Michael Kimball: Us

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.

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 that 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 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.