Grandma
April 27, 2009
She looks so tired on her bed, with the little tubes running hither and thither, pushing and pulling from anywhere body meets world. After only a moment I smile awkwardly at nothing and look away, not making a noise. The faded lime green curtains are drawn, and the television shimmers and buzzes in silence; a red icon in its corner depicts a speaker with a line drawn through it. A host of daytime TV characters walk quietly to and fro on screen, all twinkling in their evening gowns and two piece suits.
I fold my hands, standing there, and keep on looking around for just about anything. The machines look so cold and parasitic. They're so patient, looming there big and quiet.
Beep. Beep. Whirrr.
Beep. Beep. Whirrr.
I can see the life draining out of her with every beep and whir, see the light in her half open eyes flickering with resignation. Her torso shudders up testily with each breath, then shambles back down. She rolls her head to face me and opens her eyes, then points to a pack of cigarettes on her bedside table with a ghostly gesture. She's all bones and wrinkles, and it's tough to look at her.
I pick up the pack and remove a cigarette. There's a book of matches tucked in the cellophane skin of the cigarette box; I pull one out and light the cigarette, then hand it to her.
She draws deep on the long, skinny cigarette with her thin peach-gray lips, then looks up at me from there on her bed and lets the dull cigarette smoke slip out of her nostrils between the lengths of plastic tubing. Her eyes are wet and tired. I try not to look at her scalp through her thinning hair, and end up staring at the machines again.
Beep. Beep. Whirrr.
"Who are you?" She asks in a papery whisper, wrinkling the brown spots on her face together in a quizzical expression. She's holding the cigarette close to her lips.
I glance up at the muted television. A young man with sharp clothes and blue eyes is delivering a monologue in buzzing silence, his features rising and falling and contorting in perfect dramatic harmony. He's offering his hand to a crying woman in a bridal gown.
"I'm your grandson," I say, looking into the old woman's eyes and away from the TV, "I'm here."
She tries to push herself up further on her pillow by forcing her elbows down into the bed, but gives up after a moment and draws on her cigarette again. Deep and long. Old people smoke different than young people. They breathe the smoke like some wonderful smell, let it lie in their lungs and percolate up through their nose and throat, savoring its yellow weight. In a moment tiny dollops of smoke are puffing rhythmically from her nostrils, like drops of water from a leaky sink. She stares intently into my face.
I frown. Ash crumbles off the end of her cigarette, flattening in a gray crumble on the faded blanket.
The door handle clicks and turns loudly, and in half a moment, the nurse has bumbled through the door and is waving her hand in exaggerated gestures in front of her face.
"Oh my god! Dorris, you know you can't smoke in here!" She pinches the cigarette from the old lady, and holding it out away from her body walks briskly to the sink in the corner and extinguishes it with a short blast of water.
"For god's sake Dorris, this is a hospital! I swear! You act like you don't even want to get better!"
With the cigarette safely doused and thrown in the trash can, she swivels around to face me full on. I look at her thick lips as she talks, the way her midsection slides without contest into her wide hips, the way the skin beneath her jaw wiggles just a little with each word.
"And you!" She gasps, eyes opening wide and eyebrows rising high on her pallid forehead.
"What am I going to do with you?! Do you have any idea the position you put me in? Do you? What would I say if her family saw you in here?"
Tags for this piece: creative television aging hospital strory