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Show 23 Blinking back tears, I set my jaw in defiance, anger mshing blinding hot white through me and I determine instead to resolve: I will not become my children's Recently Deceased. Not tonight. I grit my teeth and glare through the cmshing pain at the gurney. It is this pain that marks our difference. I resolve to cherish every heavy brass thread of that pain, every flat-hot pressing of bone on bone, every white-squeezed muscle crying for relief. In all its crude effort to destroy my peace, it is this pain that marks me alive. My teeth are gnashing the pain, spitting it into the pillow, feeling it mix there on my cheek with the tears I can no longer control. A salty lotion encrusting onto my resolve. "They thought you were asleep," smiles the nurse the next morning. "They didn't want to wake you up to move you." She is spooning lukewarm oatmeal hastily into my mouth. She has other places to be. "It was the night shift, after all," she tells me, as if that explains everything. |
