A Breath of Fresh Air

I stepped onto the elevator and watched the doors close slowly, aware of time as a thing with weight.

The doors closed with a thud and the elevator jolted dully into invisible motion, my body falling and rising at once. Guilt washed over me: I had left her alone again. I wondered what it felt like to her when I went away—if it felt like anything at all. I almost hit the “open door” button in a panic but stopped myself. Opening the elevator door in mid-descent wouldn’t help. I imagined the elevator slamming to a halt, the doors cracking apart, leaping out at whatever-floor and running to the stairs to heave myself back up to the room. That wouldn’t happen, though. Nothing would happen. I decided to decide—when I got to the ground—whether to immediately go back up or not.

The doors opened and a torrent of sound rushed in and assaulted me. I stepped out onto the white, tile floor. The great space of the lobby felt like the welcoming center at a business convention that no one was excited about. The place attempted to suggest peace and light, the glass roof letting the Sun shine down upon all the stoic faces of all the nervous souls that milled about or sat on benches or cried into cellphones or pushed the elevator buttons or asked questions at the desk or sent flowers upstairs without delivering them in person. The pain I felt was real and mine alone, but upon seeing everyone in the lobby I was reminded that she and I were just like them: unimportant, just two of millions of people in pain. It made me resent every one of them.

I walked across the great space, suddenly aware of my feet. I put my hands in the pockets of my jacket and tried to look strong, hoping it would make me feel that way. As I passed people and voices and the sounds of shoes squeaking on the clean tile, the overwhelming feeling of being in a dream wrapped itself around me. My eyes lost focus for a second and then reattained it. When I reached two of the fourteen doors that led outside I pushed them open with as much force as I could muster. The act felt good. The doors were heavy and using my body to move them felt like an accomplishment, maybe the only kind that mattered. If you couldn’t push things or pull things or lift things or kick things then what could you do? This is what we are meant for: physical acts. And she was unable to do any of them, now.

The fresh air hit me and I breathed it in greedily. The mid-day Sun hurt my eyes and made them squint, a wondrous pain that I felt lucky to be able to suffer. Maybe they’d let me take her down here in a wheelchair or something, just for a few minutes. Maybe sunlight and fresh air would cure her. As they covered my body and filled my lungs I knew that they were the answer to everything. No one could deny us the source of life, it was ours and everyone’s and would make everything right. I decided that no one should ever die indoors. Ever. Even if the Sun and the Earth and the Air couldn’t save us all, we were meant to return to them. I would never be buried in a coffin; I would be left to rot slowly on the surface and give myself back to the mouths that spit me out in the first place. Maybe if I stood here long enough I would dissolve into millions of tiny particles and float away into the heavens. Maybe I could will it to happen right now and beat her there and argue her case and tell whomever was there that she was too precious to take and that she had gifts, gifts that must be distributed or else civilization would suffer needlessly more than it already had. She was the answer to everything and everyone knows it and why strip the lonely Earth of its one little light?

Someone’s wheelchair bumped into my leg and startled me. The woman who pushed it apologized and I said “excuse me” and suddenly I was back in the bricked courtyard in front of the hospital, my body’s particles holding onto each other whether I liked it or not.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I walked over to a wooden bench under a small tree and faced the hospital.

I looked up at the side of the building, its many windows all the same, and tried to find ours. It would be seven floors up and I counted. But I couldn’t tell which side I was on and where the hallways were and how we’d gotten up there in the first place. Those windows held so much, half-hiding it from the world. I wanted to smash them all. How did they get cleaned? Did people clean the windows while patients were inside the rooms? How dare they clean the windows while we’re in there? Do it later, wait ’til the rooms are empty, cure everyone and then clean the windows.

I hoped that I would see her face appear in one of them, looking down at me and smiling, anxious to tell me the secret of her recovery that she’d realized in a fever dream. But I scanned all of them over and over and I didn’t see her. What if she was trying to stand up right now? What if she was wondering where I’d gone? What if she thought I’d left her alone for good?

I couldn’t stand it. I stood up and walked back through the heavy doors and into the convention center welcoming lobby and up to the wall of elevators and pushed the UP button fifteen times. One opened to my right, four elevators down and I tripped a little as I moved quickly to get there. I laid into the “door close” button but nothing went any faster than usual. I started to sweat, my palms first and then the rest of my skin. My heart pounded in my ears and my breathing quickened. I had pressed the number seven countless times and I knew the button was lit and I knew this machine was taking me there but I pressed it again. The elevator stopped once on floor five and another man around my age walked in and nodded at me and it took everything I had not to punch him in the face.

I hovered as close to the elevator doors as possible, my nose almost touching the center line. Finally they opened and I rushed out and took a left and then a right and then another right and then a left and came to our room and walked in and went to the bed and she was still there.

I forced myself to slow down and leaned in near her face and I could feel her breath. I touched her hand and it was warm. I kissed her cheek and thought I heard her hum. I held her hand and silently begged her to wake up and smile and tell me about the dream that would cure her.

And then a drop of water landed on her forehead. It startled me and I looked up to see what was leaking but there was nothing. I looked back and wiped it off but three more came down and then I realized it was me that was leaking. I lifted my head so as not to drown her. I stared at the three drops on her forehead and wondered if she needed water so I gently rubbed them into her skin, hoping her body would suck them up, use them for good. And then I let myself leak all over my face and shirt, wishing I had a cup to collect all this water that my body so shamefully wasted.

I vowed, then and there, that after I stopped leaking I would never waste another drop of water again. Unless I was collecting it for her.