man/wife

The waiting room remains stale, all coffee pots and frayed magazines, the smell and colors not sterile enough. The waiting room doesn't change names when I'm not waiting anymore. The waiting room is for waiting, all nervous handed, for the man with the smooth voice and cookie baking wife you'd met with earlier in the fall. Doctors pass through in their blue and white, and the occupants sit on their own, carpet gazing, avoiding eyes or doorways. The television blares the network news, as if there is a world outside.

It's strange to sit here with my dad growing cold. He is still in a room down the hall with the yellow roses and the window view parking lot. His eyes are closed because a nurse shut them for him, the same nurse with sweet brown eyes who fluffed his pillow and sponged his back. My dad might come walking into the waiting room, IV dragging behind, hospital gown gaping open, lacking all dignity with knees knocking. He can't, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did.

It takes four days to happen. In four days my hair turns dark with oil. In four days I read the same interview in the magazine from April and it is personal and I know the answers behind your vague wording. It's nothing personal, it's publicity, you don't have to say it again. The freckle on your lip has been airbrushed away. The missing band on your finger didn't need to be. It takes four days of little sleep, no eating, my father and I suffering together. It takes four days and then, the morning the sun first breaks and starts to melt the snow.

Cole, when we met you told me the greatest thing about yourself, hiccuping from excess, you said the greatest thing about yourself was that you will never mess up this bridge and then you dove head first into the chorus of the song on the radio, the song for some different girl, one more natural than me. You bellowed the words down the stairwell as I left that night, a voice you only use on new girls. The words, worth repeating. I thought I could say them but you never wanted me to, did you? I look for trace amounts of that voice on the answering machine, our source of contact, but it's not there. This is Cole and Anna, leave a message. By tonight I will be erasing my own voice.

My dad is giving you his guitar, a Hummingbird, and you don't care. I'm in white, a shorter dress for the reception, a back yard bar b q at my parent's ranch. Play a song, Cole, play a song! Faces change from excitement to acceptance and the silence recedes into polite conversation. Instead you play modesty, thank my dad quietly and retreat once more. I think you're shy. He needed it more than you.

My dad's lungs are full of fluid but his eyes still so wide the day you call me from one state away.
"How is he doing?" you ask.
"Not well. I think we're going to the hospital."
"When?" you ask.
"Today. We'll see. He doesn't want to go, but if it's not better this time tomorrow, we have to."
"It's that serious?" you ask. "I didn't know."
"It's happened before and things ended up fine. It's seeing my father like this--he's like a child, I just--" I shutter, on accident, and cover my mouth. My voice comes out next foreign and warbling. "Cole, I just--"
"I'm coming back," you say.
There is silence on my side of the phone. My eyes are shut tight and I'm up against a wall.
"After tonight," you say.

My dad's eyes are closed, but he can feel me watching him through his sleep. I know this because his hand reaches up, weak as it is, and scratches the place on his cheek I am staring at. My back is turned to you, but I can feel you in the door way now, three and a half days late. You place yellow roses in my lap, for him, and I turn my head. I ask you to meet me in the waiting room in just a few minutes, dad's a light sleeper and he just fell asleep for the first time in-- you leave. My eyes shut again, this time not to black. The glare from the window makes everything white, red. My dad's lips are on my eyelids. My dad can feel my eyes moving beneath them, the warmth spilling down my cheeks. I open my eyes and my dad is still there. I open my eyes and my dad is still gone.

In the waiting room the magazine sits in front of you, cover facing down. I imagine:

Cole sits in the waiting room. In the stuffy room he feels itchy around his collar, his cuffs. This morning he put on the sweater Anna bought him but now regrets his choice. What did Cole think, that (even now) she would fawn over him, how the sweater matches his eyes? On the table before him sit magazines for homes and gardens with recipes and diets. He flips through the one magazine for men, months dated. Cole stumbles upon his own article, an interview in a Brooklyn bistro, the source of indigestion. Cole sees his picture doctored at the hand of some waiting person, a small, dark ring drawn around his finger. Cole shuts the magazine and puts it cover down on the table, feels his face burn and looks away.

I lied:
Doctors must learn to speak with non-threatening voices. We're sorry, Anna he says and I thank him, a habit. I place a phone call to the man with a smooth voice and cookie baking wife, let him know the arrangements will be needed in a few days. I return to the now crowded waiting room, sit between you and a stranger reading your interview unknowingly. I see the ring I had drawn on the page days earlier, when my dad was he is, rather than he was. Neither of us say anything. I rest my head on your shoulder.