Made/Unmade

Down the wooden steps, past the new washer and old dryer, the dead spiders and stray lint, past the parked red wagon and wire shelving unit, a father and daughter sit at a makeshift table. The daughter is in her father's lap. She’s in charge of the tape. Daddy hands her a piece, and she sticks it on the table’s edge for later. Sometimes, she accidentally bends the piece over and the whole thing gets stuck to the table. 

"Uh oh. I need help." 

Daddy sets down the dispenser and picks at the tape with his pointer. 

The girl's nails were too short because Mommy cut them after breakfast. She could hardly wait to finish eating. The daughter watches TV whenever she has her nails trimmed because she’s transfixed by screens. She often declares her nails are getting kind of long within Mommy’s earshot as a ploy to watch Daniel Tiger. She and Mommy disagree about her nails’ length a lot. It’s upsetting.

"What do you think, Iris?"

"Mommy will like it."

"Oh good. I think so, too. Ready for the next one?" 

"Yes!"

Iris often makes declarations. Last week, she declared her hands are big and her dad’s hands are big but her mom’s hands are little. With those big hands, she tucks sheets of tissue paper around a cotton dress. She bobs her head to Daddy’s music, which emits from a nearby speaker. 

Daddy shares his music with her. And his food. And his warmth on chilly mornings. And his interest in clocks and hockey. Daddy will share anything if she asks nicely. She asks nicely whenever he’s having a snack, including snacks he tried to consume discreetly. By his thirty-second year, he’d become a good sharer. Iris taught him how. She’s a good sharer already. She shares bites from carrots on which she’s been gnawing. She shares countless artworks with family, friends, and her parents’ coworkers. After Halloween, she shared a blue M&M at the dinner table. Daddy was finishing his pasta and told her she could eat it. She bawled. He ate it then. 

She was a sensitive child. Her sensitivity could be infuriating, especially when the family needed to be punctual. It could be adorable, too. She ceaselessly asks about tantrumming children or troubled characters in picture books. Iris shares a poor boy's delight as he careens downhill on the sled she lent him. Almost everyone Iris meets adores her. She’s well aware. She’s baffled when people aren’t spontaneously smitten. She consults her parents as if to ask, 'What’s his/her/their problem?' But that doesn’t happen often. More often, she’s showered with adoration. Like at the store, buying one of Mommy’s birthday treats, the man in the red apron told her he liked her shoes and gave her a strip of paper with five stickers on it. All five dot her shirt as she scoots back in the chair, a constellation of affection from a stranger.

She’s having a good time wrapping presents. She had a good time drying dishes. She had a good time changing a remote’s batteries. So long as she’s not sick, underslept, or being told to clean up, Iris was probably happy. She liked flight delays, crowded grocery stores, and long lines for the best burgers in town. Iris was rarely bored because she quickly bonded with others. She met friends who would make expressive faces wherever she went, at whom she would smirk and from whom she would turn away, and who would greet her with another playful expression when she turned back. The world was full of friends who would squint, wink, smirk, or fingertip waive, who would ask her name and how old she is and would tell her she’s the cutest. She’d reward it all with bashful smiles and one word answers whispered while clung to a parent’s leg or shoulder.

If there are no friends to be found, Iris was a consummate observer. She's watched for the trash truck to rumble past their living room window. She’s watched Daddy grind coffee beans and pour over hot water. She’s watched Mommy wash vegetables and chop them into smaller pieces. 

Iris watches Daddy cut the wrapping paper. She has her own scissors. They’re yellow. She offers to fetch them from the office drawer. Daddy declines. He would rather use these.

"Okay." 

She puts her fingers inside the finger holes and squeezes when he does, not quite synchronized. 

"Let me do it my own self."

"No."

"Why?" 

"These scissors are dangerous."

"Why?"

"Because they’re sharp."

"My scissors are sharp, too." 

"Not as sharp as these, Rissa."

"Okay."

