Hospital Stay

This day was just like any other. It had started just like any other, and had progressed like all the rest. The day, however, did not end like any other. No, by the time this one day had ended, Gordon Weller had learned so much. He had died. 

         Gordon did not see his death coming, more like, he waited for it to come, because Gordon Weller had spent the vast majority of his twelve years on earth in a plain white room with strange men in white coats all looking astonished that Gordon had made it as far as he did.

         This afternoon, Gordon had woken with a pain in his chest, and a throbbing headache. Yep, just another regular morning. Gordon had just begun to accept that he was never going to get better, when his vision blurred and he dozed off. The trouble was, Gordon had actually just died.

         Gordon was reasonably upset. He had just died, for Christ's sake! He had the understanding that today was Tuesday, and Tuesday happened to be meatloaf for breakfast day in the pediatrics ward he was in. But no meatloaf ever came to Gordon. No, Gordon was in a far away land. He didn't know what to call it, but he could only describe it as one of those fields off in the plains of the mid-west that he saw in those magazines the nurses brought in.

         He saw many things in this hay field. A white tablecloth thrown over a round table with only one person seated. This person was very old. He looked as if he could easily push ninety years old. There was another seat at this table, however, no one occupied it. The man had his head down, and looked as if he were crying. When Gordon approached him, the old man did nothing. He simply sat there and waited. He waited and cried. With tears streaming down it, the old man's face was a landscape of wrinkles. A lone scar ran down his chin from a war very long ago. His black rimmed  glasses were old and cracked down the side of the lens, as though he had the same pair since the days in his youth. The table was set for two at a romantic dinner, with candles and silverware aplenty. The old man wore a black beret that was crooked to one side. His nose was oddly misshaped, as though it were broken many times and healed all those years ago.

         Gordon stepped past the weeping man and climbed over a small mound. What he saw was a marriage. Gordon had never been to a wedding before because he had been stuck in a hospital room with God knows how many tubes sticking out of his arm. Gordon watched peacefully from the ridge and waited. What he noticed was that this marriage never finished. It was as if  someone were pressing  'Stop' and 'Rewind' all the time. The Groom always  proceeded to the back and always walked back up the aisle to his ever-awaiting bride. The Bride always accepted his ring as if it were never even given to her before. This was a rehearsal for a wedding to never come.

         Gordon looked on as though he were a fly on the wall. He watched their faces and their expressions. The bride crying with tears of joy, and the groom brimming with the face lit up like a Friday night on The Strip. He watched the pride from the bride's father, and the sense of accomplishment on the groom's mother, beaming like a spotlight.

         Sitting on that ridge made Gordon realize something. He realized that even though he had experienced so much in the hospital, he had that much more to actually live. He had become the poster child for charities and donation banks. He had gotten used to the routine of the T.V cameras and reporters coming in that he almost forgot that he was never going to get better. Sitting on that ridge made Gordon realize that there was more outside those plain hospital walls, and that there was actually a world moving right past him, as he sat in the passenger seat.

         What Gordon didn't realize was that he was in other people's heaven. The weeping man was waiting for his wife to die, as she slowly rotted in the home that he built, dying from an incurable disease. The marriage was the bride's heaven. She was killed on the way to the church, so all she had were memories of the wedding rehearsals, just for her to die in an automobile accident. The groom would be waiting for his bride at the alter, only to learn that his dearly beloved had died tragically.

         When Gordon watched these events unfold, he sat there wondering. He wondered about his own future that never come. He thought about his wife, and their wedding day that would never arrive. He pondered about his kids never being born, and how they would never paint him pictures in macaroni and glue. He dwelled upon the fact that he wouldn't see his kids graduate high school, and later college. He knew in his heart that he would never be able to hold his own grandchildren.

         This day was like any other, except that it wasn't. Today, Gordon Weller died.