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The nurse entered my room after midnight.
The soiled bandages she lifted out of my belly
smelled like loneliness. Her other hand, the empty one,
rested on my chest, over my heart, all I needed
to hold back the fear of the clock, the second hand
circling like a line of radar. Cold, she asked?
I didn't answer, but looked out the window
into another century. She talked about a patient,
a man much like me, down the hall,
only he believed his heart was stolen during surgery,
put in a hat box, and sold on the black market.
It left a hole in his chest, and the wind trapped inside
howled. I understood this. One night, the man had slept
under his hospital bed because he believed nightmares
coiled in a nest on his mattress. She could do nothing
to keep him from dying that night. Nothing, she said.
Nothing any of us could do for our broken bodies
but suffer them. She leaned over me, kissed me
on my lips. Whispered "I love you," as she would
every night thereafter. She left the room,
the door partially open, just enough for light
to open a crack in the dark.
Richard Solly, a professional writer and teacher, lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. He has received numerous grants and awards, including the Bush Artist Fellowship and several Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowships. His most recent book (with Yvonne Pearson) is The Way Home: A Collective Memoir of the Hazelden Experience, (Hazelden, 1997). His essay "The World Inside" recently appeared in the anthology The Healing Circle: Authors Writing of Recovery (Penguin, New York, 1998).
Caleb Brown is an illustrator and biologist living in Montana. By day he drives a delivery van, and by night he draws pictures with his computer.