When he wrapped presents by himself, the father had no excuse for rumpled corners or torn flaps. Gift-wrapping improves with Iris’ involvement, backtalk included. As evidenced by the first present they covered, Iris gave Daddy a license to be hasty. What’s it matter so long as you couldn’t see what’s inside? She reframed the chore. With her involved, the process triumphed over the product⎼⎼not solely with wrapping presents, either. Much of what he used to do alone, he does with his daughter. Though she slowed him down and rarely stuck it out until the end, she was a welcome addition. He solicited her input selecting his weekend clothes. He handed her the junk mail to open. He invited her to go pull weeds or run to the hardware store. Assistance was her idea. Iris wanted to help more than she wanted to play quietly by herself. She wanted to participate in whatever her parents were doing. Cracking eggs. Stirring batter. Paying bills. Dusting furniture. If she couldn’t do it for real, she’d do it for pretend. She baked sprinkle cakes out of plastic bracelets in her play kitchen set. She wiped down walls with a paper towel and spray bottle. She scribbled notes and marked off days in Mommy’s 2016 planner. She searched for recipes, wrote emails, and prepared tax returns on the family’s broken laptop.

Were it not for the hissy fits, she’d be a saint. What was mostly tedious for her parents was usually fun for Iris. Not because the job involved bright colors or whirring widgets but because Iris was sharp. She could cut through the sediment accumulated over the years of doing what one has to do but doesn’t want to do. She construed activities as what she was free to do. She was free to spread jelly on a slice of bread. She was free to sweep spilled soil after repotting the aloe. She was free to affix tape where a sheet is puckering. On cue, she does.

Sometimes, though, frustrations occur. Matter resists. She groans when she can’t open lids, when a stack of books is too heavy, or when a fridge magnet is to high to grab. The sun vexes her. Zippers infuriate her. Sleeves bunch in the winter, and her hair blows in her face in the summer. Iris doesn’t know why the paper won’t fold like it’s supposed to. 

"Grrr." She tugs at it. 

"Whoa." 

"Let me do it." 

"Fine but be gentle. Let me."

The paper rips. 

"See? Gentle. Here."

She can’t form the proper angles, but she can crease. She can hold a flap down for him to secure it instead, which he does. 

"All done!"

They spin the teal box around to inspect it. 

"That’ll do."

He stacks it atop the other package off to the side. 

"Now what?"

"More tape!"

"Yep. How many should we have?"

"Ten!" 

He tears off new pieces to prepare for the next gift. 

"One. Two. Three."

He hands her these to put on the table’s edge. 

"Eight. Nine. Ten."

She’s more careful with the tape this time. 

"Let’s see. Which box will this fit in?"

"Ummm… that one!"

"Let’s see. Yep. Perfect fit. Great. Now for the paper."

He unfurls more paper and snips. The roll wants to curl. His cuts are jagged. 

"What’s in there?"

"In where?"

"There."

"Where?"

"Use your words."

"In that red thing."

"In that bowl?"

"Yes."

"Nothing, it’s empty."

"Why’s it empty?"

"Uh well, it’s not entirely empty. I think there’s last year’s leftover Halloween candy."

"Can I have some?"

"Nah, you don’t want any of that stuff. It’s almost a year old. Yuck."

"But I really want some!"

"No, Rissa."

"But I really really want some."

"Maybe later."

"Maybe if I’m good?"

"Maybe."

He asks her for tape, and she sticks it along the seam. 

"Good job." 

"Thanks."

She did good. She was good. In so many ways. Her wavy blonde locks. Her button nose. Her bulbous belly. Her clumsiness. Her particularity. How she slipped her shoes on the wrong feet more than half the time. How she asked to have a book read to her backwards after she had it read to her forwards. How she commanded her parents to clap if they didn’t realize one of her improvised songs is over. 

This was the child Daddy had to be convinced to have, the baby who might rob him of his leisure time, the infant for whom the father felt ill-prepared. This was the girl who entered Earth nearly three years ago, as all do, screaming. A nurse toweled her off, wrapped her up, and handed the wailing wonder to this amateur. His offspring, somehow. Theirs. He beheld the newborn’s purple hue and clamped shut lids. We made her, somehow. A surgical lamp spotlit her twisting figure. In Iris’ distress and beet-red face, the father read an aversion to light. So, he became her shield. He raised his shoulders, bent over her, and whisked her away towards the room’s dark periphery. He spoke soothingly, as he had with his laboring wife. He intoned instinctively. All the reservations, all the apprehensions, all the self-doubt had vanished once his baby girl appeared. 

