Hospitals must rank among the hardest places to sleep.
Besides the fluorescent lighting and 5:00 a.m. blood draws, doctors’ pagers go off. The nurses get alerts from robotic voices crackling from walkie-talkies hung around their necks. Heavy food carts rumble by and the wheels on IV poles squeak as patients push them on laps around the unit. Sometimes you hear the most miserable among them groan, cough or spit. Once a woman who arrived at the threshold of her husband’s room screamed and collapsed sobbing on the linoleum floor. Two orderlies hoisted her onto a plastic chair and dragged it scraping to a conference room so she could recover.
It was May, and Elliot was back in the hospital. After he got back from a fabulous trip to Italy with his son, the cancer had spread to a muscle near his pelvis. Radiation was ordered. He’d never had that before. It was an outpatient procedure, ten doses over two weeks, but in the middle of the series a blood test revealed he had a serious infection. So we were making ourselves at home on Sloan-Kettering’s sixteenth floor. Again.
Gone were my newbie days of pushing together two stiff wooden chairs at night, sitting on one and hooking my feet on the other. I had discovered the joys of the recliners. The trick was grabbing one and keeping it. Competition was stiff. It was heartening to find that in this harsh world, where dysfunctional marriages and domestic violence seemed to get all the press, there were still plenty of husbands and wives who wanted to stay overnight with the spouses they adored. There was a certain bonding among those of us who were healthy. We nodded to each other as we passed in the hallway in the morning on the way to brushing our teeth, like we were all on a strange kind of camp out. I was extremely fortunate to know my kids always had a happy place to stay with their dad when I stayed with Elliot in the hospital. Alex always sent his teddy bear to keep Elliot company. It had a Mets logo on one paw and made for a good ice breaker with the nurses.
If I was lucky enough to score one of the precious recliners, I’d wheel it next to Elliot’s bed. I’d wake up from a short nap with my cheek stuck to the vinyl cushion. I was loath to bother the nurses as they rushed around but there were aides who could satisfy my timid requests for sheets, a towel or some soap.
At some point I realized it felt even better to both of us if I just squeezed into bed with him. I didn’t dare do that if he had an IV line in both arms, or if he might have a tender spot from a stent procedure, but otherwise I climbed right in. It was a tight fit so I hitched up the guardrails to keep from falling out. I buried my face in his warm, salty neck and kissed his shoulder where his skin peeked out between the snaps of his hospital gown. Sometimes he couldn’t move much but would turn his head to kiss my hair. There was sheer animal comfort in lying against each other. At least our arms and legs could feel skin on skin.
Staying with him wasn’t about obligation. It was simply where I wanted to be. There is a special tenderness when one of you could choose to go, but you stay where your heart is. We were going through this together, and felt closer than ever.
It was an awfully public setting for such intimacies, but we didn’t really care. We wanted as much of each other as we could get. We couldn’t exactly make love but we could make do. Spooning has its unique rewards, and our hands could travel all kinds of places under the covers. Nurses joked about the newlyweds.
Sometimes only a thin curtain separated us from a roommate. One night the patient on the other side of the drapery was a Jesuit Father. I boasted to friends that I had just slept with a priest.
My nightwear became increasingly brazen. At first I’d wear a sweatshirt and yoga pants. That way I’d be covered up when doctors came in. That outfit got hot, though, so in time I cut down to a tank top and yoga pants. Over time that shifted to just a T-shirt and underwear. I figured doctors had seen it all anyway, and I was too tired to care, and if they got a thrill from seeing a worried wife’s panties, let ’em have it.
Because worry was always simmering under the surface smiles, worry was why I slept with Elliot during almost every one of his dozens of overnight hospital stays, except for a few when I thought I’d fall apart if I didn’t catch up on real rest.
We were both afraid that if I left him to sleep by himself, Elliot might die alone.