To see you again

Sensitive themes : cancer, loss, addiction.

I’ve always hated hospitals. They’re too clean. Too plain. Hospitals remind me that people die every day. Maybe if they had any sign of life then I would see the establishment differently. Some color. Some laughter.

I walk through the glass doors and the air goes from normal to depressing almost immediately.

The nurse I’ve known for the better part of the year catches my eye. She fakes a soft smile. Trying to hide the pity in her eyes.

She fails.

I fake a smile back.

At times all that feels real is the heart beating in my chest. I don’t bother speaking to the nurse and make my way to the room I never want to see. Mainly because I haven’t seen it empty yet.

I’d rather not.

I’m only going to pick up his things. People I don’t even know probably packed them neatly in a cardboard box first thing after he died. I walk briskly. I need to get out of this place as soon as possible.

I turn a corner and the waiting room becomes visible. I wish I was there. Sitting in one of those chairs. At least then I would still have hope. Something in which I am severely lacking these days. I can’t see how the future can compare to what my life used to be before Luke was diagnosed with cancer. Before he died.

I swing open the doors that lead to the oncology ward. And then I’m there. In his old room. His old things have been shoved into a new box. The bed is made with fresh white sheets. They have gotten rid of almost all traces of him. I flip the cardboard lid which was already ajar. The sterile smell of cleaning products mix with his scent. I instinctively reach for his sweatshirt and bring it to my nostrils.

When I close my eyes I can practically feel his arm around my shoulder as I lay my head on his chest.

“I already told you, I chose last time. It’s your turn Elsie.”

I can hear him too. I wish I could stay in this moment forever. Hearing him. Feeling him like a phantom limb.

But sadly, as much as I want to, I can’t live in the past.

I open my eyes. I must be going mad. I blink a few times. But my eyes don’t seem to be deceiving me.

The blinding hospital lights dim. They no longer come from the ceiling but from a television screen. Someone flicks through film options.

I then realize that I can hear Luke’s voice because he is right next to me.

I can feel him because he really is holding me. I’ve been here before. This must be at least a year before he was diagnosed.

“El?” He’s speaking, he’s actually speaking.

I lift my head from his chest and look at him. My Luke, he’s back.

I must be looking at him strangely because he snorts.

“I only asked you to pick a film to watch. But hey, if it’s that difficult then I can choose. Don’t worry about it.” He says with a gentle smile. His perfect, reassuring smile. I thought I would never see it again.

“Luke.” I whisper wistfully. His once raised eyebrows point downwards.

“Are you feeling alright?” He asks. The answer is no. I’ve gone insane.

Luke is dead. I remember the call.

“There’s been a change in your husband’s condition. It would be best that you come to the hospital.” A voice that I didn’t recognize told me.

I rushed to the hospital to see him. But he was already gone. He was gone when I received the call. It was just a formality—to get me there in person.

This has only happened in my dreams, but this is no dream. It’s real, tangible. But simultaneously it can’t be.

“Luke, what’s happening to me?” My breathing is heavier than usual, my voice higher. He straightens on the couch and grabs my face with both hands.

“Hey, nothing’s happening. What is it?” I press my lips together and let out a small broken sound as I shake my head.

“No, stop. Don’t do this to me. You’re dead.” Everything goes still after I say the last word. His confused expression frozen in time. The fan that I hadn’t even noticed whirring stops.

This isn’t real because it can’t be. My mind is playing tricks on me because it must be.

Why am I not at the hospital? How am I in the past? As perplexed as I am, the truth is that I don’t care how or why I’m here. I’m just glad to be back. Despite me messing up somehow given the fact that Luke hasn’t moved since I said that he was dead. I need to fix this.

I can’t lose him again.

If an old sweatshirt brought me back here then maybe I could find something else. Something that might take me to another moment before cancer stole him from me. I rifle through our apartment.

Then it hits me. Go to the source.

I hurry to the balcony. I remember that before we had settled in the living room we shared a cigarette there.

We smoked together on the first night we met. He looked worried as it was passed around the circle of friends at a party. But when it got to him he pretended that he had done it a million times.

No one believed him of course. Not after he promptly coughed up the smoke he inhaled.

I pick up the cigarette stub from the ashtray and sniff it. The familiar yet distant smell of nicotine invading my senses. We both stopped smoking after the diagnosis.

Lung cancer.

I close my eyes just as I had done in the hospital, then once again I travel to a place I know with people I knew. When I open them I see a cloud of smoke and hear my friends laughing. I turn to Luke who just smoked for the first time in his short life. His cheeks flush from embarrassment before swiftly passing me the cigarette.

I barely touch it before passing it to the person next to me. I had told him that it was okay that he’d never smoked, I remember him smiling. That was the first time I saw him smile and I have to see it again. “It’s okay that you’ve never smoked.” There it is. Somehow better than I remembered.

How can I change things? I look around at my old friends, if I could even call them that. No one even liked each other. We rarely spoke due to the awkward silences when we realized that we truly had nothing in common.

