Through the Window
by Les Zig
Thursday, June 30th
I see her through the window from my eighth-floor hospital bed. My leg throbs from the surgery, and my mind struggles to focus—a combination of the shock, the disorientation, and the anesthetic and painkillers that have all been a part of this night. The three other patients who share the ward with me snore obliviously. It must be late, maybe even past midnight. The hospital is still. I feel I might be the only one who is awake.
Well, and her.
She is an elderly, thickset woman standing in the light of the bus stop across the street. Her short, coppery hair glints like dried blood. I think I should know her, that she is familiar, but she is also unreal to me—something in a long, long line of things my mind is struggling to process from tonight.
I slip back into a troubled sleep, the old woman the last thing I see.
Friday, 1st July
I see her through the window early the next morning, hunched as if she is shielding herself from the cold. That familiarity echoes around her, like an aura I struggle to identify. Others crowd her at the bus stop: school kids in deep maroon blazers, who shift and chatter with the impatience of youth; adults, tired and resigned, waiting to go to work. But she is dark, a shadow of melancholy that touches everybody around her until they feel her unease and become uneasy themselves.
A bus arrives and obscures them as a group of doctors approach my bedside. The doctors smile and laugh like they don’t have a care in the world. One pulls back my bedsheet with the flourish of a magician revealing that his assistant is no longer in the box. What awaits me is not the triumph of an astonishing magic trick, but my right leg elevated on a hill of pillows. The foot and ankle, purple and bloated, throb, while pain cuts from the big toe to my heel.
The scaffold screwed into my shin and foot isn’t just a shock, but unnatural—a contraption of steel and screws that is now part of my flesh. Nausea rises up in my throat. The doctors explain the frame—the “external fixator,” they call it—is holding the bones in place until the swelling goes down enough so they can operate on the break and insert plates. All I can picture is that somebody screwed this through my flesh and right into the bone.
When the doctors leave, two other doctors arrive, introducing themselves as part of the pain team. They tell me about the painkillers I was given during surgery: morphine and ketamine, which they say can produce hallucinations like people talking to me, or—a common one—seeing grass across the floor of the ward. I glance around nervously, like these are things that may occur spontaneously. They assure me I’ll be okay and talk to me about the medication I’ll be on now: OxyContin, for the pain; Lyrica, for the nerve trauma; and good old paracetamol, to take the edge off.
When they leave, I’m pensive until the other patients engage me in small talk and we exchange horror stories. Wayne, sitting in a chair by his bed, a cane resting across his lap, had surgery on a prolapsed disc in his neck. Penny, opposite me, has fractured a hip. Diana, opposite Wayne, remains asleep throughout—she’s had a stroke. A car struck me at a crossing—I had the right of way—as I was taking my evening walk.
The nurse interrupts us, dragging a blood pressure machine behind her on squealing wheels, telling me she needs to perform her “obs.” She plugs the machine in and wraps the blood pressure cuff around my left arm. It inflates, growing tight around my biceps. She pops a cold thermometer in my ear and attaches a little clamp to my right index fingertip that pinches at my skin. She explains the clamp measures my heart and oxygen levels.
My readings light up on the blood pressure machine’s display one after another, as if somebody is noting bingo numbers. The nurse remarks the readings are good and jots them down in my chart. She places a hand over the top of my swollen foot. Her fingers are cool and soft, but as she moves them up, looking for a pulse, the sensation grows numb. My foot feels as if it’s entered a sleep from which it might not awake.
Her frown deepens, and I expect the worst, but then she smiles. She says the pulse is strong, writes that down, and finishes by asking if I would like some pain relief. Relief! Like there could be relief from this.
“Yes, please.”
The nurse gives me my meds. I gulp them down with water from a little plastic cup and soon I am drowsy. I turn to the window, falling asleep to the sight of the departing bus.
But there remains the old woman, sitting there alone.
Saturday, 2nd July
I see nothing through the window but an empty bus stop and a busy street. No school or work today, so none of the regulars who use the stop on weekdays. They are home, tucked away, shielded from a bleary sky and spattering rain, living their lives and enjoying their weekends, just as I should be.
Breakfast is served: toast, juice and tea. The toast is soggy, like it sat under a heat lamp in the kitchen absorbing the margarine that has been spread across it. While I eat, Diana is discharged. She’s being transferred to a home. The bedsheets are changed and another patient, Roddy, is checked in. He has a festering wound on his foot, perhaps from a spider bite. Wayne hobbles around the eighth floor with a cane as part of his rehab.
Afterwards, the nurse performs her obs. Again, my readings are good. When she’s done, she asks if I’ve moved my bowels. What a question! It takes a moment for me to realize she is doing her job. My body has no secrets in here. Meekly, I answer no, so she adds laxatives to my cocktail of medication, telling me painkillers can bind up the stomach and lead to constipation. She encourages me to wash and brings me a hand towel, a bath towel, and a basin of warm soapy water. Drawing the curtain, she leaves me to it.
