We can dance in the ashes

What? Didn't everyone dress like this in 1985?


There is a man in a hospital gown and tan slippers circling the halls. He walks past every ten minutes. His arms hang at his sides. Afterthoughts? I suppose he is too busy walking, and too busy for the luxury of them.

Feet, too, are miracles.

Our miracles are tedious. We don’t notice them.

When he passes I nod or wave, but feel inadequate—as though there were a better way to meet a stranger. Ask about his head? How’s the family?

Being inadequate doesn’t seem exotic here, given the surroundings. Not too much the conspicuous violet.

I meant to say last week that I’ve never liked myself more than I do at bedside, around 4:00am, wiping drool from my sister’s mouth. Must be the Catholic upbringing. You who will never suffer enough for having suffered loudly.

The woman in the next bed complains about the lighting. Remind me to tell you what panic and grief did to my compassion.

The woman vomits every fifteen minutes. Her husband has a thick, unpleasant voice. It cuts through my headphones.

There are more people than chairs in the waiting room. A Latino family sits by the television, watching a Spanish-language cable network.

The family of the woman who slipped into a coma after giving birth to a beautiful baby boy is slumped in the corner of the room. A slump, not a huddle.

Earlier in the day, the new father had the nurses show my sister his son. My mother tells me Maureen smiled.

I hate this place deeply. Raze it. Bring salt.

Two weeks ago a young woman appeared in the recliner in the family consultation room. This was the room my mother had claimed, where she slept at night. The woman told us her husband had just returned from an eighteen-month tour in Iraq, and was hit by a drunken driver on his way home from the gas station. He always wore the shoulder restraint of his seatbelt off to one side, she told us, because it made him uncomfortable otherwise.

My mother didn’t like this woman. She said there was something wrong with this woman. My mother can be judgmental, and distrustful. I resented it this time, as I often do, but when $200 disappeared from my sister-in-law’s purse, my mother asked security about the woman.

Turns out she had no husband, and we haven’t seen her since.

I have a hard time being angry at her. There may be hope for me yet. What does it take, do you think, to make a person behave that way?




5:16AM
3.6.2005