Reflection Revision- Hospice

 

The small room smelled sanitary and lonely, like peroxide rain in an isolated forest. The overall scent and sense of desolation hung in the air. Flowers hung wistfully in photographs on the gray walls. The white floor, chestnut curtains and bedding, and pale blue comforter absorbed the soft pink, orange and jade hues of the framed wall prints, and contrasted the scarlet roses on the bedside table. The light from the window at the edge of the room seeped inside, dim and wary, as if unsure whether to return at a better time.

She reached out a frail hand from a skeletal frame reaching for something on some unseen horizon. I took her hand in mine. Her sapphire fleece sweater smelled like tobacco and Robitussin, when I leaned in. She gasped as if my presence surprised her, licked her thin cracked lips into a sincere smile and leaned her head forward to speak. Although her mouth formed the words, only a muffle came out. Trying again she hazily spoke, “You wanna go outside? I think this is the last one for awhile.”

Sometimes, in less than a span of a breath, time pauses, collapses, planets collide, and fear combusts into spiraling shards of broken truth tearing into your broken soul. In less than the time to blink one eye, every fiber of the world leaps up into your throat at once, leaving a dry acid taste and no room for a scream. The otherwise listless walls close in, growing sinister. The clock’s deafening second hand echoes the thunder of your heartbeat. You are seized back to that terrible dizzying breath. In the same split moment the instant escapes, leaving a wake of despair. I took one deep breath, trying to cleanse the shock and dejection from my face and soul.

I croaked, “C’mon. You’ll be ok.” With my forced cheerful voice, I wasn’t sure who I trying to deceive, myself or her. Maybe it was one last grasp at hope. I lowered myself, hung her legs limply to the side of the bed, and placed one of her arms around my shoulder while I gingerly lifted her weak frame into the chair. She called it dancing. Not long ago, I’d needed help to lift her. Now she was lighter than my nine year old. Her pale skin pressed against her bones, her right eye sagged, but she was as cheerful and witty as she’d ever been, when she was awake. She pressed her parched tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Do you want to try another sip of water?” “Maybe when we get back,” she fibbed.

I wheeled her slowly, down the fluorescent hallway. Bumps hurt now, more than they used to. She never said so, she was much too tough, but she tensed and gasped at approaching cracks and entryways. Warm sunlight bathed us, breathing color into her cheeks momentarily. Two drags into her cigarette, she started nodding forward slightly, lids drooped. I lead her back into the clean gray room. Not her room. Her room was lively, stacked with rows of mystery novels, collections of ocean scented body sprays, photographs of every child and grandchild and glued together remnants of decades-old kindergarten ceramics. This room was the sanitized charlatan of her legitimate room. I wheeled her soft and begrudgingly to this miscreant room nonetheless.

I would’ve lifted her back into bed, but she startled awake, nudged me back. “Let me sit awhile. I talked to Carol, and she’s having the guys move me this weekend.” Death lurked in the background behind the chestnut curtains. The second hand thundered again. She shifted a challenging glance toward the curtains, and continued. “I think I’ll be home by Monday, then. I’ll be glad to be out of here, especially at night.” (The graveyard staff seldom answered calls between commercials. Alone, disoriented and in pain, she’d wake. Relatives decided to take turns sleeping in the small chair beside her bed, in case she needed anything) “Monday, then,” I hoped, surveying the room, looking for any sharp thing. I would have ripped the scythe from his icy hands, slicing his bitter throat, with a haughty victorious battle cry but that I could deprive him of it. The less than breath, less than blink, years-in-a-moment moment shackles you to yourself, paralyzing, silencing any defiant scream you would otherwise utter. In that single space of eternal second, you cannot fraction a bargaining breath, or raise a fortifying arm.

The sunlight dared, though. Challenged the fiendish creature, warm rays chased away the lurking minute. It rekindled her countenance, fluttering against her inlaid cheekbones, dancing momentarily against the vase on the nightstand, spreading a small rainbow at my mother’s feet. My mother laughed, as if sharing a secret to which I wasn’t privy, again from the belly as if to divulge that secret now, smiled and sighed. The air freshened, and the grey walls seemed to blush. She braced her arms on each side of the chair. Petitioning her body, she strained out of the chair onto unsteady legs, stepping cautiously forward and into bed one last time.