The Man

Posted on 02 September 2009

He strides in w/a deep blue canvas bag
over his Hemingway shoulder,
thoroughly muscled. My age.
And when the black (jovial)
male nurse calls us pre-ops
I overhear that he came
by cab and has no relatives
to contact.

He moves better
than the rest of us,
the bile of fear rising
in my throat
as the math problem
that I’d like to solve
of my wife grows smaller,
then disappears altogether
around the white corner.

The pre-op room takes us
like a well oiled restaurant kitchen
and I overhear he’s getting a hip replacement
and he’ll take a cab home after.
He laughs more than the rest
of us combined, his jokes robust
while my body feels frail as they take
my clothes away (my wife will
keep them) and I become childlike

in my pale green gown. I remember
my father (in his 50’s too.) Heart
surgeries: two. At 57: dead.
My kids had called me in the lobby,
had seemed unworried.

There were others being prepped,
a very fat woman.
They couldn’t find a large enough gown.
Used two. They were mostly Jamaican,
these nurses w/sunlight in their hands
and I was cold now.
Fighting not to shiver.
Asked for a second blanket
as his voice rose above all of us
more confident than my high school coach.

And after needles
and a light sedative
my wife floated over me
(she’d snuck back here) and then

the struggle to figure out what
had happened. Sheets. Machines.
My feet rising like mountains.
Cotton. Tightness. Pain. And then

I’m alive? Everything’s fine? A doctor briefly.
The pulse checked and then

birds fly out of my fucking chest as
my bloodstream sings bigger than Beethoven
because I’ll see everybody again.
I’ll hold tiny hands and big hands.
I’ll swim in fresh and salt water
and learn to sail and finally speak Spanish and then

they wheel him in. Fast, sleek and I
fade, drift. All is well until

the screams. It’s him. Flailing.
Nurses trying. His hands stutter.
He’s calling. Wailing.
I know it’s for his mother
but he can’t find that word.