finale

Oh I just want to go home, she says, I want to get out of here so bad. Her hand tightens on the metal rail around her bed. She turns her head to look out the window. Clouds moving in.

Another hospital bed, another window, I stood with my back to the sky and looked at the stranger in the bed. They took his eye away and smoothed over his cheek, digging at the cancer. He didn't move, didn't talk.

When I was ten, when it was my grandfather in the room, when his scarred face scared me, I just wanted to go.

Now it's aunt on the bed who struggles for breath. Air bubbles through water and pushes through clear plastic into her lungs. Oh I just want to go home she says, to lie in my own bed.

I take her hand. Feel her thin skin soft with wrinkles. They were pounding on my chest, she says. Why did they have to do that? Nurse says my heart stopped. I just wanted to sleep!

Her fingers are strong but now she sees her long-dead parents in the corner when she says she wants to go home. I tell her to rest.