Moment in Time: Breathe

There is a moment between breaths in which the human body makes that decision to move, to fill your lungs with oxygen, to survive. Typically, this is as quick as the automatic firing of a synapse connection and there is no extra thinking or worrying involved.

Of course, hospice tends to screw with everything typical.

When you can’t remember what time it save the number of seconds since he last breathed, when the last thing you ate was slider from White Castle (the relatives bought two cases to share in the waiting room down the hall; you grabbed one, mostly reminded of how it’s his favorite and too tired to eat), when there’s twenty people crowding into that tiny, foreign room and you’re the only one there – things are never, ever typical. Typical is exactly six months away, back on a street called Arlington in a small white house at the end of the cul-de-sac filled with memories of a wasted summer of the Super Nintendo and ice cream and grandchildren and a trucker finally returning home after such a long trip.

This is not typical.

Your hand is clamped around his wrist – so thin now, after these six months; he used to be a round man, but he’s all skin and bones now, intravenous port sticking up just above his heart so much when you happen to see it you want to look away from it but you can’t. (It’s hidden now by hospital sheets that smell like stale piss and cheap Clorox, tucked neatly around his torso but under his arms, him lying there just like he’s d – ) He stares at the ceiling so he can’t see you kneeling on the floor, knees sore - but it’s not like you care right now because there are more important things going on. You’ve got this feeling he knows you’re there anyways.

You’re breathing the numbers out, maybe too softly for anyone to hear or maybe at the top of your lungs, working up to ten before you choke from lack of air.

One, two, three.

“David!”

One breath. One decision that only means the firing of some synapse for you but takes your voice, cracked and strained and broken and hoarse, calling his name to tip the scales for him.

Four, five, six.

“David, please!”

Seven, eight.

One more decision.

Nine.

“Please, David - oh god, please. David...”

Ten.

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(400 words; A Moment in Time contest entry, round two. Prompt: Write at least 400 words (no more than 600 words) about a single moment in time that means something to you.

Dedicated to David Ruzanka, who died of cancer in Sts. Mary and Elizabeth Hospital on the third of October, 2006, and to his wife, my grandmother who stayed with him until the very end.)