He didn’t like the smell. It was cloying and sweet. It smelled like a hospital. He didn’t like the fact that it was a hospital. He couldn’t remember coming here. The last he remembered was the confusion, then crawling on the floor, the dog barking.
He woke up here a day ago. Since then there had been tests, doctors, nurses, IV’s and medicine. His right arm and leg were numb. They would not respond to his desire to move them. They had told him that he had a stroke. This upset him but there was nothing he could do about it.
When he tried to talk he heard slurs, unintelligible. When he would make these sounds the nurse or the doctor would smile at him and nod their head as if they knew what he was trying to say.
The room was cold. He thought they must keep the thermostat set below 70 degrees because of bacteria. That had to be the reason they kept it so cold. He had a roommate yesterday but earlier in the morning they had pulled the sheet over his head and wheeled him out of the room, two nurses, thinking and lost in worlds of their own.
He felt that life wasn’t fair. He wanted to give god, the universe or whatever the chance to prove him wrong so he moved to Missouri, a town called Eminence, to be close to his daughter, the one who never called him or came around. That had been two years ago.
He only visited with his daughter a few times. She was fifteen now and excited that she could drive. She called him by his first name. She never used the word father or dad. He wanted to ask her if he remembered the way he changed her diapers as a child, but he didn’t ask and he knew she didn’t remember.
He had moved to Missouri because he thought that by being physically close, he might also become closer in other ways too. If they could just talk and visit for a while and get to know one another then things might be different. The distance would diminish. He moved hoping for this.
* * * * *
It had now been three days since he had been in the hospital. His daughter hadn’t come to visit. He heard the doctor and the nurse discussing how they could contact his next of kin. The nurse said they had contacted someone, his daughter. She had told the nurse that she would be there in a few days or so. It had only been two days. The doctor seemed satisfied with this answer, that someone this man knew and loved would soon be there to watch over him and see if he got worse or better or recovered.
The thing he liked least about being in the hospital were the machines. Their precise and mechanical nature somehow eclipsed his frail and failing body. Their presence and their connections were part of what kept him hanging on. By their grace he continued to exist.
He slept much. He would wake up to the sounds of the nurse, the doctor or some other hospital worker in the room. Always a stranger, someone he did not know. He longed for a familiar face, a glimpse of concern from friendly eyes.
The daughter, who had not arrived as of the third day, was his child from his second wife. He thought that perhaps one of his bigger mistakes in life was leaving his first wife. Their marriage was stable and there was a familiarity of sorts. But he left because he no longer felt close to her. Though they shared the same house, there was something missing. They were no more than familiar strangers pretending at a life together.
These thoughts filled his head, as he suddenly felt light giving way to dark. A familiar nausea overcame him and he felt himself going under once again.
* * * *
He awoke to the same nurse. There was a look of dispassionate concern in her face, the type of concern one reserved for bad things that happened to other people. This look scared him. She began the process of measuring, bleeding and evaluating his body to determine how much longer it might hold up before it finally expired. She finished in five minutes, noting her findings in the chart near the end of his bed. She carefully closed the door behind her as the light from the hallway seeped in through the window.
He looked around the room. Still no family. Still nobody he knew. He suddenly realized he didn’t want to die like this – in a strange room, alone. He meant to say something, mean something, do something, be something, feel something – more than this.
But this is how it ends for everyone, he suddenly realized. He thought of his brother and his mother and others he had seen pass just like him over the many years of his life. They too passed alone. Maybe they could communicate with people, unlike he could at this point, but in the end they too died alone. He realized that this was to be his fate too.
He lay back and tried his best to be at peace with the finality of everything and realized that he was scared shitless. He also realized that it didn’t matter how he felt and that things would proceed without any regard as to how he felt about things. He watched the light slowly fade in the one window pointing outside and as he did he wondered what the lives were like of the people in the apartment building next door. Did they have cares, concerns like his own? Did they have the same fears, hopes and dreams that he too once had. He felt certain this was the case but it didn’t make him feel any better. He finally drifted off to sleep, imagining these other lives and what they might be like.
