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Show 115 It is quiet in the hallway. It is not late - but people are evidently all gathered in other places, far from here. The doctors have not fixed the catheter. It has broken yet again. I know that it has broken yet again and that sometime in the future they will decide to try yet again to surgically explore the catheter to see if it is patent, but for now they have not decided to do anything and I must stay here this Christmas, yet again. Or perhaps they will, yet again, perform our invented protocol with a six-inch needle, and then fix the catheter with some medical foreknowledge of its fragmented condition. But they have not done that yet, either. They are all probably home at this moment wrapping presents, stuffing turkeys, making pies. I am sitting bent and stiff and aching in a bed on the third floor of this very large and very empty hospital. I have been here for a few weeks now. If Dr. Chappie had been in charge, I would be home now. Long before now. I am wishing sleep would come to rub out this melancholy but it will not. "It's a Wonderful Life" is on TV but I do not feel like putting vicarious value on my life tonight. I am wondering instead if my children would not in fact be better off with a mother who is not gone so much. I turn off the TV. |