The hospital doors glide smoothly to allow me to exit. My various badges clatter, announcing my clumsy weariness like nothing ever has. My bag is weighty with uncertainty, the same grime I haven’t washed off my brows. In the past day, I have slept only 4 hours, travelled a 100 miles, met with 4 professors and attended 2 phone interviews. The taste of cheap cafeteria coffee is bitter on my lips. I am not happy, the stress bites like a bug. I am hurrying now.
‘Wait,’ he says. I look around to see a frail man in a wheelchair. ‘Slow down,’
I smirk like he shouldn’t be telling me these things. Do you have any idea how much work I have?
‘Can you wheel me to the Emergency Room please?’ he asks.
‘Yeah sure,’ I say, but I hesitate.
‘It’s easy really, you just press down on the bar in the back and it releases the wheel, try it.’
I awkwardly try and get a hang of this complicated wheel-chair, and I am already frustrated. I feel flustered and angry that I am so openly advertising my failure, that I don’t know how to help a simple man get to the ER.
‘No no, you push down on the metal bar,’ he says gently.
‘I am! It’s not moving!!’ I respond tersely.
‘Calm down, sweetheart, there is time—can someone show her?’
A young teenager in a hoodie approaches me. ‘You got the wrong bar sweet, he means the other one’
‘Oh okay,’ I say, dumbly, turning beetroot. Great, now teenagers know better than me.
When I move the red bar, the wheels squeak. I get a hang of it.
So we begin a brief journey to the ER.
‘What’s your name?’ he asks me, making conversation.
‘Lakshmi,’
‘Oh okay, what’s your last name, Ashley?’
I do not correct him.
‘It’s a hard one,’
‘Temme,’
‘Bharadwaj’
‘Baradwa?’
I smile.
‘Baradwa…baradwa…sounds almost Dutch. I’m Dutch,’
I smile again.
‘How old are you, Ashley?’
‘You could say I’ve crossed 22’
‘Hah! 22, huh? 22…my, my world was tipsy at 22. It was crazy, if I got an offer to return to 22, I would take it’ he trembles.
We approach the ‘No smoking’ sign.
‘Nobody listens to that shit,’ he sniggers. ‘Everybody be smokin outside the hospital like they don’t care. Hey Jimmy, are you smoking today?’ he yells at a middle aged guy in braids, relaxing on a bench.
‘’Nope,’ the guy shakes his head.
‘Don’t trust Jimmy, everybody smokes before it’s too late,’ he tells me, and I nod like I believe him.
‘You are 22,’ he tells me. ‘My son is that age. What does 22 make you?’
‘Well, I’m a 90 born.’
‘Stop stop, stop!’ he demands suddenly. The wheels squeak to the shock of an abrupt halt.
‘Oh my god, are you okay?’ I ask, alarmed.
‘C’mere,’ he says, ‘Read this tattoo,’
He points at a rather badly done tatoo on his wrinkled arm.
‘Yeah, I see it.’
‘When was my son born?’ he asks, ‘I forgot. It says it on there. May…something…’
‘May 9th’ I answer, reading his skin slowly, ascertaining a timeline of births from his tattoos.
‘Yeah, how about that, eh?’
‘Yeah, nice’ I say.
‘I lost my sweetheart 3 years ago…’ he trails off, more to himself than to me.
‘Oh, How?’
‘Death,’ he answers simply, like ‘death’ summarized every inevitable end.
I don’t know what to say.
‘Well, we are here—thank you so much.’ he tells me. I brush it off. ‘Ok no problem, I have to go!’
Slow down. Slow down. Slow down. You look like you have so much work to do.
‘You are a beautiful young lady, you know that? You have a great life ahead of you.’
The words arrest me with the simplicity of their blessings.
‘Thank you,’ I smile
‘You work in labs, huh?’
‘Haha yeah,’ I tell him, ‘Research’
‘What do you research?’
‘Arthritis,’ I answer vaguely.
‘Well, you go do that research, save some lives or something.’
‘It was nice seeing you,’ I tell him.
‘Wait…’ he stops me.
What now?
‘C’mere’
And he then hands me a small necklace made of tiny conch shells. He wraps it around my arm clumsily. A little memory of the sea surrounds my wrists.
‘This is something valuable’ his trembling body seems to say, ‘Something very important to me,’
‘This—for the help,’ he tells me, ‘This is all I can give you, I don’t have much left to give…..keep it safe’
I am so touched.
‘No no no,’ I protest, ‘This is very important to you’
‘No,’ his smile betrays, ‘We eventually have to let go, we eventually have to bequeath. This is how you love.’
