Half-Light

Lightening flashes, thunder crashes, plates begin to break. Sometimes it all goes terribly wrong, and sometimes we are at fault. I was. Lazy, maybe, inattentive, I place things in precarious positions. It felt as if Freud was right about there being no accidents. I clean the mess and feel sad about the cat's bowl. I put her water out in something plastic. She sniffs it, backs up, sniffs again. I wonder if there is any sentiment? Rats in the alley. I am bored. I try a film, then a book. The big, soft couch is uncomfortable. That is a sure sign of trouble. Discontent. Do I need a beating, I wonder, or am I taking one? Outside, the big storm without rain continues. Flash, bang, and rumble. The tree branches dance dangerously in gusts. Where is the rain?

Eliot said it better. I hate that hideous Mr. Eliot.

* * * * * * *

The weekend over, the Super Bowl played, the perfect season finished, I wake. Monday. People return to their daily lives. A version of reality sets in. Healing. It will take a long time.

The nurses are different and don't seem as nice. Everything has a harder edge. The floor is noisier. Unable to walk further than the bathroom, I am stuck in bed. Magazines. Television.

I am visited by a woman across the hallway. She is older, in her thirties, and of a different sensibility. Her hair is up, composed, sprayed. She wears makeup. She talks a lot, I think, just talks. I have little to say. Maybe she's bored, I think, though I wonder why she chooses me for her confidences. After a long while, she is gone. I try to read, but it is difficult. I watch television. In a little while, I push the button that calls the nurses station. A few moments later, a woman in a white uniform enters the room.

"Hello," she says. "What do you need?"

"I'm really hurting. I wondered if I can get something for it?"

"OK," she says. "Let me check."

A little while later, she comes back.

"I'm sorry. It says that you turned down your pain killer yesterday. We are not allowed to give you any now."

I just look at her for a minute. I don't know what to say, how to negotiate this.

"I wanted to watch the Super Bowl," I say dumbly.

"I'm sorry, honey, but I can't. You want anything else?"

But even without the pain killer, I sleep.

In the afternoon, my mother calls. Later, my father. They each ask how I am doing. My mother lives close by and says she will come after work. My father lives further away and I tell him not to come, that I am OK. My mother comes straight from work and stays a few minutes, then says she has to get home to cook supper.

The nurses change shifts. The one I like, the cute one, is back on duty. She comes in and says hello and tells me she will come back later to change my bandages. Dinner comes on its plastic tray. As always, I ask for more milk.

Outside my window is a lake surrounded by pines over which the sun sets. I think of the cool winter air I love so much and am tired of being inside. The air is like crystal, the lake shimmering. I imagine the breeze on my skin, the deep smell of the grasses, the deep, sweet melancholy that walking in a southern winter at sunset always provides.

After dark, when things are quiet again, the young nurse comes back to clean me. I roll to my stomach and cannot see her. I feel her hands on me, hear her voice go hospital quiet.

"Let me know if I hurt you," she says.

My mind turns round. I am naked and conscious of her. She is quiet, too.

When she leaves, I lie alone and think about her, my body relaxed but my mind a carnival. Tonight, she has said, she will bring me something for pain.

Moments later, the woman from across the hallway comes into my room. She is not wearing the hospital gown she had on earlier but something of her own. She should not be parading around the hallways in that, I think, but she is not parading around the hallways. She is in my room. And she begins to talk, her voice so much different from the nurse's voice, more like a performance than real, less intimate. She comes close to my bed, and I smell her harsh perfume. She is telling me about her husband. He is gone a lot of the time, she says. He is not at home much. She tells me she likes talking to me and moves beside me. Maybe I would come over when I get out of the hospital and on my feet. She will give me her number. I look at her like a deaf and dumb pencil peddler. I don't know what to say. When she reaches out to touch me, I feel an impulse to jump up and move, but I can't. I am trapped. Then suddenly, I don't mind as much. I do what you are supposed to do, I think. I reach up and touch her. "I can't," she tells me. "I just had a hysterectomy."

When she is gone, I do not notice the time passing. Things are different, somehow, changing. Slowly, I get myself up and shuffle across the floor to the bathroom. Leaning on the sink, I look into the mirror for a long while. I don't know, I think. You can't really see yourself in a mirror. You try, but you can't. I try looking into my eyes, but it is impossible. One or the other. Left, right, left, right.

I give up and go back to bed. The room is crepuscular. I lay in the half-light, waiting.