The Chair in the Hospital Hallway
I had a spare shoelace from Ed’s boots in my coat pocket. I looped it around my fingers and showed her cat’s cradle, the way my grandmother taught me, and we spent half an hour making a cradle and a soldier’s bed and a Jacob’s ladder in the mustard chairs. Ellie laughed twice. It was the first time anything on that floor had sounded like laughing.
I did not know Kristen was standing in the doorway.
She had her shoulders pulled up toward her ears, and she was watching her daughter’s hands tangle in my string. Her face had an expression I did not recognize. I do not think it was anger.
“Ellie,” she said. “Come on.”
Ellie hopped up. At the door she turned back and said, loudly, “Bye, Mamaw Marcia,” and I watched her mother’s whole body flinch as if somebody had touched a bruise.
That evening Dr. Rao told Kristen that Ed’s kidneys had begun to fail. It was a matter of hours, perhaps a day. He asked if she wished to lighten the sedation so Ed could be at ease and, if his body allowed, awake enough to be with his family. Joyce slipped out at shift change and told me. “He may come up out of it, Mrs. Dole,” she said. “Sometimes they do. You stay close.”
I did not sleep that night. I sat with my back straight in that chair and said the Twenty-third Psalm in my head, and then said it again. Around two in the morning I stood up and walked to the double doors. I put my forehead against the cool paint beside the frame, and I said, quietly, “I’m here, Ed. I’m right here.”
Then I went back and sat down.
At ten past four on Thursday morning, Renee Gaddis came down the hall in her squeaking clogs, walking faster than I had ever seen her walk.
I stood up before she reached me. I do not remember standing.
“Marcia,” she said. “He’s awake.”
I could not make my mouth work.
“The sedation’s been coming down since midnight, and forty minutes ago he opened his eyes. He’s weak, but he’s clear. I called the house supervisor, Beth Cook, to witness.” She took a breath. “I asked him, the way I told you I would. I said, Mr. Dole, is there anyone you would like to see?”
She stopped. Her own eyes were wet.
“He said, ‘Marcie.’ Then he said, ‘Where’s my wife.'”
I put my hand on the wall.
“I wrote it in the chart in his words,” Renee said. “Beth signed under me. A patient who can make his wishes known gets to say who comes into his room.” She took my cold hand in her warm one. “Kristen’s asleep in the family lounge. I’m going to wake her in a minute, because she has a right to be here too. But your husband asked for you first. Come on.”
I do not remember walking forty feet. I remember the red button, and Renee pressing it with her elbow, and the doors swinging open on a hum and a hush and the soft green glow of the monitors.
And I remember Ed.
He looked so small. They had taken the breathing tube out an hour before, and he was on a mask and a little oxygen, with all the color gone out of his big weathered face. His hair, which I trim myself every six weeks at the kitchen table, stuck up in the back. His hands lay on top of the blanket, wide and scarred.