Cailin
Solivagant
Rated G -- no language, violence, or sex, but not family-friendly.
There is always waiting to do, here, and it is always heavy with fear. I wonder if by sitting together like this we pile our fear in one place, so that we feel the sum of it. Of all these people in their pasty-white skin who spend more time sitting under fluorescent lights than they do walking and moving in the real world.
If the fear is additive, my own is not the greatest part of the total. I am only here once a week, still. They are here every day, some of them. James McMullen comes with his mother, a woman who holds a rosary in her hands and habitually crosses herself as she waits. Frances Delario is dropped off and picked up by her fiancé. There is an old, old man named Benny Buchanan. He comes alone, as I do. These are the people whose days center around this place. They own the greater part of the fear that piles up around us. I am not at the top of the scale.
Unless you count previous losses, in which case I am unbeatable among the dying.
At any rate, the waiting is long, and the smell is thick and close, and the magazines are old. So I have made myself a path through other places, and I route it slowly, to kill the waiting. They know me. They will text me if my turn comes before I get back.
I find the neonatal unit, where the squalling red and brown babies lie, objecting to the scratch of cloth against their skin, to the cool of air and the shock of light through closed eyelids. They are held tightly against the skin of the ones who love them, are pressed and coddled and memorized, fingers counted and stroked. The mothers and fathers touch the silk hair and say, "My baby, my baby, my boy, my girl." In English and Spanish and a dozen languages I don't know. "You are here. You are mine."
Who days ago were only imaginings and now are visible, felt.
The parents huddle the small ones against them, and if they ask I tell them I am visiting my sister, my cousin, my friend. The things that happen on the other sides of these walls should be forgotten, here. I hide my truth from them.
The nursery is not where I stop, now. I pass through and move down the hall to pediatrics. Once, it would have been hard for me to see the sick children, but now we have a union, a solidarity. I stop to talk to several of them. There is a mother, a young woman with beautiful dark twin boys. One sits beside her, watching solemnly through black eyes like cameras. The other lies across her cushioned lap, asleep and not dreaming. His eyes are still as he lies there. There is a third child, too, a girl of maybe eight. She has long brown hair in a single braid. She smiles at me. She knows me from another time.
I've seen this family before; the mother is more frightened this time. I think she does not speak English, so I turn to the girl.
"How are your brothers?" I ask. I think it's one of them, one of the twins, who is sick.
"They sleep too much," the girl answers. "And my mother doesn't know why they don't talk to us."
I look at the one who is awake. He is a beautiful child. Under his one eye is the thin line of a scar, pale against the dark skin; it makes him look strangely adult.
A nurse comes out from behind the main desk and hands the woman a small card - an appointment card. Then she turns to the little girl and speaks slowly.
"You have another appointment for next Wednesday," she says. "It's at the sleep disorders clinic. On the third floor."
The little girl is confused. Disorders. It's a big word for a small child.
"You don't have a translator?" I ask the nurse.
"Not full-time. We share her with the other floors... and she's on duty downstairs."
I take the appointment card and read the time. It is a week from now. My next appointment, too.
"How about if I come with you?" I ask the girl. She smiles and turns to her mother and repeats what I've said. The woman smiles, too, and shakes my hand.
"Thank you," she says, with the first familiar words of those who are accustomed to asking for help. "Thank you."
And then they are up and the little girl tells me her name is Alma, and that her brothers are Tomas and Daniel. I'll meet them here next week.
I ride the elevator up one floor, to look over the sleep disorders clinic. It's a new unit, popular among researchers and freelance magazine writers. Sleep disorders are friendly to outsiders - curious, but not threatening. You could read about them in the beauty parlor, in the dentist's office, without feeling a knot form in your stomach, without crossing yourself.
The rooms here are blocked off, but I imagine what I've seen on television: loosely-clothed people with electrodes attached to their heads, EEGs flickering their brain waves out to the eager hands of grant recipients.
My phone vibrates; they're ready for me in oncology. I retrace my steps, go down where before I went up, shuffle back through the babies and the waiting families.
