2011-01-23

hospice dream

I just moved into the physician's residential care center. There are four other patients here. We all sit in the library after dinner, drinking hot tea, reading books, and talking. Bedtime and lights-out is 10 pm. The physician arrives at my room sometime between 10 and 10:30. There is something both comforting and foreboding about his presence. He administers my injection and leaves the room. He has a nursing staff he brought from South Korea. A nurse sits at my bedside until I am asleep. I like the nurses. They all wear vintage uniforms. The nurse sits at my bedside and crosses her legs. I fall asleep staring at her legs. I have long, detailed dreams about walking, hand-in-hand, with her through the fog. "You will be dead soon," she tells me. "But I will never leave you." I want to kiss her in the fog. I want to peel back her surgical mask and kiss her in the fog. I want to feel her latex hands on my skin. I want to lift up her dress and move through her in the fog. Before the fog is gone. Before my life is gone.