Hospital Coffee...

My mother used to say the best way to get through your own troubles was to help someone else with theirs. Which is how I ended up in the hospital cafeteria having a cup of coffee with Frank. 

Of course as I got older I realized that what my mother was more accurately saying was the best way to avoid your own problems is to not think about them. Either way I'd be getting that cup of coffee.

The problem started with the phone call. 

"Is this Nancy Greyson?"

"Yes, this is she."

"Ms. Greyson your (did I imagine the pause here or was there really an awkward pause here?) husband has been in an accident. He is in the ICU at Methodist General. Do you know where we are located?"

That pause. I'm sure it was a pause. It let me know it was bad. Is he my husband or was he my husband? What was I rushing into?

It was bad. The accident was bad. They had to cut him out with the jaws of life. The car had flipped twice. It was bad. 

The nurses looked at me with pity in their eyes and whispered to each other as I walked past. At first I thought it was a sign of how bad it really was. Physically. But then I caught..."not alone...." "does she know?" and a hushing when I walked out of the room. 

So here I sat in the cafeteria having coffee with Frank.

"You know, it's weird but this is a surprisingly good cup of coffee. Is that bad to say? I mean in movies and in books hospital coffee is always terrible. They make a point of how terrible it is. But this is..." he trailed off.

"It is good. I think writers use bad coffee as a shorthand for how bad it is to be waiting in a hospital. And nobody wants to say that one of the best cups of coffee they ever had was in a hospital cafeteria while their loved one was in surgery. It's either that or coffee in other hospitals really is bad but since we are in the PNW they felt it was just too cruel to add bad coffee to the trauma of being here." I smiled hoping he would as well. 

He did. 

I watched him. Trying to see myself in his face. See the worry around the eyes. The set of his jaw as he held himself together. The way he seemed to be aging in fast forward as we sat both waiting to hear from the ward nurses that our loved ones were back in their rooms. Hopeful. Fearful. 

Were we the same?

"She wasn't..." he started then stopped. "You don't want to hear this. You have your own worries."

I hadn't mentioned who I was waiting on. Or why. Just that they were in surgery and I had overheard that his wife was as well so did he want to grab some coffee? 

"It's okay. You can talk to me while you wait for your people to get here."

His people. I was assuming he would have people coming. If I had called anyone I would. My sisters for sure. My best friend. Maybe even a few co-workers whom I was close with. They would want to support me. I just wasn't ready yet to ask for the support. I wasn't sure how much I was going to need. Better to focus on Frank.

He looked at his watch. "My son will be here later. I told him to stay in class, to go ahead and go to football practice, to not come until the end of the day, that there was nothing to do here but wait so he shouldn't rush over. I didn't tell him how bad it was. If she..." he stared at his hands "if she doesn't make it through the surgery he will probably never forgive me for not telling him to rush over but..."

"I understand. There are no easy answers. My father had a heart attack when I was living in another state. I didn't rush home on the first plane because doing so would mean that I didn't believe he was going to survive. And I needed to believe that. He did. But I do wonder sometimes how I would have felt if he hadn't."

"I don't know why she wasn't at work. She said she was working late tonight. Would be at the office until late. They called me at 2 in the afternoon. They said the accident happened downtown. She doesn't work downtown. We don't live downtown. She wasn't where she said she would be. I don't know why. I keep asking myself that."

"Working lunch maybe. Or a trip to see a client?"

"She doesn't do that sort of work. I don't think I've ever heard of her going to lunch or visiting clients. It's just...I don't know why she was there. And..." his face changed slightly. The sadness in his eyes replaced for a moment with something else. "Her car is at the park and ride near the house. She wasn't in her own car. I don't think she was even in the office today."

I took a deep breath. "There could be a good reason." I looked at him again. Searching his face. Looking to see if I recognized anything in him. 

Was he like my husband at all. Was I like his wife? Or had they chosen each other because they weren't like us.

My phone buzzed. A text message from the shift nurse letting me know that my husband was out of surgery and on his way back to his room. 

I put my phone down and picked up the cup of coffee. "It is a good cup of coffee. Did you want another?"