CULTURE
Hospitalization
By Anastasia Royal
At first I thought she was old. But she’s younger than I am. Weighs about half what I weigh. Maybe 60 pounds, if that.
I’m in my boyfriend Liam’s hospital room telling him about the patient next door.
“I heard her daughter yesterday. She sounded little,” Liam says. “Her husband joked about coming to the hospital to have mommy help with her math homework.”
I don’t think anyone laughed — a little girl coming to visit her dying mother who was barely there to solve a math equation.
I walked by her room to get Liam water and her door was open. Her face was bright with no hair on her head to shadow it. She blended into the background. She seemed already not of this earth.
I stared at her. She didn’t move or notice me. When I returned with the ice water, she was in the same position, propped up, her profile shining into the white wall. Her hairless round head, newborn yet almost extraterrestrial. As if death is being born into another world. I stared again into her room. She didn’t move. I think her eyes were open but they didn’t seem to be looking at anything.
I had never smelled death before.
My boyfriend looks pained. Perfect. A long, muscular, depressive, anxious man adjacent to a dying, young woman. This can’t be good for a guy with an anxiety condition, trying to detox from years of relying on tranquilizers. I decided not to mention what I had noticed.
* * *
The next day, I come back to check Liam's anxiety level as he weans himself off the drugs. He looks a bit yellow and his brow is furrowed.
“Before you came,” he says, “She was screaming and her husband was yelling for the nurse.”
“I hate to say it,” I say, “but I don’t think she’s gonna make it.”
Tall, strong Liam looks down at his hands on the bed. Large hands with a gift for massage in them. Lucky me. When he touches me, I forget that we all have to die.
“Are you drinking enough water?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“It will help with your headache,”
I say, as if he had said no.
I pour him some more water.
“Drink some,” I say.
“All I do is drink.”
“Drink.”
As if water will keep us alive forever. At least it will take the poison out of his cells. We can live without food for a month, but only for a week without water.
The dying woman looked as pure as water. When I stood outside her room, I stared as if she were holy. She was a sacramental being. Holy water. Holy air. Just breathing there and that was about all. I wished I could have helped her daughter make the equation right. Something like love is greater than mommy equals gone.
* * *
Each day I return to check on Liam. Today, he is drinking more water. He’s kicking Mr. Benzo’s ass. Cold turkey. But Benzodiazapine has had its turn kicking his ass too.
“I can’t sleep well without you,” I say.
“Yeah, you look tired, Baby.”
“I really miss you.”
“Me too; I can’t keep my hands off of you.”
“I love it,” I say, climbing into his 40 thousand-dollar hospital bed.
“Sweetie, we can’t. They come in every
second. Just like the cliché about hospitals,” he whispered,
“If you don’t want them, they show up.”
I shake my head. “I don’t care. I need you.”
He laughs. “Baby, they’ll catch us.”
“So? That’s what the sheets are for.”
“We’ll never get away with this,” he says, “This is post 9/11 and all that shit.”
In a remarkably short time, he forgets his misgivings, even after one of his heart monitors pops off his chest.
“Don’t worry,” he whispers, “they never seem to notice. It can be off for hours and they don’t come in.”
“Not too worried anymore, huh?” I say.
But this time, a young dark-haired nurse bursts into the room. Without even knocking.
“Play dead,” I whisper before I hide under the sheets.
I wonder if she notices me, a lump between his legs, as she tapes his monitor back in place. “How you make this come off?” she asks in a Jamaican accent.
“Oh, they pop off all the time,” he says. “Actually I didn’t even think they were turned on.”
She makes a disapproving clucking noise as she smoothes out the sheet. And her hand grazes my head.
Feeling too ridiculous then, I pull the covers down and smile up at her.
The nurse screams, “Oh my, I didn’t even SEE you.”
“This is my girlfriend. She just came to visit.”
I stretch the sheet up to my chin and nod like a good girl.
* * *
Earlier, I had been at the nurse’s station to ask for more water for Liam and I had seen his heart’s calligraphy on the screen. His sweet heart lit up as a line moving jagged and steady in the middle of the other hearts. I wondered when his neighbor’s would even out; when the peaks and valleys would smooth away, and her husband and daughter would go home without her.
Two days later, I walked to the nurse’s station to get some shampoo for Liam’s shower. The glossy floor flowed down the hall. I looked into the ethereal woman’s room. Her bed was high and empty.
“I think she died,” I say, returning to Liam and handing him the shampoo.
“I know,” he says. “I asked the social worker who just left.”
“Oh, God.”
“I was sleeping and I heard the husband screaming for the nurse.” His face is ashen. “I never heard anything like that sound.”
I touch his hand.
“Do you want some more water?” I ask.
“I just had some.”
“Why don’t you have a little more?” I say, pouring it into the styrofoam cup.
“Have some with me,” he says, as if we have tasted death and need to wash it down.
