Read Kalila for Free Online Page B

this hospital.
    Whither thou goest I will go
    Wherever thou lodgest I will lodge
    Thy people will be my people, my love .
    Yoked to this dreaded family of sick babies, prim receptionists, smoking relatives, green-suited floor polishers, anxious nurses, taciturn doctors.
    A mother enters the waiting room, a runny-nosed three-year-old whining at her leg. Hands smoothing her daughter’s fruit-embroidered dress, she tells me the hospital is threatening foster care if she doesn’t visit her baby more often.
    They’re telling me my constant presence is getting in the way.
    Sepsis: infection of a wound or body tissues with bacteria.
    Cyanosis: a bluish colouration of the skin and mucus membrane. A sign of heart disorder, lung damage, fluid in the lungs.
    I want to strike at the thick smoke of their secrets.
    If I didn’t care
    More than words can say …
    The mother stands, watching me write. The child wants to colour in my dictionary.
    My dictionary won’t transform itself into pretty pictures.
    What’s wrong with your baby then? the child says.
    What a question! Let’s fill in the blanks. Give us an E, Vanna. Are there any Es?
    Does she look funny? Does your baby smell? Ours does. Today …
    The mother takes the child’s arm, turns her away, covers the child’s eyes.
    Peek a boo , singsongs the mother,
    I see you ,
    No, I don’t!
    Yes, I do!!
    What kind of psycho made up a disappearing baby game?
    Rhonchi: a rattling.
    Rales: an abnormal sound heard on auscultation of the chest.
    Auscultation: listening to the heart, lungs, organs with a stethoscope.
    Once, I was safe. Once, I owned myself. Now, not even my grief is mine. The hospital owns it. I can rent, make withdrawals, like books on a library card. Time’s up. Hand it over. Bear it. Buck up. Grow up. Quit snivelling. A headache at the centre of the storm. I want to strike at them. Instead I put my arms into my coat and carry my four-pound dictionary out into the ordinary world, into the harsh cold swell of winter. Ache in the gut. Pretend you chose this. Pretend you deserve this. It makes the explosions in the lungs easier to bear.

You walk the railroad tracks while Skipper bounds into the bushes, scares out birds, and splashes into the river, barking. You throw a stick. Sunlight travels the water. Skipper, tail spinning propellerlike, retrieves, and, coughing, gagging, throat-clearing, aims his bedraggled self toward shore, but the current carries him downstream and, thrashing sideways, he disappears. After some time you hear him crashing through the bush and here he is, stick clamped between his teeth. He drops it at your feet, shakes himself all over your shoes. When you make to throw the stick again, Skipper snatches it up, and there ensues a tug-of-war, Skipper growling, tail wagging, till you wrest it free and fling the stick again.
    The path here in Edworthy Park is lined by caragana bushes, dying with autumn. The intensity of a light wave follows the inverse square law. It radiates out from the source, the intensity decreasing as it travels through space. Science is how you separate truth from ideology, from foolish, unproven beliefs. Physics governs the world you used to know. That world has shifted, tilted off its orbit. You have stumbled into a universe of uncertainty. What porthole will see you through? The wind sings in the trees. You read somewhere that Australian aboriginals believe the world was sung into existence, that their belief system holds song lines, pathways that connect the landscape to a story each life tells. You picture yourself standing in these caragana bushes, lifting your voice to the stars. You smile ruefully. You can’t carry a tune. The article said each geographic contour emits its own unique song. You stand still, listen to the grasses. Once, you knew what questions needed asking. Science brought you that. Wind shushes in the trees. The splash of water. Skipper dives for the stick a