"Hello Iris. Don't cry. I love you. I’m your daddy. Andrew. Pleased to meet you. Shhh. Hush, sweet girl. Hey now. Shhhh. It’s okay. It’s going to be better than okay."

It was. 

It would be.

Since Iris hasn’t mentioned candy in a few minutes, Andrew caves. He tended to capitulate to her demands, at least when they were sweetly made. Daddy places Iris on the ground and approaches the red bowl. He plucks a saltwater taffy from the pool of Sixlets, Tootsie Rolls, and Pixie Stix. He untwists its waxen wrapper and bites the piece in half. It’s stale but the flavor endures. Mint chocolate. He offers Iris part. She opens her mouth like a baby bird, then she smiles a full-mouthed smile. He’s happy to share, to bend the rules, to benignly transgress on her behalf. It will be their secret. Or it could be, if she’ll keep quiet. Iris didn’t comprehend secrecy. She’s divulged many surprises in her few years like it was nothing. Nor did she understand her parents’ negative responses to the revelation. Her bottom lip sunk heavy and her cheeks drooped. They intervened quickly before waterworks broke out. Iris had thin skin in that way.

The father’s skin had thinned, too. His most recent tears were happy, not sad. She was wobbling atop her bike, training wheels jutting out and streamers flapping behind. Daddy strode beside and nudged her along. 

"This is fun, right?"

"Yeah."

"I’m glad."

"I like spending time you with, Daddy."

His voice cracked. "Oh Rissa. I like spending time with you, too, babe."

"What’s wrong?"

"Nothing. Nothing. Daddy just loves you very much."

Loving Iris was involuntary. Watch her. Be in her presence. It happens. She sings off-key lullabies to her stuffed dolphin, fashions train tracks out of pillows, insists on being referred to as a puppy sometimes, and conducts thorough medical check-ups with repurposed houseware. Attachment yields heartache. He can’t slow her down. Iris manifests the passage of time that adulthood’s machinations obscure. She’s a living, laughing treasure he must one day lose. A distant day, please. Very distant. Lose figuratively to other interests. To college. To another state. To a career or spouse. Both? Whatever, so long as as the loss isn’t literal. So long as he can split the occasional sweet with her or be in the same room, if not the same chair.

The father sits again, then he helps her up. The pair resume their joint effort. He trims a flap that’s too long. 

"Can you throw this away for me please?"

She crumbles it and drops the wad into the trash can. He folds the flap over and points. Iris does her part. The wrapping holds. 

"I can see a little bit of the box still peeping out here. See? Patch it up, and we’re done."

He holds a scrap over the exposed white section. Iris is imprecise, so Andrew asks her to try again. 

"Ta da! How many boxes do we have?"

"One, two, three. Three!"

"Yep. And how many bags?"

"One, two. Two!"

"Yep."

"How many presents does that make?"

"One, two, three, four, five. Five!"

"You’re right! Let’s go show all them to Mom."

"Yeah!"

He lifts Iris up and sets her on the cement floor. They leave the table, but she stops.

"What else’s in the bowl?"

"It doesn’t matter. You already had a piece."

"But I want another one."

"Not now. We have to go show Mom."

"Ugh!"

"Come on, Ris."

They exchange glances from a distance. She’s weighing her options. He doesn’t budge. Her sandals slap as she passes the appliances and shelving. 

"Good choice."

Daddy let’s her go first. At the base of the steps, Iris turns around. 

"Can I help you?" 

"Uh. Yeah. Here."

He hands her a small bag for each hand. She climbs the steps, legs out wide. She pauses. 

"Can I have a granola bar?"

"What? No, it’s almost dinner time."

"But I..."

In backpedaling, her foot clips the side of a basket on the step. The basket launches its contents. Before Andrew can react, Iris loses her balance. She turns and topples: not down the steps but over the side. That much is clear. Other details weren’t.

