Veteran

There are so many worlds, one giving over to another. Suddenly--like that--I was on my own. I got up and looked into the cloudy mirror in the bedroom where my father slept. I had no color. I was white. I took my shoes off and lay down on the bed for a minute, slipping immediately into a waking sleep, thoughts transforming into dreams, and then I went down, deeper, deeper, underwater, moving in slow motion, light fading, colors turning blue.

When I woke up, I was thrashing at the covers, yelling, sweating. I knew I had dreamed something terrible, but I didn't know what. I sat up, not quite waking, the world remaining at a distance, almost within reach, lit from within, it seemed, translucent. I went to the fridge and got some milk, drinking it from the carton. I looked out the window at the sunshine and the shadow. The day was bright. The mail truck drove by, incongruous. There is tragedy, I felt without being able to form the words. I did not think words. What words could say this?

Sitting in the waiting room of the intensive care ward, I looked around. All the faces looked the same, eyes cast down, lips touching, flat. I could only see my father a few minutes at a time. His faced had changed now, from the fear and embarrassment and disappointment. Over the days, a slow acceptance would sink in, the new world, one replacing another. He would be on the respirator for a month, they said. But he had made it through the roughest part. The worst dangers were passing every moment and soon there would be just this, the injury and the healing and then the adapting. No, they did not say all that.

That night, I sat next to a woman whose husband had just been brought in. I watched her as she shivered and shook on the plastic covered couch. "Take this," I said, handing her my coat. "It's cold in here the first night."