I wrote this a while ago, but I was just reminded of it today, so I pulled it out of the file folder and put it here.
The hospital is a strange place to me in how normal it is for half the people here. On one side of a wall nurses and doctors are bantering and talking about lives and weather and pets and shopping. And on the other side we’re all filling out forms about allergies and prior surgeries, placing faith in the priesthood who just came in to work today, a Monday in November, as if it’s the routine of any Monday, which it is. For them.
Later, walking down the hallway in between a cup of coffee and a consult, my eye caught a name, last name first, in the directory of physicians. I know that former students are now doctors, but it still catches me every time. I can’t decide if that’s who I’d want removing a gall bladder or inserting a stent.
It struck me that I used to be worried about Karyn taking the school bus when she was pregnant with Anna, 20 years ago. And now I’m sitting next to her waiting for the i.v. poke to make its way. They prod and check and prep and wrap until, eventually, they wheel her away, leaving me behind with her glasses.
In the waiting room, a nurse came out from the back call for the “Walker family.” A guy stood up, as though on cue, rolling his walker in front of him. I elbowed my 17-year-old to see if he could keep from laughing at the pun in vivo. He couldn’t.
Later, in the cafeteria line, the guy in front of me in a wheelchair and a big scar across his knee. His t-shirt says “running sucks.” I wanted to tell him he was brilliant, but I wasn’t sure if he was being funny, objectively ironic, or bitter.
Earlier, in pre-op, she asked me how I was doing and I said “just fine,” which we knew was both true and a lie. There’s nothing wrong with me; I don’t have anything poking in or out of me. And still, I can’t look her in the eye and tell her I was just thinking about the day we were married, how amazing and blessed it all is that it’s still the same face as 25 years ago, and look at all that’s changed and all that hasn’t. I thought this and cherished it but I couldn’t say it because I didn’t want to well up, not right there right before the surgery right in front of the nurse right in the mix of all of the nerves and the blood pressure monitor. I didn’t want to expose the lie or tell that truth.
But still, on a snowy day in November in the surgical wing of the hospital, you realize that this is just another day in the string of days that brings you to this moment and connects you to the rest of the string of days in your lives. Sometimes it’s an eyeball and sometimes it’s a uterus. And someday it will be me. Or maybe not. None of it is good or bad, it’s just the next thing. It’s hard now, and then it’s behind us, and we live to see the next thing, kissing her forehead as they wheel her away between double doors and leaving you behind.
And then she comes back, new scars but grateful for her glasses and eager to know what the doctor said. I kiss her on the forehead again. Soon this is behind us, too, and we’ll move on to the next thing.
Also in the waiting room, once, they called out for the “Hope family.” And, I swear it: Everyone looked up.
