Us

by Michael Kimball

  Everybody who I found anywhere inside the hospital was still alive, so I thought that my wife must be too. I went back down to the emergency room to look for her. I found the ambulance driver and the one who rode inside the back of the ambulance with my wife, but they didn’t have my wife with them anymore.

  I went back outside to find our car. It was still parked there. Nobody had moved it or towed it away and nobody had turned the engine off either. I saw the exhaust coming out of the exhaust pipe of our car and it made me think that my wife must still be breathing somewhere back up inside that hospital.

  The Dying Woman Who Looked Smaller and Older Than My Wife

  I waited in the hospital lobby until I heard them call my name over the hospital intercom. They called my name again and it sounded as if my wife were calling me from another room from somewhere inside our house. Her voice was sort of fuzzy and distorted, but she was calling me back up into the hospital. I went back up to the floor and to the desk that I thought she said and the woman there said that they had a woman there who might be my wife.

  She walked me down a hallway and into a hospital room. She took me past an empty hospital bed, behind a curtain, and past a bank of machines. They had most of her body covered up with sheets and blankets and she seemed too small to be my wife. Her head was propped up with a pillow and they had laid her hair out on it, but her hair looked too thin and too gray to be my wife’s hair. Her arms were laid outside the sheets and the blankets and her skin seemed to be colored with the colored lights from the machines that seemed to be keeping her alive. Her eyes were closed and another part of her face was covered up with an oxygen mask. She didn’t look like my wife like that, but I had never seen my wife dying before that night and I didn’t know what it was going to look like.

  How Much of Her Still Worked

  The nurse handed me the clipboard with the forms on it and sat me down in a chair next to my wife’s hospital bed. There were other doctors and other nurses inside the hospital room. They seemed to be taking some kind of care of my wife, but they all also seemed to be waiting for me to fill all those forms out before they did anything else for her.

  I wrote my wife’s name down while they watched over my wife and me. I gave them our address and her birthday and her social security number. I skimmed over the medical history list. I checked asthma and cancer, allergies to certain medications, and recent surgery. I filled all the blanks in. I wrote my name in for her emergency contact and I signed a line that said that they could treat her to keep her alive. I gave them my insurance card, my credit card, my driver’s license, and another card with my name and picture on it.

  One of the nurses took the clipboard with the forms on it and the cards that I gave her and left some charts with my wife’s name on them on another clipboard in a plastic holder at the end of her hospital bed. Another nurse picked the clipboard back up, took my wife’s temperature and then her pulse, and then wrote them down on one of the charts. Another nurse measured her blood pressure and how much my wife could breathe in without the machine on and then she turned the machine back on and wrote those things down too.

  They found a vein in my wife’s arm so that they could hook an IV up to it and drip the bags of fluid into her. They said that the IV might wake my wife up, but it didn’t stop her from sleeping either.

  They found another vein in my wife’s other arm and took some blood out of it. They said they needed to check her blood to see what was in it. They wanted to know if her blood had enough sugar and enough minerals in it. They said that they would know if her kidneys and her liver still worked.

  One of the nurses took the blood away for the tests and then two other hospital workers came in and took my wife away for other tests. They rolled her out of her hospital room and down the hallway on her metal gurney with her IV bag and her respirator alongside her. They were going to test her heart and also her brain. They were trying to find out how much of her still worked.

  Why I Stayed Awake

  My wife wasn’t very alive then. She couldn’t keep herself alive, but there were doctors and nurses who could. There were machines that could feed her and that could help her lungs to breathe and her heart to beat. But one of the doctors told me that since her eyes didn’t open, and she didn’t seem to hear anything that he said to her or move any on her own, that my wife probably wouldn’t be alive without the machines and that she might not be alive in the morning with them.

  I felt as if I were already in mourning. I looked at the nurse and the nurse put her head down. I looked back at the doctor and the doctor looked back down at the charts on the clipboard in his hands. I looked away too. I tried not to cry. I lifted my hand up to my face and held onto my jaw so that it wouldn’t shake. I thought that they might not leave me alone with my wife if I started to cry.

  The doctor said something else and the nurse did too. I couldn’t hear them anymore, but I nodded at them both. I didn’t say anything more. I kept looking at my wife.

  They didn’t move for a long time. They were quiet too. Then the nurse said that she would come back to check on my wife. The doctor left the clipboard in the plastic holder at the end of the hospital bed. He left the hospital room and the nurse did too.

  They left me there even though I wasn’t supposed to stay inside the hospital room with my wife. It was too late and the hours weren’t right, but they left me sitting down in the visitor’s chair next to my wife’s hospital bed.

  I watched my wife try to stay alive for that night. I turned the visitor’s chair so that I was facing my wife’s face, but she didn’t open her eyes up to look back at me. It didn’t look easy for her to breathe even though she had all those machines trying to help her to do it.

  The machines and the wires made her look so tired. I was tired too. I wanted to get into the hospi tal bed with my wife and go back to sleep with her. I wanted to sleep her sleep with her.

