Loneliness and the Ladybug
Early November evening and the winds thrash the window with pellets of ice and sheets of rain. The old ash tree outside my room is scratching to get in. Each billowy gust presses branches naked of leaves, against my window. Wave after wave, everything says the storm has a long ways to go before letting up. With that, I sit alone in my hospital bed, wondering if I will ever be able to leave this room. Being trapped on the rehabilitation floor is incrementally better than being trapped in the Intensive Care Unit, but only marginally. My food is delivered on a cart instead of via a tube through my nose. The pain is greater now that they have started weaning me off the cocktail of narcotics. At the end of each day, when my room empties out and the nurses collect at the end of the hall, there is a time before sleep comes. In that vacant time, hopelessness darts around my room looking for a place to take up residence. Television usually plays police dramas or soap operas. The commercial...