Between Then & Now || Currently Editing for Wattys 2022

40.

The hospital smells like bleach and nurses shoes when I step inside, the cold, air-conditioned air hitting my face. A few heads turn my way, looking up from their newspapers and books and social media pages. In the corner, a baby gurgles. They start crying. My mind blurs.

Wonder if they're all here waiting for someone to die, too.

I keep my chin up, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear as my eyes scan for the reception desk. The room is so white with the basic, light-colored wood molding and paintings of lakes and forests. So white. Like a great expanse of nothing. Just white and white and white. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, to make anything out of the everything in front of me.

Finally, they set themselves on the desk, separated from the rest of the room by a sheet of plexiglass. Slowly, one foot after the other, I approach it. One after the other. One after the other. A squeak of rubber on a tiled floor. Step after step. And, suddenly, the middle-aged woman behind the desk is staring up at me. Her gray hair is pulled into a tight bun and her black glasses have a chain that wraps behind her head. She glances back to her computer. And I fall and I fall and I fall.

"Name?"

But I'm still standing.

"Ola Murphy." I murmur, then clear my throat when she looks back up at me. "Ola Murphy. I'm here for– for Tomasz Kaminski."

"Can you spell that last name out for me, please?" Her attention returns back to the monitor screen in front of her, red nails at the ready on the keyboard. But all I can see is white and white and white. The sound of a door closing. Bleach in my nostrils.

"K-A-M-I-N-S-K-I."

The clicks of the buttons under her fingers ring around the waiting room as I wait. Somewhere in the distance, my foot is tapping. I wait. And wait. And wait. She scrolls through the records, and clicks her mouse. After a second, she looks at me and her expression has changed. There's a depth to her eyes that wasn't there before, and I already know what she's about to say.

I'm sorry for your loss.

But she doesn't. Because there is no loss. Yet. And that would be inappropriate. What do you say to someone who knows they're going to lose someone but hasn't lost them yet?

There isn't really a phrase for that.

Instead, she gives me a soft, maternal smile and takes a pen out of the holder in front of her, writing the room number on an index card before handing it over to me. A piece of hair in the back of her head is loose from her bun I notice. White and white and white.

"Room 327. Third floor." She smiles again as I take the card from her, the smell of bleach wafting into my nostrils again. In the background, a nurse emerges from a door and calls someone's name. There's some shuffling as they get up from their seat, and the baby begins to cry again.

"Thanks," I mumble, taking the card.

She nods then points to my right. "The elevators that way."

I nod back at her and turn to the direction she pointed to. The hallway elongates into infinity, a deep, endless tunnel, as I take my first step, shifting the bag on my shoulder. Then, another. And another. My feet slap against the tile. But the sound grows more and more distant, my body on auto-pilot until my own hand knocking on a light-wood door that matches the molding in a new hallway snaps me out of my trance.

"Lala?" A man's weak, hoarse voice rings around the room. "Is that you?"