. . . What’s it like staying in a room for ten days? To look out the window once, when your roommate’s curtain is drawn, only to see a ventilation shaft? To get used to the chill of the IV fluid creeping up your arm, the loss of appetite, loss of thirst till you start to relish it after a while? It will seem so alien to you afterward that when you return for blood work you’ll stop by the room again to convince yourself that, yes, it’s actually connected to a corridor and a lobby that take you outside. At the time, the light switch wasn’t just a light switch but the way the nurse signified morning, which meant only that it was time to draw blood, and you adjusted the bed to its “day” position knowing you hadn’t slept. It wasn’t just the periodic in-and-out to check on your roommate, the occasional alarm in a far-off room, the weirdness of trying to sleep in the same position after not moving all day. It was your own body signaling rebellion, twitching every few hours. You couldn’t figure out why it happened, that spasm, the sharp intake of breath, the half-realized suspicion in the dark that maybe – could it be? – you’d stopped breathing? That you’d actually been . . . gone? Impossible. You’re just in a strange room with a clouded mind and an open door with shadows lit by the pale fluorescents outside, all of it a cauldron heating your fears. Still, you find that you’re standing watch over yourself, and though you soon lose track of the days, the moments of your stay remain somewhere jumbled in your mind.

You always hoped for the same nurse for the morning blood draw, the one with the sun-freckled skin, bleached hair and warm smile who told you about sailing the sound off Long Island. The idea of tacking back and forth in a fiberglass shell only to turn around and go back again had always struck you as a waste, and reminiscing about it doubly so, but now you couldn’t get enough of it. The boat was in Guilford. Or maybe she was in Guilford and the boat docked elsewhere. You were foggy on the details. In fact, you never learned her name. But she talked to you as if you weren’t half stupid on drugs and shared something with you that took place outside that involved things like the sun and breeze and escape mixed together, and you soon became grateful for weekend sailors and cheap beer and plans hatched during winter to finally win the such-and-such race at the local marina. Somewhere out there it was August, and a crew was leaning back on plastic chairs under an umbrella, shirts damp, necks red, bodies still holding for a while the memory of water. Who could believe it? Not you – not from bed, anyway – but if you could you would’ve raised a glass to them anyway.

You started marking time by counting your nurse’s shifts. You wept in front of her when you had another setback and wondered if you’d ever leave. As you confessed this you didn’t recognize the crack in your voice, the sound pitched so high and thin. You were naked in front of her in ways you never were in front of yourself, and even now, years later, you can’t imagine that room for long without seeing her pull up a chair after you finally had surgery, writing notes in your chart.

“I’m off for a few days,” she said, smiling. “Hope I don’t see you again.”

She didn’t . . .

I was on the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC to discuss my essay "The Size of the Room." Start the player below at 25:55 or read the entire essay.

Published in The Saint Ann's Review, Fall 2009