His mind was a looped video, buffering. Andrew couldn’t smoothly recreate her motions. The event was a flipbook of distorted images. She was upright, then horizontal, then inverted. When she struck, her body bent unnaturally like a doll’s might. How did she land face first? Had she twisted midair? Was she on the third step or the fourth? What would the fall’s adult equivalent be? He remembered having three wrapped gifts in his hands and not being immediately sure what to do with them. A man of action would have dropped them and darted towards the scene. He paused a second to locate a stable surface upon which to rest the boxes. Maybe he hesitated because he could not fathom his darling being gravely injured. Maybe his priorities weren’t as clear as he presumed and, in the moment, preserving his wife’s presents was worthier than tending to his child. 

However it happened and whyever he waited, she was not where she was supposed to be. She was supposed to be at the top of the steps asking for help with the door. She was supposed to be calling for Mommy to come see. He denied his senses. What had just transpired was impossible. Iris was fine. She was fine a minute ago. She’s fine now. He went to her. The bare bulb above them cast the father’s shadow over the daughter. Iris looked up at him, vacant. No cuts. No blood. She was a cherub out of place among dry goods and soft drinks. For a moment, she appeared ready for a nap. A kiss and a hug. Pull up the blanket. Sing a song. As he bent to retrieve her, her eyes shut, her mouth opened, and she erupted. 

Up the stairs, he rushed her. She heaved on his shoulder. He turned the knob one-handed and flung the kitchen door open. It clanged against the refrigerator. The mother was hurrying through the dining room. 

"Get the Boo-Boo Bunny. She’s hurt. Bad."

His wife did. 

His daughter was.

"Mommy! Mommy!"

"What happened?"

"Mommy!"

"She tripped on that stupid basket, Carli! You shouldn’t leave anything on the steps!"

"Where’s she hurt?"

"Mommy!"

"I think her head."

"Mommy!"

Iris clawed for her mother’s arms. She kicked and leaned, outstretched. The father passed her off. He stroked her shoulder. She swiped him away. He opened the freezer door and extracted the pink ice pack. With her cries, Iris begged the mother: hold me. Make it stop. Make this better. 

Her mother did. 

Her mother couldn’t. 

She couldn’t.

Carli and Iris retreated to the rocking chair. Above them, the yellow and gray mobile spun languidly. Andrew sat on the nearby carpet, watching his girl's paroxysms of agony. 

"Could you get her some Tylenol?"

"Yeah."

He left to grab a bottle and empty syringe. 

"I’m sorry. How much?" 

"350 milliliters I think. Whatever’s the top line."

"Right."

He drew medicine into the syringe. He spoke, at once loudly and invitingly. 

"Hey Rissa. Sweet girl. Look. Here babe. I’ve got a treat for you."

She turned, sucked down the red syrup, and burrowed back into Mommy. Andrew could do no more. He could not contribute to Carli’s caresses because the pair were in motion. He had been relieved of duty. His station was to wait.

He sat beside the rocker, nauseated, and hugged his knees. Her pain was his. Iris had become another other half. As soon as they met, as soon as she laid featherlight on his chest, as soon as he fingered her strand-of-pearls spine, or pinched her row of niblet toes, or palmed her warm peach of a head prone to loll about unsupported, once he spied her sleeping, curled up with legs still bowed from the womb, or heard her exclaiming with a meaningful potency surpassing words, they were fused. To have and to hold. Through sickness and health. Through good times and bad. True for matrimony; true for paternity.

"How bad is it?"

Carli pulled back the frozen cube ringed in soft fleece. 

"Jesus." 

A murky tempest of swirling blood swelled above her left eye. Never had either parent seen a welt so protruded, so expeditiously formed. The mound’s appearance was unbelievable, like something out of a comic. A ping pong ball bulged under her taut skin. The father envisioned lancing her brow to relieve the pressure. Not seriously. Not that he could do it. But seeing the ghastly wound spurred him to think up how it might be removed. The sooner he could erase the mark, the sooner everything would be be back to normal.

Carli tried to reapply the ice, but Iris resisted. Rather than upset her further, Mommy let it go. The clock over Iris’ big girl bed ticked slowly. 

Tenderness and torment.

Singing and sobs. 

Whispers and whimpers. 

Andrew paced nearby. The floor was a minefield of puff balls, dried beans, spare buttons, and fake coins: the debris of a child’s imagination. Her wails settled into a rhythm. 

