Waiting Room
The chairs in the third-floor waiting room are the color of something that was once green. Martin sits in one near the window where he can see the parking lot and the low brick wall and the row of bare trees that line the access road. He has been here for two hours.
He is not family. He learned this when he arrived and asked at the desk and the woman behind the glass said she could only share information with family. He said he understood. He sat down. He did not leave.
The last time he spoke to Ray was November. Not this past November — the one before. Fourteen months. He knows the number because he counted it in the car on the way here, gripping the wheel at a light that took forever to change, doing the math on his fingers like a child. March to November, then another November, then four more months. He'd gotten the call from Deborah, who he hadn't spoken to in longer than that, and her voice sounded the way voices sound when someone has already been crying for a while — level, emptied out, precise. She said Ray was at St. Joseph's. She said she thought Martin would want to know.
He does want to know. That's why he's here, in the green chair, watching a woman across the room turn the pages of a magazine she is clearly not reading. She turns them at even intervals, like a metronome. He wonders if she knows she's doing it.
The thing about fourteen months is that it doesn't feel like fourteen months. It feels like last week and also like another life. He can hear Ray's voice perfectly — the way he drops the g on everything, the way he says "brother" when he means anyone he trusts — but he cannot remember what they argued about. He remembers the argument. He remembers the kitchen. He remembers the specific quality of silence afterward, the kind that doesn't resolve, that just extends until it becomes the shape of the relationship. But the content — the actual words, the actual cause — is gone.
A nurse comes through the double doors and calls a name that isn't his. The woman with the magazine stands up. She leaves the magazine open on the chair, face down, spread like a bird.
Martin takes out his phone and puts it back. There is no one to call. The people who would care already know. The people who don't know wouldn't understand why he's here, sitting in a hospital he has no technical right to sit in, waiting for news about a man he is no longer sure he can call his friend.
He and Ray met in college. Not the interesting part of college — not a class or a protest or a late night of shared revelation. They met in the laundry room of a dormitory on a Tuesday afternoon. Ray was sitting on a running dryer, reading a paperback with the cover torn off, and Martin asked him what it was, and Ray held up the coverless book and said, "No idea. Found it in the kitchen. It's about whales." That was it. Twenty-six years grew out of a book about whales in a laundry room.
He tries to remember the last good day. Not the last time they spoke but the last time it was easy, the last time he wasn't already composing his half of the argument in his head before Ray finished talking. He thinks it was the fishing trip. Three years ago, maybe four. Ray's truck, a cooler of beer, a lake Martin can't name. They caught nothing. They sat in the boat for five hours and caught nothing and talked about nothing and it was the best day he'd had in years.
The light outside changes. Late afternoon becoming early evening, the shadows of the bare trees lengthening across the parking lot like dark fingers. A different nurse comes through the doors and looks around the room and Martin sits up straighter, but she walks past him to the corner where an older couple is sitting together holding hands.
He should go home. He knows this. He has a drive ahead of him and a dog who needs walking and a kitchen full of dishes he left in the sink this morning when Deborah called and he grabbed his coat and his keys and drove ninety minutes without turning on the radio. He should go home and call Deborah tomorrow and ask how Ray is doing and Deborah will tell him because Deborah has always been generous that way and he will know and that will be enough.
He doesn't go home.
He sits in the green chair and watches the parking lot empty and the lights come on and the cleaning crew push their cart down the hallway and the woman at the desk change shifts with another woman who looks at him once and then doesn't look again. He sits there because sitting there is the only thing he can do that means what he needs it to mean.
At some point — he's not sure when, the clock above the desk has a dead battery — a man in scrubs comes through the doors and says Martin's name. Not a doctor. An orderly, maybe. Young, tired, a stain on his sleeve.
"Deborah said you'd be here," the man says. "He's stable. He's sleeping. You can't see him tonight but you can come back in the morning."
Martin nods. He tries to say thank you but what comes out is just a breath, a shape without sound. The young man nods too, like he's heard that particular silence before, and goes back through the doors.
Martin stands. His knees ache. The parking lot outside is dark now, just the orange pools of the streetlights and his car, alone at the far end of the row where he parked it because he didn't want to take a space someone more important might need.
He zips his coat. He finds his keys. He walks to the elevator and pushes the button and waits and the doors open and he steps in and pushes the button for the lobby and the doors close.
He comes back in the morning.