He stumbled out of the room. His children had to help him stand. I stood immobile in the nursing station, the sweeping sound wave of machines and phones and bells washed out by the simple veracity of his sadness. It was nearly impossible not to stare at him, there, as his grown children led him down the hallway like a penitent inmate being led to the gas chamber; full of tears and regret, and not knowing.
When they had brought in his wife, she was far from dying. She stood with one foot in sickness and the other in health, like a child plays on the changing shorelines of a beach in the summertime with his parents. Her name was Anastasia. I remember her name. I don’t think I could ever forget her name.
I had many conversations with her, and with him. In the mornings after the cafeteria staff handed out breakfast trays I would make my rounds, assisting the nurses, asking simple questions and offering answers. Anastasia always greeted me with a smile and cheery, croaky ‘hello’. She would prop herself up a little higher on her elbows in her hospital bed; it encompassed her frail, ancient body like a swollen throne of sheets and off-white blankets.
“How are you today?”
“Oh,” she would say. “I’m fine.”
“Did you sleep through the night?”
“No, I couldn’t. Its hard for me, you know, to sleep without John here.”
They had been married for fifty-one years. Shortly after our daily early morning chats, John would appear at the end of the hallway, the floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of it like his own personal golden brick road to happiness. He always carried two coffees, a buffoonish grin smeared over his face.
“Jay,” he said.
“Mr. Yardenson,”
“How are we today, Mr. Jay.”
I shook my head, smiling. “Same old story.”
“Go on any big dates last night?”
He would chuckle as he waddled past me, towards his wife’s room in 15B. And so it went like that for a long time. We would talk about the Cincinnati Bengals, or the weather in Southern England. We would trade jokes – some dirty, some clean—and tell each other our favorite parts of World War Two movies, or places we’d been. I spent a lot of time talking to John Yardenson. He was my friend.
The first time I knew something was wrong was three days after she had the second surgery. Her once cheery disposition was replaced with a frightful mistrusting; she questioned everyone, her eyes had become constantly locked wide circles that darted like flashlight beams over our faces. She started to call out, all through the day, complaining about invisible mechanics in her room who were trying to cut her throat; or small, ferocious animals with enormous red eyes who spoke to her in Latin as they hid under her bed.
“It’s not unusual,” I said to John, that first day. “for patients of an elderly age to hallucinate after coming off of large amounts of anesthesia. She had a very, very major surgery. Twice.”
“I’m just afraid, you know.” He placed his hand on my shoulder and smiled. “I’m not ready for any bumps in the road.”
“We’re gonna do all that we can, Mr Yardenson. I promise we are taking care of her.”
“Oh, I know that, I’m grateful we’re here.”
Soon he stopped bringing coffees in the morning. He still grinned, every time, shuffling slowly down the hallway like an primordial penguin with glasses. But it only got worse for her.
She relapsed into periods of comatose, and there were days when it seemed like the only things I overheard were the discussions of doctors debating whether to send her to intensive care. John didn’t want to move her. He said that he trusted us.
When she started to begin the process of dying, Mr Yardenson no longer appeared at the end of the hallway. He had moved full time into her room, showering in our staff locker room, taking all his meals in the cafeteria for free. Their children, and their grandchildren visited now, daily, in the mornings. We would all try to smile and transmit a feeling of happiness that eventually felt so foreign and wrong I started to just simply nod at them. We all knew what was coming. Even John.
The day it hit me, I remember, was on a Friday afternoon, after four o’clock. Nicole was writing in Anastasia’s chart, outside the room, when the surgeon and Mr. Yardenson came out together. They had clearly spoken together for some time, and as they walked out Mr. Yardenson stopped, leaning against the railing. The surgeon quickly walked away, and as John’s children came out, he started to cry.
“Oh, John,” said Nicole. The family had loved her as a nurse so much; they requested that whenever she was working, she take care of John’s wife. “John don’t cry,”
“How,” he said, choking on sobs, breathing in sporadic, anxiety-filled breaths. “What’s gonna …. Who’s gonna take care of my wife,”
Nicole put an arm around his shoulder and rubbed him calmly. He wiped the corners of his eyes with his fingertips.
“John it will be okay.”
“fif… no,” he said. “I don’t think it will be.”
He and his family shuffled past me, and I put my head down. I knew it wouldn’t be long.
I wasn’t at work the day that Anastasia Yardenson passed away. I have always regretted that fact. I have always felt and believed in there was a strong closeness with them -- with both of them -- and I should have been there. I wanted to be there for him. I wanted to be there for her. It felt like I needed to be in the room with the nurse to take the tubes and lines out of her body. I wanted to help sew the stitches over the incisions made for IVs and nephrostomies. I wanted to close her open eyes, and say a silent prayer for her.
It has never made much sense to me, why I’ve felt this way. I suppose it was the only was I thought I could show respect to someone who I briefly knew and admired before their downfall. When I heard the news that she had passed on, I knew instantly that I would never share another conversation with either of them. It hit me in a way that I had never conceived when I started working at the hospital. I had made friends only to watch them dissolve into their own futures the way smoke slowly floats over a lake for a brief moment. I went on with my life.
I saw John Yardenson, today, at the hospital. I don’t work there anymore – I was transferred to a larger facility over a year ago – and I was only planning on stopping by to visit an old coworker, when I heard my name called quietly from a table in the back of the front-lobby coffee shop.
“Jay?”
I turned to see him.
He stood up with a beaming smile and had his hand stuck out four full steps before he reached me. As I shook it he pulled me in, his large, old arm gripping my shoulder as he chuckled.
“Mr. Yardenson …”
“If it isn’t the king of the dates,” he said, grinning. He winked at me and turned towards his companions at the table, roughly five elderly gentlemen, and said, “Boys, this here is Mr. Jay. He was there for my family and I when … when my wife passed away.”
“What are you doing here?” I said, my hand on his shoulder. “It’s so nice to see you.”
“Oh, boy, what am I doing here? Ha!” He slapped me on the back. “You didn’t hear? I started a new program here.”
“A new program?”
“After Ana passed away, I couldn’t be away from this place After fifty-one years, it’s funny to say it but the time that her and I spent in this place, it’s what made me really realize how much I loved her.”
“She was a great woman,” I said.
“You bet your ass she was,” he said, smiling. “Toughest old woman in the world. I loved her unconditionally, Jay.”
“I know you did.”
“I didn’t take long for me to realize that other people, there are other people who felt what I felt as she was going. I want to help them. If I can do that, and be here, in this place, where I constantly remember how much I loved Ana … well it’s the best of both worlds. I started a program to help newly-widowed seniors to get back on their feet. The hospital actually pays me to do that,” he laughed. “Come over, sit down.”
I ordered a coffee and sat down with the old men who collectively have probably lived 500 years. John looked at me and grinned.
“You boys treat him damn good,” he said. “This young man took care of my wife.”
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