Death is no more
Than passing from one room
Into another
Helen Keller
September 14th, 2009
At 9:00 a.m., on September 11th, 2001 my father was scheduled to have his right leg amputated due to complications from diabetes.
As you could imagine, he never did have the operation that day; every doctor and surgeon was called into New York to help save lives.
As the world was in chaos, my father got to keep his leg for one more week.
Wheelchair-bound for the last eight years, my dad has spent six hours a day, every other day at dialysis, getting his blood decontaminated.
His dialysis nurse is Mary.
Mary has a son who was in a severe car crash a few months ago and lapsed into a coma.
Jess is in the same room Mary's son occupied when he was in the ICU at this hospital.
Next door to Jess is a ninety-four-year-old woman whose daughter has spent every hour with her, but knows the inevitability of her mother's fate.
The daughter has been extremely nice to Jess and me. She has popped her head into our room at just the right time with two cups of coffee in hand and a smile on her face.
In ICU room number 3, is an elderly man who has brain cancer. He has a white bandage wrapped around his head, from a recent surgery and has had a deluge of visitors recently.
I will call him Bob.
In room number 4 is a mid twenties male handcuffed to his bed. I'm not sure what he did, or what has happened to him, as he has not had any visitors.
It is 2:00 a.m.
Bob is crying.
He is struggling to say something.
I can only hear muffled, incoherent rambles.
For the first time in my life I know that something is absolutely true.
Bob's loved ones visited him for the last time yesterday.
They don't know it yet, but I do.
At 7:30 a.m., the nurses change shifts. Before one shift goes home and the other takes over, they bring one another up to date on each patient. They ask me to leave during that half-hour as they feel that my being able to overhear another patient's status report would be an invasion of that patient's privacy.
At 8:00 a.m. I reenter the ICU and see the hospital workers mopping room number 3.
Bob is gone.
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