It’s not easy washing with a hand towel when I can’t turn or move my leg from the pillows. It’s even harder washing my back and buttocks. A metal rung hangs above the bed; I haul myself up with one hand while washing behind me as best as I can with the other. The water is tepid and the washcloth rough on my skin, but the activity highlights both that I am capable despite my injury and trapped in this bed. It takes several hoists to be thorough, and by the time I’m finished I’m panting from the exertion.
The nurse returns and remakes the bed around me. When it comes time to replace the sheet, she asks me to lift my right leg. I do so, expecting pain to shoot through where it’s been broken, or in the foot that’s swollen. But the pain that comes is in my right thigh, and it’s not a result of the damage, but because of the inactivity – the muscles in my right thigh are already wasting away and struggling to lift the rest of my leg, including the extra weight of the X-Fix.
The nurse works efficiently and methodically. This is something she must’ve done time and time again with countless patients. I try to find assurance in that. No alarm bells are ringing. Nothing is happening that can’t be handled. Everybody is going about their business the way they always would.
But deep inside, the uncertainty gnaws at me. This may be the routine in here, but I will not be in here forever. How does this new truth impact the rest of my life, and the way I move through the world outside these walls?
Sunday, 3rd July
I see nothing through the window but the emptiness of the bus stop, so I settle back, feeling alone, if not deserted. I eat breakfast mechanically and wonder how I’ll spend the morning, but then my stomach gurgles. I urge the nurse for the bedpan and she brings a variety of things: the bedpan, toilet paper, and other toiletries to wash myself. She offers to slide the bedpan under me, but I tell her I’ll be okay, so she draws the curtain.
I pull aside my hospital gown, lower my underwear, haul myself up with one hand and maneuver the bedpan under me with the other. I move tentatively at first, but then with confidence. My right leg is not going to scream with pain, the way it did when they put me on the stretcher to load me into the ambulance, my bones shattered and jostling free of the ankle socket. The X-Fix is holding everything in place. I find sanctuary in that. This is what I need to do. The bedpan is cold against my buttocks, and the edges press into my skin.
Moving one’s bowels in this situation is difficult. It’s not just the awkwardness of the position, or that a lifetime has not trained me to feel at ease in this situation—or that it is in any way normal—but also being in a ward with other people, knowing they can hear me, that they can smell me, that they know what I’m doing. There are reasons toilets are given their own room in some nook of a house.
Afterward, I wipe myself—which is harder than washing myself—and put the waste in the bedpan. Then I wash myself and call for the nurse to take everything away. She does so wordlessly, while I force a smile and thank her, trying to cover my embarrassment that she has taken care of me as if I were a toddler needing potty training.
Monday, 4th July
I see her through the window, her bright red scarf like a beacon amongst the Monday morning crowd. The bus arrives, and the others clamber on. But not her. She stays. Like she is waiting.
The arrival of the nurses distracts me. Penny is discharged. After the bed is changed, she is replaced by Shaun, a portly, middle-aged man who’s had a knee replacement. It’s amazing what surgical technology can do.
The doctors come and lift my sheet, but their examination of my leg is perfunctory. They tell me it’s still too swollen and check my foot. It is numb to their touch. They tell me that the nerve has been damaged—that the surgeon who attached the X-Fix said that in breaking, the bones had hooked the nerve and wishboned, stretching the nerve. Only time will reveal the extent of the damage.
The doctors go, so I turn to the window, to the woman now seated alone at the stop, and close my eyes. Perhaps it’s because I have not seen her for two days that my mind takes in all the details like it’s seeing her for the first time; or maybe it’s because now that I’ve been here for four days, my mind has acclimated to the shock, digested what’s going on, and made space for the memory to emerge. She appears in my mind amongst a crowd of onlookers. I sit on a nature strip, clutching my leg, the bones bulging through the flesh.
I know her. She is the woman who hit me with her car.
She is the woman who put me here.
Tuesday, 5th July
I see her through the window at the bus stop, pacing back and forth like a dog straining to get off its leash. Maybe she’s trying to summon the courage to come in. Maybe she wants to apologize. While it is winter, the sky is clear and the sun beams off the window. It would be nice if she didn’t have to come in here, if I could be out there enjoying the day, like so many others will. It would be nice to take a walk. I used to walk all the time, sometimes as exercise, sometimes to clear my thoughts, sometimes for both.
Physios arrive and flex Shaun’s leg to get the new knee working. He grimaces and whines and complains about it being too hard, but doesn’t know how lucky he is, every moment bringing him a step closer to recovery. Wayne scoots around the eighth floor, his cane an accompaniment like tap shoes.
Outside, the bus comes and goes and the woman remains. If she came in here to say sorry, I think I would act noble. I would tell her accidents happen and that I accept her apology.
The doctors arrive and perform their examination. They tell me the swelling is going down but still not enough for surgery. The nurse follows them with her obs. The pain is tolerable and I don’t want to take the painkillers the nurse offers. I want to be strong. I want to be independent. I want to be me—or who I was, free and unencumbered. The nurse says if I let the pain back in it’ll be harder to push out again. And there it goes: my resistance is punctured, and that self-image deflates into something I no longer recognize, and have no confidence in.