"Want me to turn on the sound machine?"

"Sure, yeah."

Andrew twisted the machine's knob. White noise isolated his recriminations. He should have anticipated the calamity. Those damn sandals. Iris would have been safer barefoot. He shouldn't have let her try them on to keep her from pouting. Carli was the better parent. She knew where and when to draw the lines and how to be soft. Carli could be reassurance incarnate. She rubbed Iris’ shuddering back methodically and rocked in 4/4 time.

Unanswerable questions arose in his idleness. Did she have a concussion? Could he tell if she’d lost consciousness? Was today going to affect her future? How many brain cells had burst? Would the fall have a bearing on her academic performance? Had her life’s arc lowered a half hour ago? Would she be more prone to depression as a teenager? All this talk about traumatic brain injuries and post-concussive syndrome rattled him.  Every month, another football player was found dead, no note. Before that, Iraq, IEDs, and skyrocketing suicide rates among veterans made getting your bell rung more dire. If big burly men were vulnerable, what about two and half year olds in the 5th percentile?

Andrew had to leave. He departed through the office with coloring sheets strewn and pencils scattered. He fled down the hall towards the open basement door. Carli’s gifts were still atop the dehumidifier downstairs. He couldn’t go down there. She would have to get them for herself. He looked back, unsure. His wife and daughter were one form in the chair, a koala and her tree. He could hear no howls over the ambient hiss. He entered their bedroom and turned on a lamp. He stood, avoiding the mirrors. 

He put yesterday’s socks in the hamper. He straightened the bedding. How could he put his own uninjured head on a pillow when his daughter couldn’t lie on one side? Should she be allowed to sleep tonight? Wasn’t there a protocol? He’d ask Carli. She’d know. She could give him perspective. She’d encourage him to take it easy on himself. His intentions were pure. He was trying to give Carli a break. Enjoy a little daddy-daughter time. It wasn’t like they were being reckless. He wasn’t roughhousing. He wasn’t spinning Iris around by the arms or tossing her high in the air. Still, blame was his. He was the father. He’s why she’s here to fall at all. He was the primal cause of her distress. Without him, there would be no one to feel it. He had never borne such depth of guilt. In his own case, all of the scrapes and breaks, were dependent on another’s instigating action. But in Iris’s case, he invited her to suffer. He summoned her out of nothing to be embodied amidst other bodies. He destined her to be a subjective object. He set her up for collisions and to be conscious of how careless matter is. Come. Feel this. Warm. Cold. Soft. Hard. Harder than you. 

And it could have been worse. He could be running through ER halls beside a gurney instead of blubbering in his home. There were so many hazardous items around the base of the steps. The corners of pasta boxes. Cans of soda. Wine bottles. A fire extinguisher. A fucking jagged, expired fire extinguisher the previous owners had left and that he and Carli had never touched because having a fire extinguisher around seemed a very adult thing to do. So it stood, rigid and pointy since 2010, ready to mutilate falling humans. His baby could have been sliced or impaled. She could have lost an eye. People lose eyes. People have two eyes. Then something happens. Then they only have one. It’s possible. That was how life-changing events happened: in an instant like all the other inconsequential instants. The time it takes to snap a stick while raking the backyard is the time it takes to sever a spine while driving down the highway. Life is normal immediately before it’s not. You could be stacking tupperware above the sink when your mom texts you to call her ASAP because dad had a stroke. On and on. That was how life-ending events happened, too.

Iris could have died. There could have been internal bleeding. Children can hemorrhage. Precious children can die like the three year old who was struck and killed by a foul ball earlier this year. What was that tragedy's backstory? Had the father postponed using the bathroom until the next half inning because the home team had runners in scoring position and no one out? Had the father decided against a hot dog in the fourth because the concession line was too long? Was he in 16F, holding his dear baby boy in his lap and whispering the game’s rudiments in his itty bitty ear, because he had swapped seats to be next to his own father? Had he declined all familial offers to hold the boy, which would have put the toddler in a out of the fatal trajectory? Had the father been checking some inane factoid on his phone when the metallic ping rang out? Did he raise his eyes when the first whoops and gasps suggested they were in harm’s way? Had his reflexes failed him? Had he put his arms around the boy’s torso but left his sweet, soft skull exposed? What was the sound the ball made when it struck the child? Did his boy make a sound in return or was his last sound a breath inaudible in the crowd?