We smoked, we drank. And we considered ourselves ‘cool’ for it. This is all their fault. Luke didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, but when he met us that changed. Smoke filled his lungs like a promise. This means you fit in now. This means you belong somewhere. Eventually we stopped hanging out with the self proclaimed cool kids. Still, we didn’t kick the habit. Maybe if we had left sooner, the promise we breathed in every night that we were with them would sound less like the truth. Maybe we would have stopped believing it.

I turn to Luke, the man I knew—the boy I didn’t know yet. I push myself up to stand and reach my hand out to him.

“Come on, we should go.” He looks perplexed. The suggestion might have been too sudden. I have to remember that even though this is my Luke, I’m not his Elsie yet. “Trust me, don’t waste your time with these people.” I try to give a reassuring smile, but that was always his thing. Still, he nods and takes my hand. I pull him up though he does most of the work.

“Where are you going Els?” A ‘friend’ asks. I ignore him and lead Luke from the skate park to the streets illuminated by street lamps.

He stops in his tracks and when he does I can’t pull him anymore.

“We need to get away Luke, please.” I beg as if it would change things. Maybe if we get further away it will work, if we go and never come back.

The same expression that he had in our living room when everything froze returns.

“Elsie,” he starts, unsure whether or not he remembered my name right “I don’t understand. I don’t care that they laughed, honestly, I’m used to it.” He tells me with a self deprecating smile.

This is who he was before we got to him—before we taught him how to care in all the wrong ways.

He was like this again when we stopped talking to the others. But it was too late. He still kept the habits that caring had given him.

“You have to let them laugh Luke. Don’t let them change you.”

He looks at me as if to say “But you don’t even know me. Maybe I need changing.”

“You seem like a really great person. I know them. They’re not good people. I don’t know a single person who hasn’t trash talked the other and they still call themselves friends. We still call ourselves friends” I correct, remembering that even though this time in my life is so distant to me now, somehow I’m back. And the truth is that I was one of them. “Did you like smoking that cig?” I ask already knowing the answer.

He shakes his head “Does anyone really like it?”

I smile “I doubt it. I never have anyway.” Maybe this is all it would have taken for him to stop smoking. Maybe I’ve changed things for good. “You’re not going to smoke again are you?”

“Probably not” He matches my smile. That’s not enough, I need a definite no.

“Please, don’t even think about it. Luke, promise me. You have to promise me.” My voice taking on a strangely serious tone for someone who is meant to be an acquaintance.

“Are you always this preachy? It’s a little intense” He laughs. I don’t.

“Promise me.” I repeat, I think I might say it over and over again until he actually does.

He looks at me like I’m crazy, which I probably am. “Sure, I promise.” He raises his eyebrows to check if that’s all I want him to say. And it is.

I swing my arms around him and pull him closer. At first, he stiffens against the unfamiliar feeling. Then he does the same. I close my eyes and smell his hoodie. It smells the same as all his clothes. Ever since I’ve known him, his scent hasn’t changed. When I open my eyes again I’m back at the hospital. In his room. It’s empty. There’s no box packed by strangers on the bed, no sweatshirt in my hands. I’ve done it. I saved him. Before I have a chance to fully register what happened a nurse enters the room. “Mrs. Taylor?”

I turn around. How does she know me? She’s not supposed to know me. Unless it didn’t work. Unless he still got cancer.

I clear my throat “Yes?”

“You’re supposed to be in the waiting room. The surgeons were looking for you. Come with me.” She says with a well rehearsed smile.

“The surgeons?” I ask.

“Yes, they’ve completed the surgery on your husb-” She stops herself “It’s probably best that you speak with the lead surgeon.” She places a hand on my upper back and guides me through the hospital, stopping in the waiting room I had passed earlier. Two surgeons stare at me as I enter.

“Mrs. Taylor,” Her voice, like the nurse’s smile, is rehearsed. “let’s go somewhere more private.” The male surgeon gives me a brief nod then leaves before the lead surgeon and nurse guide me to a private room. They gesture me to take a seat then they do the same.

“Mrs. Taylor, we did everything we could to save your husband.” No. Not again.

“But unfortunately his injuries from the crash were too severe. He didn’t make it. I’m truly sorry, I wish I could give you better news.”

Time freezes just as it had done in Luke and I’s apartment, only this time it just feels like it.

It wasn’t enough. He may not have gotten lung cancer, but he’s dead all the same.

“My husband, Luke Taylor?” I check, maybe I changed so much that we weren’t even married to one another.

The surgeon confirms my fear with a nod.

I stand and leave without saying another word. Needing to be away from the hospital with its lifeless air. Even when I walk out through the glass doors the air feels the same. When I arrive at our apartment, the air feels the same.

I do the only thing that will get my breathing back to normal.

I slide the wedding ring off my finger and just as I did with the sweatshirt, the cigarette and the hoodie. I bring it to my nose, close my eyes and breathe in the faint metallic smell. When I open them again, I’m wearing my wedding dress, Luke is in a tux in front of me. Sliding the ring back on my finger.

I didn’t think that it was possible to live in the past.

But I can.

And I will.