A BRIEF HOSPITAL STAY
Machines beeped and chirped. Air wheezed in and out of ventilators, a soft susurration. The halls were filled with such sounds, a constant symphony that could rattled the brain after a while. It got to where Don always made sure to close the door whenever he came for a visit, even though the nurses seemed to frown on the doors to patient’s rooms being closed. Every time a nurse or CNA came in to check on Harriet, they would leave the door wide open when they left, and Don would have to get up again to close it. With the door closed the room was quieter, just one machine beeping, one machine chirping, one machine wheezing, and he could bear it.
The curtain was open, letting in pale moonlight. Don thought how nice it would be to open the window, to let some fresh air into the room, but he had been told that the windows in patient’s room were supposed to remain closed--no exceptions. He thought the room smelled too much like cleaning fluids, but rules were rules.
He scooted his chair a bit closer to the bed and took his wife’s hand. The hand was wrinkled now, the veins too big, but they had looked elegant once, and graceful. In another time, in another life, Harriet Steck had had beautiful hands. He raised this hand that looked so little like the hand he had slipped a ring on fifty-two years before, and he kissed it; both the hand and his lips were dry. He lowered the hand to the bed, leaving one of his own hands on top of it, squeezing just so gently. Her eyes remained close. Her hair fell around her face in a wintry halo.
There was a soft rap on the door before it swung open and a CNA swept into the room. She smiled at Don as she moved to the bed.
“Just need to check her vitals,” she said.
Don moved back from the bed and let the woman go about her business. She checked Harriet’s blood pressure, took her temperature, and checked her oxygen saturation levels. The CNA then unwound her stethoscope and took a listen to Harriet’s heartbeat, and her breathing.
“Everything good?” Don asked as the woman wound her stethoscope up and stepped away from the bed.
“Everything’s good,” the CNA replied with a smile.
She stepped out of the room, leaving the door open a crack, letting in the mechanical noises from the neighboring rooms. Don sighed. He stood up with an effort and patted Harriet’s hand, then walked to the door. He slipped out of the room and closed the door softly behind him, then made the long trek to the cafeteria, which the hospital saw fit to place as far from the patient rooms as possible.
The kitchen was closed at that time of night, so the cafeteria was mostly empty, just a couple of nurses sitting together at a table having a snack. Don cycled through the available items in the rotating vending machine, passing on the egg salad sandwich, a cheese sandwich, and a microwavable cheeseburger. He pulled a handful of change out of his pocket, counted out eight quarters, and inserted them into the machine, sliding open the little plastic door and grabbing out a hot dog. He tore open one end of the plastic package and placed the whole thing into the microwave that sat on a table next the vending machine, punching in a minute and half and hitting the START button. When the machine dinged, he slide the cardboard tray out of the plastic package and topped the hot dog with a thin line each of mustard and ketchup, then added a small squirt of hot sauce.
Realizing he was hungrier than he had thought, Don scarfed the hot dog down in three bites. He threw away the cardboard tray and the plastic wrap, then poured himself a small cup of water and drank it down, the cool water putting out the fire that the hot sauce had lit in his mouth.
After trashing the paper cup he made the return trip to Harriet’s room. He took his seat next to her bed and leaned back in the chair, stretching out his legs. He looked at his wife, saw her lying there, unconscious, gone down some deep, dark hole. He wondered if she would ever find her way out of that hole. The doctor’s used lots of uplifting words, saying things like “hopeful” and “optimistic” a lot. But he saw other words, left unsaid, in their eyes.
Don’s thoughts sometimes turned to things he would rather not think about. One thing that kept coming back to him, rattling around his head, were all of the obituaries he had read recently. When you got to be a certain age your friends started dropping like flies. He thought of the words and terms that you could find in just about every obit, things like “the deceased is survived by…”, and “in lieu of flowers, the family requests that…”. He thought about all of the obits he had ever read, and how many of them had mentioned that the deceased had passed after “a brief hospital stay”. A brief hospital stay. How much heartache, how much horror could be contained in those four words?
Don looked around the room, at the clean whiteness of it. The smell of disinfectant stung his nostrils, and again he wished that he could crack the window open a bit, let in some fresh air. Out in the hall a pair of rubber soled shoes went squeaking past the door. The ventilator whooshed air in and out, in and out. He felt a lump forming in his throat, and he swallowed it down with great effort, as he had all his life. Men didn’t cry. It was a rule he had never questioned, and likely never would.
He clasped one of Harriet’s hands in both of his own then, and sat watching her. He wondered if she knew he was there, or if she was dreaming. He wondered if there was any light at all in the dark hole she had descended. He wondered if she could find her way back to him. He hoped she could. He hoped.