Disgusting. 

Senseless. 

Offensive.

Iris’ family had their own trivialities that led to the accident: a small bungalow circa 1931 that was grandfathered past modernized building codes requiring balusters in open stairwells; an 80 square foot kitchen with limited cabinetry and no pantry, thus requiring occupants to store food elsewhere such as in the basement on a repurposed bookshelf; a basket of granola bars placed on a step’s edge to prevent a famished, harried mother from descending all the steps and walking around to grab one; their conservative parental policy regarding sugar intake that rendered granola bars dessert and instilled a lust for them unfelt by most contemporary American children; Iris’ helpful demeanor as demonstrated by her requesting Daddy let her carry some of Mommy’s gifts and Daddy’s desire to validate her complaisance by offering her the two equilibrium-disturbing bags, despite not actually needing assistance; that earlier in the day, Carli’s friend, who stopped by to socialize with Carli and been a prompt for Andrew and Iris to make themselves scarce downstairs, had given Iris a pair of her own daughter’s outgrown sandals, a daughter whom Iris admired and from whom Iris was eager to possess anything⎼⎼even footwear two sizes too big that could impair her ambulation; that Iris had navigated these and other stairs for more than a year without incident, no longer requiring minimal support and refusing it when offered by a parent who still wants to assure safe passage and hesitates to be hands-off but concedes the child needs to be ever more independent and allowed to expand her autonomy; Iris’ distaste for sources of protein leaving her in a perpetual state of hunger, especially during a current growth spurt, tonight being no exception after the bite-sized grilled chicken remained on her orange plate despite the promised reward of grapes for chicken consumption and the parents not caving to the child’s counteroffer of fruit first without a good faith effort on her part, so the child declaring herself full and pushing away from the table without being satiated and so inclined to be distracted by any opportunity for caloric intake, especially a blueberry cereal bar in her path. All of this somehow lead to his sweet girl being maimed and in him having to be grateful it wasn’t worse. She won’t need sutures, a cast, or a little casket. 

Unacceptable.

Insulting.

Absurd.

In his indignance, Andrew passed judgment. We are ephemera begetting ephemera. Time and space are our allies and enemies. We are flukes who consider ourselves miracles. How else explain our personal origins? Swallow a pill too late, and a human might arrive. Rip a condom, and a sentient being could be on the way.

While his little girl convalesced in his wife’s arms, Andrew knelt next to the bed on which Iris loved jumping. He wept. What was that sonless father doing now that the press had packed up? The baseball fan must have asked himself the same question in the hospital, the mortuary, the cemetery, and everywhere since: now what? How could he start his sedan in the stadium lot after the fateful ambulance ride? How could he turn the key in the ignition as he had yesterday to drive his boy to the game that would be his demise? How could he check the rearview mirror if it meant seeing the empty car seat? How could he disconnect the seat in their driveway and notice the Cheerios that had slipped out his living boy’s sticky hands and cracker crumbs that had fallen from his living boy’s pink lips without collapsing? How could he carry the seat downstairs, anchor straps bouncing off his legs, and set it next to the bag of clothes his son had outgrown and the others that would ever be too big without breaking down? Would that forlorn father, ten years later, dismantle the pile of baby stuff in the basement once it was obvious they’d have no more kids? Would it come to that? Were he and his partner young enough to try again? Would they? What would be the point? Why make life when it can be so outrageously unmade? Why do anything if life can be unmade like that? 

This father could have been like that father: the surviving remnant named in an obituary. Andrew could have been subjected to countless mundane exercises that added up to moving on. This father could have witnessed his daughter die. He could have held her as her pulse faded to flatline. Though it happened to be freakish but not fatal, that it could have been was unbearable. He would rather have been obliterated. He wished he could erase all the marks he’d made in the world if only to delete this error. Let him have passed years prior. Or, if not, at least let someone else have raised her. Someone more qualified. But he couldn’t go back anymore than he could heal Iris. She sought him as he was reeling in place.

