Regulars

Ellen sits on one of the greasy vinyl chairs in the crowded alcove just outside the hospital ward. A book is open on her lap, but she's too restless to read. To while away the time she looks around at the afternoon visitors. A man in a business suit stalks up and down, shooting his cuff to glance malevolently at his watch. Another man, this one in a cowboy hat and boots, sits hunched over, twisting his fingers as though trying to jerk them loose from the palm. A teenaged girl in jean shorts hanging precariously from her hipbones sighs impatiently, and with each sigh her belly button winks like a third eye. Usually the visitors are there for a day or two and then vanish. Ellen wonders whether the patient has died or the ailment was trivial—a new baby, a broken leg—hardly worth the fuss, the time lost from work.

When a haggard blond woman and a little girl in crisp overalls come into the alcove, Ellen closes her book and stands up. "I'm just leaving," she says. She heads for the swinging doors to the ward. Sometimes she can go in a few minutes early.

* * *

The intensive-care nurse sits at a wall of computer screens and machines, reading the vital signs of the three patients. Henry is in the bed nearest the door, his eyes closed, his mouth ajar. Tubes dangle from his nose, his mouth, his arm, from under the sheet. There's a glistening trail of spit from the corner of his mouth down his chin. He would hate that. Ellen pulls a tissue from the packet she carries and carefully wipes his mouth. She kisses him on his lips and rests her head against his. There is no response. She knows that he is dying and that there is nothing the nurses, the doctors, the machines can do. Nothing she can do.

* * *

As she enters her condo she picks up a box left between the screen and the front door. Lady Godiva chocolates. Good, she thinks. No wilting flowers and stagnant water to throw out, no soured chicken salad to shove down the disposal. When Henry first had the stroke, their friends came to the hospital to spend long hours with her. But, when they held her hand and sympathized and talked about Henry, it took all her energy to control her emotions and not cry. She doesn't want to cry. Even though she knows it's futile, when she goes into the icu she wants to be upbeat and hopeful, not red-eyed and depleted. It is much easier when she's surrounded by strangers.

After the first three days she had told her friends she needed to be alone at the hospital, and they had understood. So now they leave casseroles and salads and flowers at her door. She sets the Lady Godiva box on the coffee table. She'll write a note of thanks later. For now she just wants to go to bed and try to sleep.

* * *

The weather turns overnight, and it is drizzling by the next morning. After her first visit to Henry, Ellen goes into the empty alcove. She picks up an old National Geographic with the corner torn off—the contribution of some doctor not wanting to reveal a home address—and starts to read an article on chimpanzees in the Congo.

Soon a man comes in and drops like a heavy sack of flour into a chair. She recognizes the cowboy hat with its stain of sweat around the crown. He was there yesterday and, yes, the day before that and perhaps the whole twelve days that she has been there. About her age, late forties or so. Cheeks and chin in need of a shave, light blue shirt in need of a wash. Large bones, leathery skin, shaggy reddish-brown hair hanging below the ludicrous hat. A coarse, ugly man—cousin of a chimp.

She lowers her eyes and tries to read, but the print slips and slides across the page. Why isn't that oaf lying in there instead of...