Our bodies are known to end, but the embodied self is enduring, indestructible, and immeasurable… This is the place of the infinite spirit; achieving it, one is freed from delusion; abiding in it even at the time of death, one finds the pure calm of infinity.
The Bhagavad-Gita
Day 0
When we first meet in your hospital room, you are furiously rubbing at the hot pink nail polish on your index finger. The blue-white hospital gown draped over your shoulders looks like a designer duster over your Lululemon ensemble.
“Ugh Doc, this is not me,” you explain, gesturing to the newly nail-polish-free nail. “But they can’t get the oxygen reader thingy to work.”
You see me bite my lower lip. Hear the grating screech of metal on floor as I pull a chair over to sit at eye-level, the way they taught us to in medical school when ‘Delivering Bad News’. This is not the quick “The CT scan of your head looks great!” conversation you were hoping for.
With my first words, your face crumbles like a building in an earthquake. First, a crack of wrinkles on your forehead, a tremor of the corner lip and then, everything shatters at once. I save the tilting coffee cup from your hand.
“You can finish this but don’t eat or drink anything after midnight. We’ll do the surgery tomorrow.”
Day 7
“I am becoming myself again.” The words bubble out of you. “I finally got to wash my hair.” You start to reach towards the deep gash running like the prime meridian along the globe of your head and stop abruptly under my gaze.
“It is out of me,” you effuse.
Day 14
“This is not her,” your sister whispers in my ear. “She’s so angry. Yesterday, she screamed at me for brushing her hair too hard.” I can’t focus on her words when it’s your grey-blue eyes locked onto mine. I wonder if this how you will look in ten years.
“This is not her,” I repeat in reassurance. “We’ll go down on the steroid dose. That should help.”
Day 190
I see you before I see the scan — newly paretic, unduly energetic.
“Can you help me get this second gown on? You’re going to have to buy me dinner before you can see my backside.” A feeble laugh. We try a few maneuvers to tuck the flaccid arm into the sleeve as if the gown were a jacket. After the fifth attempt, we eschew this play at normalcy and just unsnap the whole sleeve.
Day 191
I fixate on a spot a few millimeters above your eyes, imagining each cancer cell in your brain dividing without discrimination, slicing through white matter tracts, conscripting the capillaries, and perforating the brain with malignant blooms. The silence that suffocated the team room after your MRI flashed onto the screen this morning still echoes in my ears.
I want to grab your hand and tell you that if I could, I would spend every waking minute scraping away tumor. I would work till my fingers blistered and bled, stopping only when my body gave way. Because this – the alternative — is so much worse.
“There’s no surgery we can do to make you better,” I say. This time, there is no crash. There’s nothing left.
Day 210
I’m surprised to see you asleep in bed instead of your usual perch by the window. The thick, orange novel that normally adorns your bedside is replaced by a half-completed word search. Your signature Starbucks cup swapped for a gray hospital pitcher. I use this moment punctuated by your light snores to look at the dozens of photos lining the room – a silly photobooth snap with giant sunglasses and clown noses, you and your look-alike sister with racing bibs and big toothy smiles. At the handwritten crayon notes that start with “Mommy,” the air escapes my lungs, and I have to tear my eyes away.
You’re awake now, eyes pinned to my slow revolution around the room.
“This is me,” you explain, motioning to the walls.
“This, this is not me.” I can’t tell if you mean the single hospital gown stained with puddles of egg, your limp arm propped up on a pile of pillows, the acrid stench from the bedside commode, or the tears streaming down your cheek. I nod.
Day 240
The walls are empty now. The accoutrements from the last few months left behind in the hasty overnight ICU transfer. I almost don’t see your slight frame under the pile of blankets – cancer’s great disappearing act.
I imagine your sister s- the same grey-blue eyes laden with sleep, coursing down the highway to the hospital with the bag she keeps always-packed, always-ready, just-in-case. But for now, I am the sole witness to your labored breathing in this twilight vigil.
“This is not you,” I whisper, your bone-thin hand in mine.
Day ?
Photo by Leiada Krözjhen on Unsplash
