One Hundred Paces...

He walked the hallway between the waiting room and the nurses' station. It was 100 steps. Really it should have been 102 but he made sure to fudge a little on his stride length to make it 100. A nice round number. It just felt better to count them off that way, 98, 99....100, and turn and start again.

He made the circuit over and over again. Thousands of steps each day for the past week. He needed to do something to pass the time. He hated hospitals so the fact that he was there at all spoke to how important it was. Hospitals were the reminder of too many tubes and needles and too many people poking and prodding. For a very private man the indignities of a hospital stay were too much. An invasion of space in the justification of health. He traced the scar on his chest, too many memories. He just wanted to bolt for the door every time he saw someone in a white coat walk by.

So he paced.

"You know you don't have to be here, right? We can call..."

"That's okay, I'll wait."

He paced back and forth.

Family members passed him in the hall. Going in to her room. Staying for a few minutes. Shuffling back out. Going to the waiting room and sitting in hard plastic chairs waiting for the next time they might be granted entry. And still he paced.

He had tried to stay in the waiting room with everyone else. He really had. But it was too much. They were too much. Everyone handles things differently. That's what he would repeat to himself. Everyone deals with things in their own way. But he still didn't want to see their faces. Their "trying to be okay" faces. Or their "everything is falling apart" faces. He couldn't stand to see his daughter reading a book like nothing was happening or his son staring at the wall crying like the world was ending. So he paced.

Eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven....

Her hand slipped in to his. Eighty-eight, eight-nine, ninety...

Then he heard the alarms.

Ninety-one, ninety-two, ninety-three...

And the rush of nurses to her room. The doctor on call racing out of the room at the end of the hallway.

He gave her hand a squeeze. "Did you want to wait?"

Ninety-four, ninety-five, ninety-six...

She squeezed back, "I think we've been waiting long enough, don't you?"

Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred...

They stood together and looked in to the waiting room. Their children sitting rigid listening to the distance alarms sounding. Waiting for the news they knew would come.

"She's with Dad now..."



She turned and smiled at him then. "Yes, I am."