the very odor of memory.
Nowhere in a hospital can you walk without blundering into the memory pools of strangers—their dread of what was imminent in their lives, their false hopes, the wild elation of their hopes, their sudden terrible and irrefutable knowledge; you would not wish to hear echoes of their whispered exchanges—But he was looking so well yesterday, what has happened to him overnight—
You would not wish to blunder into another’s sorrow. You will have all that you can do to resist your own.
Chapter 13 “I’m Not Crying for Any Reason”
February 17, 2008. This morning at 7:50 A.M. arriving at the hospital—ascending in the elevator—at the fifth floor turn left, to Telemetry—breathless/hurrying/eager to see my husband—(for always the first glimpse of a hospital patient, in his room in his bed unobserved, is fraught with meaning)—carrying the hefty Sunday New York Times for us to read together—and at the farther end of the now-familiar corridor—past the now-familiar nurses’ station—there is room 541—there is Ray’s bed—empty—just the stripped, bare mattress.
“Mrs. Smith?—your husband is in room five thirty-nine. Just this morning he was moved. We tried to call you but you must have left home . . .”
And so entering this room—which evidently I’d passed a moment ago without glancing inside—I am trembling so visibly that Ray wonders what is wrong with me—the blood has drained from my face—I am trembling in the aftermath of a shock as profound as any I’ve ever experienced, or am I trembling in the aftermath of relief—for here is Ray in the new bed, in the new room—a room identical to the previous room, with the identical bedside table and on this table the vase of flowers from friends—Ray is no longer wearing the oxygen mask, nor even the nasal inhaler—since his oxygen intake has improved, and there is the possibility of his being discharged from the hospital this Tuesday— he smiles at me, greets me—“Hi honey”—but when I lean over the bed to kiss him a wave of faintness sweeps over me, suddenly I begin to cry—uncontrollably crying—for the first time since bringing Ray to the hospital—my face is contorted like a child’s, in the throes of an agonizing weeping—“I’m not crying for any reason, but only because I love you”—so I manage to stammer, to Ray, “—because I love you so much”—and Ray’s eyes well with tears too, he murmurs what sounds like, “Something like this—I’ll be knocked out for two months—”
Like drowning swimmers we are clutching at each other. Someone passing in the corridor outside sees us, and looks quickly away. Never have I cried so hard, so helplessly. Never in my adult life. And why am I crying, is it purely out of a sense of relief . . .
Something like this. Knocked out two months.
Always I will remember these words. For this is how Ray assesses the situation: pneumonia has interrupted his life. These days in the hospital and his weakened state will result in his editing-work being slowed, delayed.
He isn’t thinking of the future in the way that I have been thinking of the future—he’s thinking of the May issue of Ontario Review, the responsibility he bears to the writers whose work he’s publishing. Meeting a deadline. Paying his printer. Paying his contributors. Mailing, distribution. He isn’t thinking of anything so petty as himself.
Maybe Ray isn’t capable of thinking of himself, in the terms in which I can think of him.
Maybe no man is capable of thinking of himself, in the terms in which a woman can think of him.
“Lean on me, Mr. Smith. That’s good. Good!”
A physical therapist named Rhoda, very nice woman, is walking with Ray in the corridor outside his room, in the effort of exercising his leg muscles. Lying in bed for several days has weakened Ray’s legs—it’s astonishing how quickly muscles begin to atrophy. Earlier this morning I’d been encouraging Ray to push hard against my hand, with his foot—to exercise his leg muscles in this way—and he’d pushed hard, very hard it seemed to me; but Rhoda is telling Ray that when he’s discharged from the hospital it won’t be to his home but to Merwick Rehab Center, not far from the Medical Center. Not only must Ray regain his ability to walk normally, he must regain his ability to breathe.
How bizarre all this would have seemed to us, a week ago! This shuffling man in hospital pajamas, trying not to wince with pain, leaning heavily on a young woman therapist’s arm, an IV gurney tugged in his wake.
As Ray is walking—unsteadily, leaning on Rhoda—but he is walking—I am thinking Don’t fall! Don’t fall please.
In the hospital corridors it isn’t uncommon to see patients walking slowly with or without therapists—tugging IV gurneys in their wake. All these days, hours—the IV line has been embedded in the crook of Ray’s bruised right arm—dripping in the antibiotic that, like a magic potion in a Grimm’s fairy tale, has the power to save his life.
An attendant arrives, to take Ray to Radiology for X rays.
It seems that a “secondary infection”—“of mysterious origin”—“nothing to worry about”—has appeared in Ray’s left lung—which is to say, in Ray’s (previously) uninfected lung.
“But—is this bacterial, too?”
(How matter-of-factly this adjective rolls off my tongue—bacterial.
As one might say infinity, light-year, a trillion trillion stars—in the naive speech of the non-scientist.)
The smiling young attendant—female, dark-skinned, cheery and sturdy-bodied—her name tag is Rhoda—says with the bright smile she lavishes on all patients and patients’ relatives who ask such naive questions of her—“Ma’am, I don’t know! The doctor will tell you.”
Which doctor, I wonder—Dr. I_, or Dr. B_?
Bacterial. One thing that I have come to know—the nightmare-vigil has so impressed me, for life—we are not so much surrounded by invisible and very greedy life-forms as enveloped by them—at every instant of our lives—and before our births, in the womb—we are flesh-vessels for these microscopic life-forms that require us for warmth—for warmth and nourishment—those bacteria that benefit us we call, with anthropomorphic instinct, good; those bacteria that seek to ravage us, and destroy us, we call bad.
It is utterly naive, futile, uninformed—to think that our species is exceptional. So designated to master the beasts of the Earth, as in the Book of Genesis!
“Infection”—another problematic term. For by definition any infection is bad—but some are not-so-bad as others.
“Mr. Smith, can you tilt your head this way?—that’s great.”
One of the nurses is shaving Ray’s jaws, that have grown stubbly. This is a task I might have done for Ray myself—or, if we’d thought of it, I could have brought him the right sort of mirror and Ray could have shaved himself.
“Your husband is very handsome, Mrs. Smith. But you know that.”
Without his glasses, eyes closed, Ray does look handsome—his cheeks are lean, and remarkably unlined for a man of his age—his forehead is marred by the faintest frown lines, scarcely visible in this light. As the nurse deftly shaves him, wipes away lather—I feel a sense of unease, that Ray is becoming adjusted to the hospital setting, ever more comfortable with the eerie passivity such