* * *
He awoke to the sounds of someone screaming.
He wondered if there were any warning signs before death? Would there be some short requiem before the actual event or did it just “happen”. He sullenly realized that this was the event he had been waiting his whole life for and was certain that it would be occurring very soon. Still, he seemed to feel no more concern than if he were waiting for a bus that had somehow not arrived on time.
He looked over at the EKG again and watched it spike and fluctuate as if there were a malfunction on the machine. He knew from the ways the nurses watched it and checked it each hour or so that there was not a malfunction. He felt the beats of his heart, thin and erratic that would occur before the machine would respond in kind.
He was alone in the room again. The nurse had left to attend to other patients, others like him, some facing death, some not. He tried to think back and recall what he could of his life, as if remembering it and holding onto those memories would somehow keep things the way they were.
He recalled his childhood, snippets of his parents, both gone now. He remembered first days of school, taunts by other children, moments of triumph and moments of despair. His wedding, his wife, his mistakes, his first child, his illnesses, his loves, his hates. He remembered all these things and more; things that didn’t really happen, but in his fevered mind, seemed as if they did.
He felt strange, fevered and cold, a hot cold, all at the same time. His mind felt free and unfettered like a wild horse running from danger. The lights were brighter and he felt for a moment that they might turn into angels, winged and beaific.
At first he thought it was the play of the lights, this apparition before him, his daughter, all white and translucent, but maybe it was just his eyes. He watches her as she floats or walks toward him and he feels somewhat more peaceful as the endorphins begin to saturate his blood stream.
The nurse takes one look at the EKG and knows there is a serious problem. The lines surge and dance like a chorus line, each one indicating a point at which his heart was overstraining itself to the point of thrombosis.
She pushes the button on the intercom. “Get Dr. Thomas in here quick. We have a cardiac arrest in progress.”
She watches the sweat bead on his forehead and his eyelids jump as his body tries to hang on despite the fact that his heart is rapidly degenerating into chaos.
The Doctor arrives, his glasses askew and hair unkempt, as if he had been taking a nap in the break room. He quickly unpacks the defibrillator and places the cold steel of the electrode pads against his chest.
The nurse watches on anxiously, realizing that in moments like these, so close to the precipice between life and death she somehow feels more alive. Goosebumps form on her arm and she shivers despite herself.
“Can you hold his arms for me?”
She quickly grabs them, limp and lifeless and moves them away from his chest.
“Okay, 1, 2, 3!” The doctor presses the button which sends an electrical jolt directly to the heart, in hopes it might stimulate it to begin beating again.
“Nothing,” the nurse replies.
“Okay, again.”
Once more the body jumps as the electrical jolt travels down through the electrical pads directly to the heart which responds by a sharp constriction which sends blood throughout the body.
“Still nothing.” The nurse adds while watching the EKG for any sign of activity.
They both look at each other with the resigned look of having lost “another one”. They both briefly contemplate the lives that have passed through their hands.
The doctor looks down at the man, eyes open now, lifeless and goes through the procedure of a declaration of death.
He knows it is a formality that must be followed and quickly executes the process, signing a sheet which the nurses hands him declaring the date of death attributed to Myocardial Infarction.
He looks up from his paperwork at the nurse, “family?” he asks, knowing it is his duty to inform the next of kin.
“No he was alone,” she replies.
“Sad.” The doctor says, while pulling the sheet up over his head and checking his watch to see if he can still make a lunch he had with a young RN named Allison. He realizes he can and quickly leaves after washing his hands.
The nurse looks back at the body for a moment and then exits the room, shutting the door behind her.
She suddenly feels lonely but can’t understand why and ponders why she might feel this way as she walks back to her station.
Outside, the sun moves behind the clouds, causing shadows to fall across the city, casting the light in an off shade of gray.
