Almost four
years to the date of my last hospital stay, I spent about a week in the
hospital earlier this month. In the intervening years, the hospital lost its
religion (used to be Lutheran) and became NYU Langone. For this NYU alum, all
that purple felt comforting.
My first
roommate was out of for a procedure when I was admitted and for hours
afterward. When I first noticed she was in the room, I had awoken in the middle
of the night, and she was slumped over the bed – she fell asleep watching some
animated film and the TV operating instructions were playing on a loop, inexplicably
in Spanish.
The next
morning we introduced ourselves and we talked and laughed for a couple of
hours. Then her husband came and we had an animated conversation. She let me
use her cell so I could call Mom and put her at ease that I had a good night
and sounded better. I even got to chat with the lady’s daughter on the phone
for a minute. The laughter was easy and plentiful. It was joyful—a shared bliss
in meeting the sun another day.
Then they
released her and, tragically, I was all alone…
Soon another
roommate came and she slept as a man and a woman hovered over her and spoke to
each other in Greek. The woman, a tall and lanky blonde, seemed just a little
angry all the time and spoke to the man with unveiled contempt.
After they settled the sleeping beauty, the blonde left and only the man remained. Hovering. Lost in sadness and anger. At the
end of the evening, he kissed the patient’s forehead and left. The next
morning, the man was back, with the same pained look in his eyes.
We nodded.
Soon we were exchanging pleasantries. I asked if the patient was his mom. To my
horror and embarrassment, he replied, “No! That is my wife.” He looked at her
lovingly and added, without a trace of rancor, “We’ve been married for forty
years.”
Apparently, having
put a foot in my mouth further depleted my oxygen saturation and I got
stupider, and instead of apologizing—or better yet STFU—I doubled down on the
stupid: “Oh, I guess I thought the bossy blonde was your wife.”
He looked at
me for a moment, thought about it and, after a long pause, laughed. “Yeah, that's her sister and she’s
always like that… She thinks she is everybody’s boss. But it comes in handy
with all the doctors. Nobody talks down to her!”
He soon
forgot and, having Brooklyn and this hospital stay in common, we were soon
being sociable and forgot my faux pas. And soon, just as some of my neighbors,
he was able to ignore my vague ethnicity and began to spew all sorts of racist
crap, which I politely ignored because I realized he had bigger problems…
The love of
his life was wilting before him and after forty years, I suspect his bravado
and denial masked anger, sadness, and fear.
I can’t
write romance, but I could visualize a tiny Greek beauty fresh from the old
country taking his breath away and how she still does; and so she still
believes she is that pretty young thing (plus she is slowly succumbing to Alzheimer’s).
Their love affair is slowly turning tragic because he is losing her: her body
is failing her, her mind is failing her, and he believes he can bring her back
by reminding her about what their life has been. And he thinks he can care for
her on his own because no care facility cares more than he does... (This may be
partially true but also will be his undoing, and realistically will lead to more
tragedy.) He doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to. Her sister calls her a "survivor" and does not see that her sister is deteriorating.
And again I
find myself staring at wounded love broken by this illness and reminded that I
wanted to write a story of a mind trapped in it. I may still do it, but staring directly at that face of tragedy requires a courage I have not mastered yet.