There is always waiting to do, here, and it is always heavy with fear. I wonder if by sitting together like this we pile our fear in one place, so that we feel the sum of it. Of all these people in their pasty-white skin who spend more time sitting under fluorescent lights than they do walking and moving in the real world.
If the fear is additive, my own is not the greatest part of the total. I am only here once a week, still. They are here every day, some of them. James McMullen comes with his mother, a woman who holds a rosary in her hands and habitually crosses herself as she waits. Frances Delario is dropped off and picked up by her fiancé. There is an old, old man named Benny Buchanan. He comes alone, as I do. These are the people whose days center around this place. They own the greater part of the fear that piles up around us. I am not at the top of the scale.
Unless you count previous losses, in which case I am unbeatable among the dying.
At any rate, the waiting is long, and the smell is thick and close, and the magazines are old. So I have made myself a path through other places, and I route it slowly, to kill the waiting. They know me. They will text me if my turn comes before I get back.
I find the neonatal unit, where the squalling red and brown babies lie, objecting to the scratch of cloth against their skin, to the cool of air and the shock of light through closed eyelids. They are held tightly against the skin of the ones who love them, are pressed and coddled and memorized, fingers counted and stroked. The mothers and fathers touch the silk hair and say, "My baby, my baby, my boy, my girl." In English and Spanish and a dozen languages I don't know. "You are here. You are mine."
Who days ago were only imaginings and now are visible, felt.
The parents huddle the small ones against them, and if they ask I tell them I am visiting my sister, my cousin, my friend. The things that happen on the other sides of these walls should be forgotten, here. I hide my truth from them.
The nursery is not where I stop, now. I pass through and move down the hall to pediatrics. Once, it would have been hard for me to see the sick children, but now we have a union, a solidarity. I stop to talk to several of them. There is a mother, a young woman with beautiful dark twin boys. One sits beside her, watching solemnly through black eyes like cameras. The other lies across her cushioned lap, asleep and not dreaming. His eyes are still as he lies there. There is a third child, too, a girl of maybe eight. She has long brown hair in a single braid. She smiles at me. She knows me from another time.
I've seen this family before; the mother is more frightened this time. I think she does not speak English, so I turn to the girl.
"How are your brothers?" I ask. I think it's one of them, one of the twins, who is sick.
"They sleep too much," the girl answers. "And my mother doesn't know why they don't talk to us."
I look at the one who is awake. He is a beautiful child. Under his one eye is the thin line of a scar, pale against the dark skin; it makes him look strangely adult.
A nurse comes out from behind the main desk and hands the woman a small card - an appointment card. Then she turns to the little girl and speaks slowly.
"You have another appointment for next Wednesday," she says. "It's at the sleep disorders clinic. On the third floor."
The little girl is confused. Disorders. It's a big word for a small child.
"You don't have a translator?" I ask the nurse.
"Not full-time. We share her with the other floors... and she's on duty downstairs."
I take the appointment card and read the time. It is a week from now. My next appointment, too.
"How about if I come with you?" I ask the girl. She smiles and turns to her mother and repeats what I've said. The woman smiles, too, and shakes my hand.
"Thank you," she says, with the first familiar words of those who are accustomed to asking for help. "Thank you."
And then they are up and the little girl tells me her name is Alma, and that her brothers are Tomas and Daniel. I'll meet them here next week.
I ride the elevator up one floor, to look over the sleep disorders clinic. It's a new unit, popular among researchers and freelance magazine writers. Sleep disorders are friendly to outsiders - curious, but not threatening. You could read about them in the beauty parlor, in the dentist's office, without feeling a knot form in your stomach, without crossing yourself.
The rooms here are blocked off, but I imagine what I've seen on television: loosely-clothed people with electrodes attached to their heads, EEGs flickering their brain waves out to the eager hands of grant recipients.
My phone vibrates; they're ready for me in oncology. I retrace my steps, go down where before I went up, shuffle back through the babies and the waiting families.
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