Hospital Waiting Room

               Television always plays more commercials than entertainment. At least that’s what it feels like in the hospital waiting room.
               My husband had been back in surgery for thirty minutes before I finally felt comfortable looking around the room. My straight spine relaxed into the chair and I turned my neck this way and that, clicking as I rotated it around on my shoulders.

                The CT scans had come back clear, the best news of today. So if the irregularity was cancerous, at least it was contained, for now.  But for thirty minutes, I could not shake the agitation of expecting the worst. What if my husband contributed to the small percentage of people who had severe complications? What if he added to the mortality rate? Those statistics were a reality for someone.

                I remembered our last kiss. Was it the last time I would feel his lips respond to mine? My fingers had wrapped around the back of his head, pulling his face closer, pressing with more strength, lingering even though the anesthesiologist waited.

A good man, our pain doctor, cheery. A family friend. When he texted that he changed his day’s schedule so that he could take care of Dustin, I brushed away the tears. Such a kind gesture.

He gave Dustin a short-term amnesia-causing drug. But my fun husband wanted to remember. So I chuckled, as his face twisted in concentration, an effort to imprint his journey to the operating room, determined to beat the meds. Comforted by my spouse’s never-ending good nature, my heart warmed as he rolled down the hallway.

                Good memories to turn over and around in my mind now that I sat here waiting. Much better than the what-if questions that plague me in the middle of the night. Better than discussing our life insurance plans and making contingency preparations. He would live. He knew it. I knew it. But I worried about complications.

                My comfort in the waiting room increased enough that I began to study my fellow wait-ers. People who would never normally be together, brought to share the same space in difficult circumstances, we participated together in sometimes trying news. As each doctor arrived to share the results of surgery, the rest of us pretended we didn’t hear the prognosis. But it was difficult to ignore, “If he smokes again, even one more pack, he will die.” Or the “I’ve done all I can. At this point, we watch and wait and hope for the best.”

                When our friend-anesthesiologist stepped in to greet me, gone were the clinical patient/doctor lines. He embraced me. “It looked great. He’s doing well. They will call you back as soon as they get him out of recovery.” And he explained a couple important details.

Relief filled me.

Life might be different than we’ve ever known it to be from here on out, but it was life. And life could be lived, adapted, tried, failed, conquered, but most importantly, lived.