Michael Kimball: Us

Nobody else came into that hospital room for that other woman until one of her machines went into a long beep. It sounded like an alarm clock going off and the doctors and the nurses all came back into that hospital room. That other woman in that other hospital bed was dying, but they were trying to keep her alive too.

They checked her IV lines and her eyes. They tapped on the glass of the machines and they checked the plugs of the machines at the outlets. They checked her blood pressure and her heart rate. They wheeled another machine into the hospital room and shocked her with paddles on her chest that made her body seize up off her hospital bed. They pressed down on her chest with their hands and pushed the air out of her lungs. They pulled her jaw down and her mouth open and held onto her nose. They pushed air back into her mouth and her lungs with their mouths and their lungs and then let the air rise back up out of her.

That other woman wasn’t really doing anything anymore and the doctors and the nurses stopped doing anything else to her. They looked at each other and looked down at the floor. One of the nurses looked over at my wife and me and walked over to pull the curtain that separated their two hospital beds into alive and dead sides across that hospital room.

I heard all the doctors and all the nurses leave the hospital room and I heard the door being eased shut. I pulled the curtain back and saw that they had left that other woman’s body in that other hospital bed. I thought that she might still be alive, but they had turned off and unplugged all her machines. There weren’t any beeps or numbers or lights anymore.

Two more hospital workers came back for that other woman’s body. They pulled the sheets all the way down off her hospital bed so that they could pick her up. One of them picked her body up under the arms and the other one picked it up around the ankles. They lifted her body up off the hospital bed and set it down inside a long bag that they had laid open on a metal gurney. They tucked her feet into the foot of the bag and they pulled the top of the bag up around her shoulders and the sides of the bag up around her arms. They zipped the bag up and rolled the metal gurney and the bag with her body inside it out of that hospital room and away down the hallway.

One of them came back to pick up the few other things that she had with her — some worn clothes, some old magazines, some wilted flowers, and a toiletry bag. He gathered everything up, put all of it inside a plastic garbage bag, and tied the top of the garbage bag into a knot. He stripped the pillowcases off the pillows and the blankets and the sheets off the hospital bed. He cleared the food tray away and wiped the table down where the tray had been. He wiped the bedside table and the handles on the sides of the bed down too.

He made that hospital bed back up and pulled the side handles back up, but they didn’t put anybody else back in that hospital bed. They were waiting to see if my wife were going to wake up and get up out of her hospital bed without dying too.

I moved into my wife’s hospital room with her. I lived with her inside her hospital room and ate hospital food. I took my baths inside that hospital room’s bathroom and changed my clothes inside there too. I slept in the empty hospital bed next to her hospital bed and I kept the curtain that separated our two hospital beds pulled back so that there wasn’t anything else between us but her sleep.

The nurses who came into the hospital room to check on my wife started to check on me too. They would touch my shoulder to wake me up to let me know that they were there and they would sometimes bring me an extra tray of hospital food or the things that other people didn’t eat or drink — those little boxes of cereal, a cup of crushed ice, a little bottle of apple juice, or a small bowl of jello with fruit inside it that was wrapped up in plastic. I didn’t have to go down to the hospital cafeteria to eat. I didn’t have to leave that hospital room or my wife.

The nurses let me help them with my wife too. I would hold onto my wife’s body for them when they would move her so that she wouldn’t get any bedsores. I would hold her body up on one side when they rolled her back and forth to change the sheets or change her clothes. They would leave me a bowl of soapy water and a hand sponge and a hand towel so that I could give my wife a sponge bath and then dry her off.

I was more of a husband when I could do these things for my wife. But my wife had started to shrink. The clothes that we changed her into were too big on her and she looked smaller and more wrinkled in them. Her chest seemed to sink in. She was breathing too much of herself out and not enough back in.

The nurses showed me how to move my wife’s arms and her legs for her. I started every morning with her arms. I held onto her hands, bent her arms at the elbows, and then straightened them back out. I pulled her arms out away from her body, raised them up over her shoulders, and then brought them back down to her sides. I moved her hands back and forth at the wrist. I bent her fingers back and then curled them back in so that she would be able to hold something in her hands again. I opened her hands back up and put my hands into them. I held onto her hands to see if she could hold my hands back yet.

I lifted her leg up at her ankle and then bent her leg in at the knee. I bent her ankles up and down and back and forth. I wanted her to be able to stand up and not wobble or fall down when she woke up and could stand up and I wanted her to be able to walk again.

I got onto the hospital bed with her and pulled her upper body up until she was sitting up. I pulled her eyelids up with my thumb so that she would be able to open her eyes up again. I turned her head to each side so that she could look out through the doorway and then look out through the window. I opened her mouth up at her jaw so that she would be ready to talk again after she woke up again.

I whispered things into her ears so that she would remember how to talk and remember me and the things that we did together. I would say that we were going for a walk when I moved her legs and I would say that we were holding hands when I held onto her hands. I would tell her that she was taking a bath in our bathtub. I would tell her that she was sitting up in a chair or looking out the window or brushing her hair.

I would play the tape with the sounds from our house on it for her. I would tell her that she was getting a glass of water from the kitchen sink or that we were making lunch. I would tell her that the door latch and the sound of the door closing was the sound of her coming home. I would tell her that we had put everything down and that we were walking back down the hallway to our bedroom and that we were going back to bed and back to sleep.

My wife didn’t wake up again for so many more days, but the way that she slept started to get restless. She started to move a little bit. Sometimes her body shifted during the nighttime. Sometimes I saw that her arms and her hands or her legs had moved some in the morning. One afternoon I watched her fingers twitch and on another day I watched her toes curl and uncurl under her bedcovers. Sometimes her eyelids would flutter a little bit and I would go to the end of her hospital bed and stand there so that she would see me if she woke up and opened her eyes up.

I woke up and she had woken up too. She had opened her eyes up, but she couldn’t turn her head to look at me in the other hospital bed. I got up and went around to the end of her hospital bed so that she could see me too.