This Hospital
Standing next to the hospital bed, holding the strongest hand you’ve ever touched in your life, the hand that has picked you up when you fell and ruffled your hair and fed you secret popcorn treats in the middle of the night, you don’t want to think of letting go. The hand goes cold and your mind goes blank.
In the future, you will have major surgery in this hospital and secretly resign yourself to dying in a room nearby. In the future, you will work in this hospital and wonder if working in this hospital is an adequate connection to the ghost that never appears even though you often call to him. In the future, your mother will have major surgery in this hospital and you will consume petty distractions as your sustenance in order to avoid remembering this moment. You can’t know any of this. Somehow, you know all of this.
In the past, you’ve rushed to this hospital for or with your grandmother, your mother, your aunts, your cousins. Your father. You’ve rushed here, white clenched digits on the steering wheel, various pale passengers in the seat beside you. In the past, you’ve known you were in a competition with the invisible racing greyhound of time and you’ve always won. You’ve seen smiles in the ER, or admissions that last a single night, or long-term care that ends with your father dancing in this hospital in an open-backed gown, itching to go home. Now, there is no competition with time. Now, there is no dance.
You let go of the hand that you love and run down the hallway to throw up. It won’t be the last time you throw up in this hospital, but it will be the last time you hold that hand.
