HG Pieces

Numbers

Over the next three days, he realizes his life is ruled / by numbers. How many times he can drive to the hospital / from home or campus without missing the boy’s / needs or being late to teach, and how many calls / he makes until he hears her quavering voice beg / for the end. He counts how often he unplugs her cords from the wall / and leads her to the bathroom, how many whirs and clicks / per minute from the IV pump pushing ringer’s and Zofran / into her wrist’s small blue tree rooting back to her heart. The math / of when she can next get a Reglan shot or something to sleep / because she does ask, and then again when she dislikes / his answer. How many times she breaks / into tears, how often he relies on You’ve done this before / and survived to reach her, to comfort her, to make her trust / this is only temporary. How many ceiling tiles, how many papers / he still has to grade, the number of days until semester’s end and he is free / to care for her without interruption. He imagines one letter, / then four, five, twenty more explaining his insurance benefits / and then a second stack clarifying the price / of what’s not covered. The times he has to tell the boy / to not jump on her bed or the tubes keeping her / close to whole. He counts how many minutes he’ll sit next to her / as she fights into evening, into sleep, into the next day / and the one after, and he counts how many ways he’s let her / down without meaning to.

Decline

When she calls him next, he swipes / the screen for Decline and continues to live / in a space without her. Though he feels guilty, he loves / for a few moments what it means to have nothing / of her sickness touching him. To be free of her / pain and groans, to let silence be the joy / in his life like it was before this, before the boy, before her / love filled him.

Which isn’t true, not entirely, because he never / wanted to spend his days and nights alone. / That loneliness kept him occupied more than this has or could, / the thought of no one to give himself over to the realest ache / that ever grabbed him in the middle of the night, / a train whistle’s low midnight moan as the cars / lurched cross-country to find their way home.

But it’s not false, either. / He needs to have some place, some time, that’s only him / if he’s going to be his best self. Which is why he doesn’t feel / guilty to be in this house alone, his mother-in-law off to take the boy / to lunch, maybe the dollar store after that, too. He lies on their bed / as he waits for the phone’s ting to let him know there’s something / she needs to tell him. He hears it and closes his eyes for a minute, / then a few more, and maybe several after that. But he gives / in eventually,  plays his voicemail, listens to her hysterical pleas / for him to call Dr. S. Her nurse does not like her, will not / give her medication when she requests, does not come soon enough / to unplug her, help her to the bathroom. And when she does stop / in, finally, she is rude and dismissive, tells her / she has other patients and no patience for all these demands. /

He sighs and calls her, listens to all this again, tries / to talk her down: That last part, that can’t be, he says, / no nurse would say that. She swears / at him for not believing her, bawls him out because he’s not there, / he doesn’t know what it’s like, he’s not the one / going through this. She knows what’s happening; she’s not / making up any of this. He should believe her, she tells him, / he should trust her word. They don’t know / what they’re doing here. I’m on a post-surgical floor, / not a women’s one where the nurses would understand. / They think I’m crazy for complaining about a little morning / sickness. I can feel it, she says.

He grants this is true / probably and not just because he feels ashamed / for refusing her call. He agrees their familiarity with this is nothing / like watching for burst stitches or fevers, blood clots or fluid build-up / under an incision, the growing redness or deep-colored drainage / of infection. They don’t know to recognize the physical / and mental, the toll taken on the inside worse / than what can be seen and measured, / no set of numbers to tell them when to act / with compassion.

He tells her he’ll call Dr. S who will call / the floor’s head nurse who will have words with the young woman / who has a 98% chance to never know this illness, / to never feel the intense thirst that, if quenched, / comes back up violent and bitter and green, to never experience / this steady decline from health to misery, all for the sake / of bringing her truest wish life.

Reminder

The man takes his mother-in-law and the boy / to visit her bedside, which seems the appropriate way to say it / because it does feel like his wife’s on the verge / of some small death at least, and they should pay / their respects before anything else might happen, another loss / still a fair possibility this early.

The boy darts ahead / down the bowed hallway, fast enough he disappears / for a moment if the man doesn’t keep up. Eager, yes, but also / too unsure of the room, the boy stops to ask, Where’s Mom? / The man points to the correct door, has the boy open it / so he might be the first face she sees, / he the reminder of what can result from dogged resolve / and a mess of pharmaceuticals.

The room is dark, save the glow / of the IV pump’s monitor and the crack of sun / stealing in where window jamb meets shade’s edge. / This doesn’t bother the boy. He only sees her / struggle out from her fetal position, her sheets, her every / blue thought. He only hears her say, There he is.