  The nurse who kept checking to see if my wife were still alive kept me up through the night. She brought me a pillow and a blanket and I made a kind of sitting bed in my visitor’s chair. I still didn’t sleep. I thought that it might help my wife to stay alive if I stayed awake. I thought that she might open her eyes up if I kept looking at her. I turned the lights on inside her hospital room so that she might think that it was morning and might wake up.

  How I Tried to Make It More of a Morning for My Wife

  I had fallen asleep, but my wife hadn’t died. I had woken up, but my wife hadn’t woken up too. She hadn’t moved either.

  I whispered into her ear that it was morning, but she didn’t seem to hear me. I nudged her at her shoulder and touched her upper arm, but she still didn’t open her eyes up, so I opened the blinds on the windows up. I turned her head to face the light coming in through the windows.

  I whistled bird sounds, but she didn’t open her eyes up or put a pillow over her ear or turn her face away or roll over away from the light. My wife hadn’t shifted her body since she had been in that hospital bed. She hadn’t kicked the bedcovers off her legs and her feet or pushed the pillow onto the floor. She hadn’t tossed or kicked or turned over in her sleep like she did when she would sleep in our bed at home.

  She didn’t wake up for the morning as she had on every other day of our marriage, but we ate breakfast together that day anyway. One of the nurses brought a tray of food into the hospital room and placed it on top of the table that swung over the hospital bed. I told the nurse that my wife couldn’t eat or drink or swallow or chew, but the nurse didn’t take the tray of food away when she left the hospital room.

  The nurse came back in with an IV bag for my wife. She hung the IV bag up on the IV stand and made sure that the drips worked. I watched the IV bag drip for a while before I took the tray of food off the table and set it on my lap and started to eat too.

  We ate breakfast together, but it still wasn’t morning for my wife, so I tried to make it into more of a morning. I decided to wash up. I pushed myself up out of th
at chair and stood up. The blood seemed to rush out of my head and I couldn’t really breathe right. I had to use that chair’s armrests to hold myself up. I was bent over until I got my breath back. I stood up straight again and my head cleared up.

  I took my hat off and left it on top of the back of that chair. I took my jacket off and hung it around the shoulders of that chair. I pulled the sleeves of the jacket around to the front of that chair and left them resting on its armrests. I wanted to make it look as if I were sitting there, or at least make it seem as if I were nearby, if my wife woke up.

  I didn’t want her to wake up without me there with her. I didn’t want her to be awake and alone at the same time.

  I went into the bathroom inside her hospital room to take as much of a bath or a shower as I could. I smelled like sleep and I wanted to wash the sleep off me. I took my clothes off and hung them up on the back of the bathroom door and laid them out on all the handles and bars that are supposed to help people get up or stand up inside a hospital bathroom. I turned the water faucet on and washed myself off with wet paper towels. I dried myself off with dry paper towels, but it didn’t really make me feel clean. I felt dry and tired. I felt as if I had shrunk.

  I turned my underwear and my undershirt and my socks inside out. I wanted to have the clean side of them touching my skin when I put them back on. I shook the rest of my clothes out. I tried to get the sleep off them too. I tried to move some air through them too.

  I got dressed again, but my clothes felt sticky and thick on me. It was difficult to move in them. My pants could almost stand up on their cuffs on their own and my shirt seemed to keep its own shape around my shoulders. My clothes looked stiff and wrinkled and so did I. But my clothes also helped me stand up. I needed something else to hold me up.

  I stood over the bathroom sink and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. I looked smaller and older too. I turned the water faucet back on and splashed water on my hair and on my face. I pushed my hair down with my hands and combed it back with my fingers. I wet one of my fingers again and brushed my teeth with it until my teeth felt smooth to my tongue.

  I straightened myself back up and stood back away from the bathroom sink and the bathroom mirror. I tried to straighten my clothes out some more, but they didn’t seem to fit right anymore. My clothes and everything else seemed bigger than me. I tucked my shirt further down into my pants and tightened my belt a notch. I took a long breath in and tried to fill my clothes out with myself. I was going to need all of me for this morning.

  The Small Things that I Asked Her For

  The doctors and the nurses monitored her lungs and her heart and her brain. They kept checking her to see if she would open her eyes up or respond in any way to anything they said. They kept checking her for her blood pressure and for how much oxygen her lungs could process. They kept testing her for how much blood was going into and out of her brain and for how much pressure there was on it. They kept measuring parts of my wife so that they could find out how much she was alive.

  The doctor told me that the numbers were getting worse and that my wife wasn’t getting any better. There wasn’t enough oxygen going into or out of her lungs or enough blood moving through her brain and the doctor told me that my wife probably wouldn’t gain consciousness again.

  But I thought that there had to be something that would wake her up again. I thought about snoring or making some other kind of noise from our sleep. I thought about kissing her on the forehead or on the cheek. I wanted the telephone to ring or for somebody to knock on the door to her hospital room. I wanted her to have a nightmare or even insomnia. I wanted the alarm on the alarm clock to go off. I wanted it to be morning again.