"Why’s Daddy on the ground?"

Carli stood behind her. "Daddy’s sad."

"About what?"

"About you getting hurt, I bet. It was scary for him."

Iris walked to Andrew, bent over, and hugged him. Her bare feet were distorted in his peripheral vision. She was slightly pronate like her mother. Andrew didn’t address her but told her he was fine in a voice that belied his words. She remained. He reared onto his haunches and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. He tried to feign normality, but she was not so easily duped. Iris knows what’s fine and what's not. She consults her mother in the doorway and rubs Daddy’s back, gently. 

"It’s alright. We’re here. Don’t cry."

Maybe it was. 

They were. 

But he couldn’t.

The role reversal was too much for him. The child who requires multiple nightlights pacifying the parent. The daughter, with her temple still throbbing, tending to the father. His torture was intensified by her sympathy. He had nearly allowed this angel to expire. In the aftermath, he distracted from her recuperation. His breakdown diverted attention away from the injured party. He had absolutely crumbled without any prospect of self-reassembly. Here sat a man-child, fetal. An animate Humpty Dumpty dispersed on the worn carpet among the shed hairs and unstuck stickers. A wretch clearly undeserving of a child and unfit to raise one, so feeble as to recoil from a crisis and become catatonic. A delicate flower unable to Man Up and Put On a Brave Face and Take Care of Business, given to disintegration so complete his toddler has to suspend her recovery to reconstruct him.

Andrew evades. "Daddy needs to go potty."

He crosses the hall to the bathroom and shuts the door. He sits on the gray bath mat and leans against the tub. Iris enters, not knocking as usual. He keeps his head in his hands. 

"What’s wrong? What happened?"

Carli answers from the doorway. "Daddy’s still upset that you got hurt, babe."

"But it’s just an accident. Accidents happen."

"I know it was, Sweets, but…" When he finally raises his eyes to her face, it’s his beautiful girl with a hideous bruise on her brow. He can’t stomach the sight of her or the fact that something so grotesque could befall someone so radiant. He crumbles further and waives her away. She erupts again, with him this time. His pain was hers, too. 

"Come here, Iris. Let’s give Daddy some space, hun."

Iris will not leave. She pulls away from Carli, who tries to draw her by the arm. 

"Let’s go finish the episode."

"Go on, Ris. I’ll join you guys later."

Carli extracts her daughter, whose protests resound off the tile. Iris squirms out of Carli’s grip and rushes to Andrew. The daughter kneels by her father. She lets the love that made her move her. 

"Don’t be sad."

In her command, Andrew hears forgiveness. How could she? What does she know? How to count to twenty. How to find the lone cat on a page full of dogs. How to don a jacket by spreading it upside down on the floor, sticking her arms through the sleeves, and flipping it over her head. The nature of culpability, though? No. Neither did he, yet he is self-flagellating. What’s intended, what’s inadvertent, and which are we? No. Neither did he, yet he is floundering. He shows there’s no wisdom in despair. In her compassion, Iris shows how to overcome ambivalence. She’d be the first to set aside injury. She’s be the first venture to the basement. She’d be the first to chase him around the house. She’d be the first to crack a joke.  

The father accepts his daughter’s clemency. He has learned receptivity to gifts. Had he not stretched forth his hands in the maternity suite, what then? You take her. I’m not ready. Would he ever have been? Had he rejected the offer, pessimistic of what entailed, dubious of his worthiness, would the nurse have set Iris in a plastic warming bin? Would Andrew have looked on while Iris screamed for intimacy? Would he have formed a habit of disengagement in the service of self-preservation? Then he would have forfeit the greater part. 

Not always composed and rarely apologetic, Iris was ready to reconcile. If she can be brave for him, he can be brave for her. If her pain is his and his pain is hers, then so might their pleasure be. She’s waiting for him, wounded but persistent. Here was youth’s resilience. Adults were adept at complex tasks, but not simple hoping. Follow her. Cease brooding and be open to the future. 

He rips a square of toilet paper and hands it to her. She dabs her nose and offers it back to him. 

She's okay. They’re going to be better than okay.

She is. 

They will be.

Will Be With You Shortly

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.