Hospitals

1.

I hate hospitals 

Their shiny floors

And intolerable beeping

The disease that is on the loose in the halls

The weak ankles and dull skin of the walkers

The oil paintings strung up by nails that suggest this to be a happy place 

I keep my voice high and positive like I always have for everyone 

When the insides of me are water

My eyes raw from holding it all back 

His room is 5022

I see those silly rubberish socks sticking out of the sheet and his bruised arms are up around his head wrapped in oxygen cords and assorted tubes

I see my Grandpa lying there 

Loose and helpless 

(His chin quivers while they retell the story of his body over again) 

They take him soon 

For more testing 

More ultrasounds of his heart and

To check the size of his spleen and none of us know really what that has to do with his blood anyway 

2. 

It takes hours. 

We sit, the four of us. 

I tried to leave 

Claiming I had so much to do

I cried the entire walk down the elevators into the parking garage 

I made it all the way to my car and knew that this is me hiding

I let all of it out in those walls 

And I went all the way back inside 

To find my family 

To live in the today

And asked God to take care of the rest of it 

3.

Mom reaches over during lunch

The cafeteria is buzzing with Drs. & nurses and patients

We are lost in this building 

Unsure of how to order a hamburger in our grief 

Or what direction to pay in

Grandma tells a story of yesterday

" while Grandpa put on his shoes to come here he looked up at me and told me that these last 67 years of his life married to me have been the best 67 years of his life" 

She doesn't cry, but I do, because I'm a Gentry she says, they're emotional, she says, the rest of us keep it inside, she says

and my Dad tries not to look at me for fear of not knowing what to do with me (he must be a Grimm)

Mom reaches over and wipes at my forehead 

I ask her what she is wiping away 

She tells me lines

Worry lines

That have built their way into my skin

2.

Dr Brenner 

Is a quiet man with words that were solid and understandable 

He spoke slowly so as to try to help us understand what he's saying through his bramble of long words and definitions and capital letters that stand for things having to do with leukemia (the bitch) and bone marrow

But through it all 

He gives us good news 

But just enough

And not too much 

So that we cannot call him a liar later when the actual test results come 

4.

Grandpa was in good spirits then

And finished his pot roast and ice cream carefully with

His thigh exposed by the sheet, 

The white loose undies showing just barely on his hip

And under his buttocks as they move him here and there 

He thanks me for coming 

Twice

Tells me how nice it was, really 

5. 

Life is marked by so many things

Death

Disease 

You can hear it in the nurses voices 

The strain of hope that you find buried there 

But it is also marked by life and beauty 

And I know you aren't supposed to use words like life and beauty and hope in poetry

But I am going to be looking for beauty through it all 

And so it felt like a respectable place 

To put the word