as that old man down the road from the apartment, hoarding his garden to himself, allowing her only the bittersweet twigs she could steal. Why didn’t he come out and introduce himself, she wondered, instead of watching the world from behind the curtains of a darkened window.
The day after Gabe was hospitalized, Joy picked up Augusta at the train station and dropped her off at the hospital cafeteria so she could refresh herself before going to see him. Joy then went home to catch a nap. The cafeteria had floor-to-ceiling windows looking over landscaped grounds. Augusta found herself a table right by one of these glass walls and, as she drank her tea, a small black rabbit bounded across the lawn right up to the window. Domesticrabbits ran wild over the whole south island. She had seen them on the hospital grounds when visiting friends from the seniors’ centre; rabbits speckled or tan, off-white or black, grazing on the lawns or begging from visitors who fed them limp lettuce from plastic bags. This rabbit of Augusta’s sniffed the glass at her shoes and sat up, clearly begging for food, apparently unaware of the glass that separated them. The rabbit was so trusting that Augusta could hardly believe it. The creature seemed like a gift, a divine comfort. For a moment the anxiety that had tightened her neck slipped away.
After her tea, Augusta found her way to the intensive care unit of the neurology ward. The sign on the door said, “Knock and wait for a nurse to assist you.” Augusta knocked and waited a long time out in the hallway, unsure if she should knock again or not. The pain in her hip gnawed away at her. Some kind soul dressed in white had seen her breathless confusion over the buttons in the elevator, asked her where she was going, pressed the appropriate buttons, and told her which floor to get off at. Then there was another agonizing walk to the nursing station, and still another down a corridor to the door of the unit where her son-in-law lay. She was staring down that hallway at an elderly woman tied into a wheelchair when the nurse finally opened the door. “Gabe Suskind?” Augusta asked her.
“Are you family?”
“I’m his mother.”
The nurse led her into the long narrow room and to a bed occupied by a man Augusta didn’t at first recognize. “Gabe?”
“You can try talking to him if you like,” said the nurse. “But please keep it down.”
It was Gabe lying in the bed, but it also wasn’t. His hair against the pillow was as carroty as ever, but his skin was nearly as white as the sheet he lay on, and none of his expressions was there, certainly not his smile. The nurses were keeping him sedated so he wouldn’t move around, as he had for much of the day before. A bit of dribble slid down the side of his mouth. There was no bee on his lips. Nevertheless, here was the vision she had seen in her kitchen the day she had pulled herself up from the floor to open the door for Joy. She took a handkerchief from her purse and wiped the saliva from the corner of Gabe’s mouth, then leaned into the bed rail. There was no place to sit. One bed was arm’s length from the next, and in between were an assortment of IV stands and drip lines. Augusta shifted her weight carefully, to dampen the pain in her hip and to steady herself, so she wouldn’t hobble and knock something over.
A nurse came and took Gabe’s blood pressure and his pulse; lifted the blanket and checked the catheter and the filling bag of urine. She left Gabe’s bedside without having once acknowledged Augusta’s presence.
Augusta took Gabe’s hand. She didn’t know what else to do. It was limp and cool. The whole room was cool. She could see, now, why the nurses all wore sweaters. Fevers, she guessed; they kept the room cool to help combat fevers. She had done that herself for Joy, so many years ago: immersed her in lukewarm water to help bring down a fever. An old remedy, but it worked. When she took her daughter in to that
Janwillem van de Wetering
Renata McMann, Summer Hanford