My Loss of Words

-Tuesday-

Doctor's Office. Whispers in the hallway. For privacy, I know, and I try not to listen, but they're talking about her. I just know it. Emergency Room. This all should be familiar, and it is, but it isn't. I sit in the corner, out of the way, and I need to fight, but I can't. I can't fix anything with my feeble human love and a needle and thread.

-Wednesday-

Hospital after work till dark. Pneumonia, but it isn't cold. Pneumonia comes with the cold weather and sickness that won't go. I stumble through the dark at home. Finish chores by 10:30. I write.

-Thursday-

Doctor's Office with someone else. Trying to fill holes, carry the weight of her worries, but I can't fill all her spaces, not hers and mine. Work. She sends me a text, 'Pray.' Hospital. Her chest trembles with each fight for oxygen. Breathing shouldn't be so hard. She is sick. Not sick like all the other hospital stays. Sick. We pray. Sister cries. I don't. Not till I'm home and alone and stumbling through the dark. Do I trust God with the lives of those I love?

I don't. 

-Friday-

She says she is scared. I want to know the deepest parts of another human, but I don't want to know that. Don't tell me. My heart cries, and I work because I can't be there. And I pray. A procedure. A test. A new room in the CCU - Critical Care Unit. My heart stops as I read the sign. And I wait outside the doors. She is drowsy. Her face half-covered with a breathing machine. In and out. In and out. Filling her lungs with the freshest air she has breathed for a month and a half of smoke. She can't talk, but there's color in her face. She is better, yet worse? 

-Saturday-

Fever breaks. It isn't a fight to breath on her own. Out of CCU to somewhere else. I sneak her cut-up melon fresh from my garden and roast and vegetables I cook. She eats more than she has since last Saturday. And she smiles. And she almost laughs. 

-Sunday-

All afternoon we watch her drowse in and out of sleep. She is better but worn. They don't know when she'll get to go home. Home. She wants to go there. She apologizes for all of this, but why? I want to cry, but she does, and I try to pick up the pieces of my saddened heart and put together a smile. It will be alright, but I don't know when or how. She asks, 'Why?' I just don't know. She drags herself along, bruised and broken and worn, and her body fights, but it's tired. And I'm tired as I try to fill all the spaces, her spaces, with me. I can't fix anything with my feeble human love. 

This life is a messy life, and I think I've lost my words. 

P.S. My blog's 1st anniversary is this week. I was going to do a giveaway but life.