Drop me at the ER entrance, you tell the driver, impatient on the Upper East Side. You don't love a hospital, but you don't fear it so much, anymore. We've been here before. You like to think you've gotten better at some things in life.
When your grandmother forgot your name and couldn't go outside anymore, did you not walk her down the hospital corridors looking at paintings and pretending you were at an art gallery? She asked you to stop at a window, said the light is so special here up north, and you nodded even though you were nowhere near the polar village where she grew up. It really is, you said, and then she called you by your mother's name.
I overstayed visiting hours and walked out of her room wrung dry. The corridor was quiet, dark after hours. The nurses kept a dinner tray for me, told me to sit down and eat a bit before I left. Told me there was no rush. Hospitals are sterile mazes of inexplicable events, but there's a warmth in the walls, a suspension of reality that carries you through. I keep my fingers crossed some of that air will come to 67th street. The year lies long ahead, but the cherry trees are in blossom and the evenings are mild. He returns to bed, takes heavy breaths into the future, you learn a little more about yourself each time the world around you shudders.
There's no telling what else
lies ahead.
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