The hospital room became the center of my world.<\/p>\n
I stopped thinking about the house.<\/p>\n
I stopped thinking about the things I had left unfinished.<\/p>\n
Even the phone calls I had made before coming to Knoxville seemed far away.<\/p>\n
There was only Maggie in that bed and the hope that she would open her eyes.<\/p>\n
I kept my phone beside me.<\/p>\n
Every time it moved or made a sound, I reached for it.<\/p>\n
Most of the time, it was nothing important.<\/p>\n
A message about an ordinary matter.<\/p>\n
A notification I would normally have ignored.<\/p>\n
I began turning the phone facedown between calls because I couldn't stand the way I reacted to every little sound.<\/p>\n
I had spent days waiting for Maggie to contact me.<\/p>\n
Now that I was beside her, I wished I could take back all the time I had spent waiting at home.<\/p>\n
I knew I couldn't.<\/p>\n
That was the problem with regret.<\/p>\n
It offered no useful place to go.<\/p>\n
A nurse came in to check Maggie again.<\/p>\n
I stepped aside and watched quietly.<\/p>\n
When she finished, I asked whether Maggie seemed any more responsive.<\/p>\n
The nurse explained that her condition was being monitored and that they needed to allow time for the effects of the medication to lessen.<\/p>\n
I thanked her.<\/p>\n
Then I returned to the chair.<\/p>\n
The chair had a hard back and a narrow seat.<\/p>\n
After a while, my legs began to ache.<\/p>\n
I barely noticed.<\/p>\n
I kept looking at Maggie's hand.<\/p>\n
I had held that hand for years.<\/p>\n
I had held it while we walked through crowded places, while we sat together in waiting rooms, and while we listened to difficult news about people we loved.<\/p>\n
I had held it so often that I had stopped thinking about what it meant.<\/p>\n
Now I was afraid to let go.<\/p>\n
I remembered the morning she left.<\/p>\n
She had carried her bag to the car without asking for help.<\/p>\n
I had offered to drive her, and she had declined.<\/p>\n
At the time, I thought nothing of it.<\/p>\n
Now I wondered whether I should have insisted on taking her.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I could have spent the drive talking to her.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I would have noticed something that mattered.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps the same thing would have happened regardless.<\/p>\n
I had no way to know.<\/p>\n
I tried not to build a different past in my head.<\/p>\n
It was difficult.<\/p>\n
At some point, I realized I was hungry.<\/p>\n
I went to the hospital cafeteria and bought a sandwich.<\/p>\n
I carried it back to the room and set it beside my phone.<\/p>\n
I ate a few bites without tasting anything.<\/p>\n
Then I folded the wrapper and put it in the bin.<\/p>\n
When I returned to the chair, I noticed how quiet the room had become.<\/p>\n
The sounds from the corridor were muffled by the door.<\/p>\n
Maggie lay still beneath the blanket.<\/p>\n
I wanted to ask her questions.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know whether she remembered arriving in Knoxville.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know what our son had told her.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know whether she had felt sick before she became unable to answer her phone.<\/p>\n
But asking those questions while she couldn't respond felt pointless.<\/p>\n
So I waited.<\/p>\n
Waiting had become something I knew how to do.<\/p>\n
I only wished I had learned sooner when waiting was the wrong choice.<\/p>\n
The doctor stopped by again to explain that the team was continuing to assess Maggie's condition.<\/p>\n
I asked whether there was anything I could do.<\/p>\n
She told me that being present and providing information about Maggie's usual health and medications could be helpful.<\/p>\n
I explained that Maggie rarely took medicine.<\/p>\n
I told her I knew of no strong sedative prescription she was using.<\/p>\n
I tried to be precise.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to make a statement that sounded more certain than I could honestly be.<\/p>\n
There might have been something I didn't know.<\/p>\n
That possibility bothered me.<\/p>\n
A marriage could last for years without either person knowing every detail about the other's life.<\/p>\n
I had always thought that was normal.<\/p>\n
Now I wondered whether I had mistaken privacy for understanding.<\/p>\n
The doctor listened and made a note.<\/p>\n
She didn't treat my uncertainty as an answer.<\/p>\n
She simply took it into account.<\/p>\n
After she left, I looked at Maggie again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish you'd told me you were having trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stopped.<\/p>\n
I couldn't know whether she had been having trouble before she became ill.<\/p>\n
I was speaking to the version of the story I had built in my head.<\/p>\n
I corrected myself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish I knew what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was the truth.<\/p>\n
I wasn't angry with Maggie.<\/p>\n
Not anymore.<\/p>\n
I was frightened, and fear kept trying to turn itself into questions I couldn't answer.<\/p>\n
I leaned back in the chair.<\/p>\n
The hospital clock continued to move.<\/p>\n
At home, I had watched a clock while waiting for her to call.<\/p>\n
Here, I watched another one while hoping she would wake.<\/p>\n
The difference was that I could no longer pretend the hours were ordinary.<\/p>\n
A nurse asked whether I wanted to step out for a little while.<\/p>\n
I told her I was all right.<\/p>\n
She didn't argue.<\/p>\n
She only reminded me that I could call for help if I needed anything.<\/p>\n
I appreciated her kindness.<\/p>\n
I also felt embarrassed that a stranger had to remind me to take care of myself.<\/p>\n
Maggie would have told me to eat something.<\/p>\n
She would have told me not to sit in one place until my back hurt.<\/p>\n
She would have said I was no use to anybody if I made myself sick.<\/p>\n
I could almost hear her saying it.<\/p>\n
For a moment, the memory made me smile.<\/p>\n
Then the smile disappeared.<\/p>\n
I reached for her hand again.<\/p>\n
I didn't know when she would be able to speak.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what she would remember.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether the explanation would be simple or complicated.<\/p>\n
But I knew I needed to hear her side of those four days.<\/p>\n
Not because I wanted someone to blame.<\/p>\n
Because I wanted to understand what had happened to my wife.<\/p>\n
And because, for the first time in our marriage, I was afraid that there might be something important about her suffering that I had never noticed.<\/p>\n
The hospital room became the center of my world. I stopped thinking about the house. I stopped thinking about the things I had left unfinished. Even the phone calls I … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37913,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37897\/revisions\/37913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}