The Patients Are…

…surprisingly quiet. They make little noise.

Of course there exceptions. The woman in the bed in the room next to my mother's who called out regularly, monotonously, once a second, like the pained turning of the smallest hand of the clock, Help. Help, Help. A nurse would appear. The sound would stop for ten minutes to an hour. Then resume.  To whom did she appeal and why? I never knew. She was simply gone one morning. And her voice, her call, her understated panic vanished with her.

Then there was the man down the hall. I never saw his face. His room was shadowed. I saw him in the bed. The covers up to his chin. His face directed to the TV on the wall, but not (I think) seeing it. He, too, would call. In his case, a name. A woman's name. A wife perhaps? Someone already dead? (Or, worse, indifferent?) In any case, whoever she was, she did not come. He was not comforted. And one day too his room was empty. The ambulances appear as a rule at night, you see. They are not perceived.

But, for the most part, they…the patients… are quiet. In their beds. In their chairs. Terribly quiet.

*

There are three sorts. Patients I mean. There is the non-ambulatory sort. The people who never leave their beds. Or, if they do, then it is only through the intervention of nurses and aides and machines…for example, a device that is somewhere between a large sling and a small forklift. It lefts them up, out, swings them away from the miraculous inflating/deflating bed that fights bedsores and brings them, gently as possible, into the wheeled chair. Then, after a sojourn in the sun or the front office, it swings them back again.

My mother is one such.

The second sort: The semi-ambulatory. These come and go with rather greater ease. They do not spend the whole day prone. They are assisted out of their beds into their chairs and then rolled about to various destinations—the large front room, where the nurses or aides read to them; the dining area where they are given their meals (if they can feed themselves), various functions here and there, sometimes to the little Van that takes them on outings. The State Fair, for example.

The third sort: The fully or at least mostly ambulatory. They are here for recovery from some devastation or another. A fall perhaps. A shattered hip. A replaced knee. Pneumonia. They move about the halls not in chairs but with walkers. In time, they may go home. To some home or another. Probably not to care entirely for themselves. But, perhaps with a home health aide. A daughter or son. Someone.

*

There is crossover between the three groups. Sometimes, rather improbably, (I hope, one day, my mother) the non-ambulatory will transit to the middle. One morning, one afternoon, a patient will show such improvement that they are able to move, to speak, to command the relative autonomy of their very own wheelchair. Perhaps even go home to the care of a family or of a personal attendant.

However, the more usual course (alas!) is the other way. Someone checks in expecting to be here only a few days, a week or so at most, just until they're "back on their feet." Only, it doesn’t happen that way. They do not regain their feet. Perhaps the feet do not regain their former function…instead weaken, blacken, must be amputated. The walker gives way to the chair. The chair to the bed. The bed to…well, where-ever it is that one goes to from there.

Which is an interesting thought, is it not? Could I perhaps have it backwards?

*

I wondered thus as I walked past a room today, one near my mother's. In it was a woman I've seen here before. She is ancient. Far older than either of my parents. Her hair is utter-most white. She is motionless. Has been motionless the last month.

She lies in her bed. She looks toward the ceiling. I've never heard her speak. The nurses switch off the lights. Apparently their brightness bothers her. What illumination there is in the room leaks from the window in the tight white projections (almost spectral) of a Venetian blind. Plus, there is, of course, the silver flicking of the obligatory television tuned to no station in particular. So all her flesh is pearl in color…hair, face, hands…while the body is clothed in the black of a coverlet that reaches to her chest.

She is the least ambulatory, the least mobile of anyone.

And yet. And yet. Somehow, I feel a kind of tension when I see her. A bowstring tautness. Something of the preparation. The moment without motion. The second before the anticipation. The waiting before the flash and the blur. The diver on the board. The gathering of nerve. The catching of the breath.  The strain. Then… action. The leap. Thus what is most without motion is the most in movement. The least mobile the most upon the wing.

And the woman, the others…they shimmer in their shadowed rooms, possess the illusion of silence, know however the great secret of stillness.

To wit, that it contains the flight. And within the breathless dim is discovered …the fury, the flurry, the exaltation…

The exit…

The child's laugh.

The final bell before the summer's boundless energy.

And speed.