to meet the steaming liquid.
“Is your shift almost over or just starting?”
“Almost over,” he says mostly into the cup. “Yes, almost. After I leave here I’ve a forty-five minute drive home to my wife and one of my boys. She tells me to drink plenty of coffee so’s to stay awake for the ride home. I’ve been up since 3:30 this morning.” After a beat, he adds, “This’s my second job.”
“Bless your heart! That’s a long day. Your wife’s right. Drink up.”
“You said it. She’s always right.” He laughs to himself. “Never been wrong as long as I known her and that’s been almost twenty-five years. That’s what I tell my boys. I say your momma’s never been wrong once and when you get a wife yours’ll never be wrong neither!” He laughs again.
The older mother and son smile, the mother appearing more genuinely amused than her offspring. “Boys should hear that kind of message. It’ll save them grief down the road.”
“Yes ma’am. I should say so, yes. She and I...we know a thing or two about grief. Yes. Sometimes its lyin’ smack in the middle of the road and you see it a mile away. Sometimes it pops out atcha from the woods. Mm.” He pauses to let his words sink in. “My wife, you see, she’s been disabled nearly three years come this November. She’s a good deal older than me but hardly looks it let me tell you. Puts on heels ev’ry Sunday. She’s in remission but they had to take most of one lung. But she don’t let it keep her down, no. She reads books morning to night. Yes. She’s the smartest woman I know. I tell my boys you listen to your momma because she’s the smartest woman I know.” He takes another tentative sip. “Yes. She’s smart. Wise, too. Won’t let her illness keep her down. Nope. She does all she can, more than she should, really, considering. She keeps the house in order. She writes me and the boys notes to keep our spirits up when times get tough.”
The son blinks. His mother holds up their end of the conversation. “How sweet! You’ve got a good one.”
“Yes, ma’am, I do. Only I don’t say got. I don’t got a good one. I say with. I’m with a good one. That’s something Sharonda—my wife—taught me. We’re each of us on loan, she says. No one owns anybody, not even ourselves. We’re on loan and we don’t know the terms of the contract if you know what I mean.”
“I do.”
The exchange lulls. The younger mother’s ringtone erupts from the other side of the room. Her children are lying on the ground, flipping through kids magazines. The adult son consults the television. A syndicated crime show is playing.
With an index finger stuck out from his cup, the custodian gestures to the older mother. “Who’re you with?”
“I’m sorry, come again.”
“Who’re you in here waiting for?”
“My husband, Carl, underwent heart surgery. He’s in recovery now. We should be seeing him soon.”
“Mm.”
“The doctors are optimistic.”
“That’s the best way to be. Keep your head up high and don’t be afraid to hope.”
“Let’s hope his bypass is the cure.”
The custodian nods.
“Heart disease runs in his family. He’s always eating out for lunch. His job’s quite stressful, too—deadlines and all. He’s a project manager for a construction company. Reynolds Construction. Have you heard of it?”
The custodian shakes his head. “Oh, I don’t know much about construction. Had no cause myself to have anything built.”
“Well most of what Reynolds builds is commercial, office buildings and the like.”
“Mm.”
Having completed the challenges contained in the magazines, the children grow restless. The younger mother takes the phone off her ear, presses it against her shoulder, and scolds them.
The older mother asks the custodian, “So, do you like it here?”
“I try to like it everywhere, ma’am. I’m getting too old to fight where I’m at.” He emphasizes to the son, “There’s sweetness in everything if you know how to see it. I remember when my wife was diagnosed and we heading home from the doctor’s office. I had no notion of what to do next. I was quiet and heartbroken to be honest. I was thinking she wasn’t long for this earth and I was scared of what would come, but I knew I shouldn’t speak of that to Sharonda so I clammed up. I kept both hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead. She touched me on the shoulder after ten minutes and said let’s not count the days either of us has left. Let’s just say thank you for every one and hope for another. And ever since that’s how we do.”
“What a great way to put it,” the older mother commends. “You must say that to all the folks you meet here.”
“Aw, it’s not me. It’s Sharonda. Didn’t I tell you she was wise? Full of the spirit, too. She prays more than I sleep.”
Another man, identically dressed, stops in the doorway and interrupts them. “Jimmy can’t find the buffer.”
“I told him it was in the closet on four.”
“He said he checked and it wasn’t there.”
“That fool. Probably didn’t flip the light on.” Resigned, the custodian told the family he had to go. The son said bye. The mother wished him well.
***
A couple in their twenties enters, the woman looking more ragged than the man. It’s her friend who’s in critical but stable condition. The man hasn’t met the injured woman. He came for support the his girlfriend. She didn’t need to ask him to come. He came on his own. He knew that he ought to accompany her.
On the way to the hospital, the boyfriend rode shotgun. He sat there wanting to cheer the girlfriend up. He broke the relative silence by saying some things he’d been meaning to say for a while about how precious she was to him and how honored he was to be near her, wherever—hospitals included. He was sure to use that word, honored. It sounded rare and weighty in his head. He rambled for a while about how he never saw this coming, his desire to be there for her regardless. He admitted he never felt that way before about other girls or whatever. He grew nervous because she wasn’t responding. She looked to be losing it, in fact.
These were convoluted moments for the girlfriend, brimming with affection for her boyfriend and with dread about Suzy. She didn’t want to neglect either but she also didn’t want to betray the one by acting as if she wasn’t under the influence of the other. She was overwhelmed, so she eventually said thanks, really in her awkward choked-up voice and left it at that. It was hard for her in the car ride to talk about their relationship and what it meant to her because she was still stunned. She couldn’t process what Mrs. Witten said fifteen minutes ago about her daughter’s loss of sensation. She never got past the whole paralysis thing. The girlfriend blurted out that twenty-four is unbelievably young to be in, like, need of a wheelchair.
The boyfriend told her that it’s way too early to speculate about wheelchairs for certain, that nerves are weird and swelling jacks them up but not always permanently. He told her let’s all just rally around Suzy now and deal with what comes when it comes.
From there, they talked for a while about what they knew of loss. They exchanged stories of classmates or cousins who’ve left this world and of grandparents that still clung on. They cried together, each in the manner their personalities allowed and at points overlapping and distinct. They wiped their faces with napkins from the glovebox. They felt more tightly bound for commiserating. It’s good to mourn, the boyfriend said. The girlfriend agreed. It sucks how flukey this major shit can be—the timing of things, the girlfriend said. The boyfriend agreed.
He kissed his fingertips and placed them on her flushed cheek. She took her eyes off the road for a second to blow him a kiss of his own and nothing tragic happened in that unattended interval. The boyfriend smiled while thinking accidents happen just like that. Why no sudden break lights straight ahead? Why no traffic lights descending from yellow to red? We are all so precariously close to death, it seemed to the boyfriend the greater mystery is why any of us are alive.
The exit for the hospital came upon them while the girlfriend recalling trips with Suzy to down cheap coffee by the potful and cram for many a final until three in the morning. The girlfriend was feeling happy for those crazy college nights and sad for not taking a second to thank Suzy for her part in that. She was happy for basic coexistence, even, and sad that she wasn’t leaning on Suzy’s bedrail, taking her friend’s mind off whatever was hurting her. She welled up with gratitude thinking about all that she had and the people in her life, even her moody boss who’s admittedly going through a lot of crap right now. The girlfriend swore to herself she was going to change. She was going to take way less for granted. She was going to risk opening up more often. She thought she should express her love whenever it struck her.
Right then, she turned to her boyfriend and did.
It will be the first thing she does when she finds Suzy.
