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Show 49 The nurse is bringing a pan full of warm water and towels, lots of white, white towels, to my bedside. Talking to me all the while, she is rubbing my skin all over with the warm, squeezed-damp white towels and I am feeling clean. Talking about so much I cannot remember exactly what it was that made me so very happy but I am filled with her joy of the day nevertheless. Talking and smiling, she washes away my embarrassment at this breach of my privacy. "Youhr'e just fahhn!" she is saying and for a second I think she is telling me I am just "fun" then I realize I am just "fine." Good. I am relieved to be just fine. "We thought we had lost you," Sadie is telling me. She and Kathryn are standing next to my bed, smiling, chatting with me. They are telling me that they had been there each of the three days I was "asleep," thinking I might not be there the next day. Thinking I might not take my next breath. They are saying that I only breathed - "'gasped' would be more like it," Kathryn is saying - just a few times each minute. "Maybe four times a minute," Kathryn is saying, looking at Sadie for verification. Sadie nods in agreement, more sober than Kathryn. They are telling me that they were very worried that each gasp was to have been my last. Kathryn is a nurse and knows about these things and I now am sobered. |