  The doctor started talking about unhooking the IVs and unplugging the machines, but I didn’t want them to undo any of her treatment. I wanted them to do more of anything that might make her wake up, but the doctor told me that they couldn’t do anything else medical for her. The doctor said that we had to wait for her to be more conscious before they could do anything else for her.

  The doctor told me that if she did anything again that she would be able to hear again first. He told me to talk to her. He told me to ask her for small things.

  I asked her to open her eyes back up. I asked her to move her eyes back and forth under her eyelids so that her eyelids would tremble some. I asked her to smile or move her lips even a little bit. I watched her eyes and her lips for a twitch or for any other kind of change in the way that her face looked. I held onto her hand and asked her to move her fingers, but she didn’t move them or seem to touch my hand back. I asked her if the bruises on her arms from the needles and the tubes hurt.

  I told her that the skin on her hands was soft and that I liked the age spots on the backs of her hands. I told her that she had a soft dress with polka dots on it that she liked to wear. I told her about where we met and about the hospital room where we were then. I told her that she was lying down in a hospital bed and wearing a hospital gown that she probably would not like. I told her that she probably would not like the hospital room either. I told her that we should go home soon.

  My wife didn’t say anything back or seem to hear anything that I said to her. The doctor told me that I should go home and come back with some things from home that would remind my wife of being at home. The nurse told me that I should go home for a change of clothes for my wife and for myself. The nurse told me that I should take a shower and get some rest and come back fresh. The nurse told me that I should pack up enough clothes so that I could stay at the hospital for a while.

  I was afraid to go back home and pack up our clothes. I was afraid that my wife might die if I did not stay there with her. I felt as if I were somehow keeping my wife alive by being there with her.

  How I Tried to Drive Myself Home

  My legs felt heavy and sleepy when I tried to stand up to walk out of her hospital room. I stumbled a couple of steps forward toward my wife. I had to stop and hold myself up over her hospital bed with my arms. My back tingled and spasmed. I couldn’t feel the back of my head. I needed help to breathe too.

  I waited until I had enough breath to talk. I leaned over her in her hospital bed and whispered into her ear. I told her to wait for me to come back to see her. I kissed each of her eyelids and touched her hair and her ear and her cheek.

  I walked along the side and the foot of her hospital bed with my arm holding onto the edge of it to help hold me up. I straightened my back up and held my head up. I walked away from her hospital bed, past the empty hospital bed, to the doorway and out of her hospital room.

  It was so hard for me to walk out of that room. I didn’t know how she was going to get up out of her hospital bed and leave too.

  I stopped outside the doorway. The hallway was so much brighter than her hospital room was that I had to close my eyes. I turned around to look back inside her hospital room at her, but it was already too dark inside there for me to see my wife anymore.

  I walked away down the hallway, got on the elevator going down, and went down to the hospital lobby. I got my legs back under me and walked through the sliding glass doors and out into the parking lot. I had parked our car under one of those tall lamps out in the parking lot, but it had been so many days since then that I couldn’t remember where or which one.

  I looked up at the different lamps and watched the insects that were flying around the lights up there. I walked from lamp to lamp through the parking lot until I found our car. I opened the car door up and started to get inside, but my body wouldn’t bend enough for me to get into it. I held myself up with the car door and sat down sideways into our car. I backed myself into the driver’s seat and lifted my legs up into our car with the rest of me. I was too tired to drive and I was almost out of gas, but I thought I had enough to get me back home.

  I tried to drive home, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I kept falling asleep and then waking up afraid. I kept pulling over to the curb to sleep, but I could never
sleep once our car was parked there. I would start driving back home again. I would pull back out into the street and then wake up blocks later. There seemed to be two grooves worn down into the street that seemed to keep the left set of tires and the right set of tires rolling me back toward home. I didn’t even need to hold onto the steering wheel and I was almost back home.

  I drove by the front of our house and saw that I had left all the lights at the front of our house on. It made me think of the lights on my wife’s machines inside her hospital room and it made it look as if somebody were at home and living inside our house.

  I drove around to the side of our house, drove back up the driveway, and parked our car there. I had left the front door and the back door open too. I walked into our house and down the hallway and into our bedroom. Our bed was still unmade and the shape of my wife was still marked out in the pillows and the blankets and the sheets.

  I walked up and down the hallway and through the rooms of our house—our bedroom, the bathroom, the spare bedroom, the guestroom, the other bathroom, the study, the kitchen, the dining room, and the living room – but I knew that I wasn’t going to find my wife inside any of those rooms.

  I didn’t know what to do without her there at home with me. I held onto my head, but my hair was dirty and it was slick. My skin itched too and my clothes felt sticky on my skin and kind of hard. I took my clothes off and let them fall down my body and into a pile of dirty laundry around me.

  I walked into the bathroom, turned the hot water and the cold water in the shower on, got into the shower, and pulled the shower curtain along the length of the bathtub. The water hurt and the shower made me tired. My skin tingled and my back spasmed some more. My eyelids got heavy and covered up most of my eyes too.