So I take the painkillers and watch the old woman through the window until I drift off into a drug-addled sleep.
Wednesday, 6th July
I see her through the window, the centerpiece among the morning crowd for whom I’ve imagined names and histories: Susan, a blonde teen who despises everybody who thinks she’s stupid because she’s pretty and wants to become a doctor; her classmate Gary, who has a crush on her and fantasizes about her every night; Henry, a stocky middle-aged man who’s the manager at the local supermarket; Ruth, a thirty-year-old redhead who’s unhappily married; and on the list goes, but for her.
She is a void. Everything I imagine about her is not right. Maybe it’s because she ran me down. Crippled me, temporarily, maybe permanently, because I don’t know how my leg will recover. Maybe I’ll walk with a limp. Or a cane. Maybe the feeling in my foot will never return.
I scowl and don’t engage as the others chitchat. My teeth grind when the physios help Shaun hobble across the ward with the aid of a walker. He still grumbles, but without the same conviction, no doubt recognizing the improvement, knowing that they wouldn’t be pushing him if he couldn’t handle it. He’ll be out in no time. Roddy cheers him on. Wayne laps the ward.
When the doctors come, I want to question them about my recovery. I prop pillows behind me and sit upright, like a schoolchild at attention. The doctors examine me and declare the swelling’s better, but still too severe to operate.
The questions flare in my mind, frustration incinerates them, and disappointment scatters the ashes.
Thursday, 7th July
I see her through the window, just a blur among the others as drizzle curtains the bus stop. The sky is grey, and the day looks cold and miserable—the sort of day I wouldn’t want to get out of bed for, let alone leave the house.
For once, I am glad to be in here.
But only for a moment.
Then I think about how nice it would be to feel the outside, to feel the wind ruffle my clothes, the coldness of the rain on my face, and hear the world unfold around me; to be free to do whatever I wanted, to eat what I like, to not have to worry about obs and pain meds and surgeries, to take a walk in the rain and then go home and soak in a hot bath.
She has put me here and yet she stands outside, as she has done every day, trying to build the courage so she can face me to apologize for my suffering. What other reason could she be here but guilt? It binds us now, until we are two halves of the same entity, the thing this experience has become.
I can understand her reluctance. I can understand her fear. That I might explode and condemn her. I was crossing at an intersection and had the right of way. She turned and hit me. How did she not see me? Of course she’s afraid to face me. She should be.
I’ll send a nurse out to tell her it’s okay to come in. Even with the encouragement, she may still be too scared. The nurse can relay my forgiveness. Hopefully, that would be enough. Then the old woman could go home to whatever family she has and leave me to wait in here, waiting, waiting, waiting to heal.
I buzz for the nurse.
When she arrives, I look out the window, then ask for more pain relief.
Friday, 8th July
I see her through the window, only a small, hunched woman physically, but a giant in my mind I cannot navigate around. The bus arrives and takes away the others, but she remains.
Just her.
And me.
Us.
I don’t want the pain.
I don’t want the ugliness.
I don’t want any of this.
I try to focus on Shaun as he packs. He’s been discharged. The way he walks, you wouldn’t be able to tell his whole knee has been replaced. The nurses change his sheets, and Andy, who’s ninety or so, is checked in. I don’t know why he’s here, but he sleeps the whole morning, his snoring reverberating through the ward.
The doctors arrive and perform their examination, joking between themselves like I’m a cadaver which they need to pay no regard to. When they tell me the swelling’s better but still not good enough, I turn to the window, to her; she is sitting there, uninhibited and capable of movement, but not even able to offer an apology.
Saturday, 9th July
I see nothing through the window but an empty bus stop. The world moves on outside. I am left with the what has become my new normal.
The ward.
The bed.
My leg.
Wayne is discharged, so we exchange goodbyes and somebody else is checked in—Tariq, I think his name is. I don’t care. Not anymore. Only the empty bus stop really matters—empty because she is at home, living her life, because that’s what she’s able to do. I see her, sitting with her husband, an old man with a kindly face who bellows laughter that fills the room with warmth and happiness. She has children who are married, and they have children who clamber onto their grandparents’ laps and cover them in kisses and giggles, never knowing, never suspecting, that their grandmother has crippled a man.
After lunch, she takes her grandchildren to the park, and watches proudly as they play on the swings, imagining lives they might lead when they grow up—successful in their jobs, happy in their relationships, and healthy in their bodies and minds. By then, who would I be to her? Nobody. Some small wrong she wishes could be undone—and undone not for me, for the damage she has inflicted, but because of the guilt it has caused her. Perhaps she does not even remember. Perhaps she just takes for granted that everything worked out.
She is a monster with no real concern for me, other than to seek my absolution for her own peace of mind. If she were to come here, if she were to stand at my bedside, I would spit on her, I would tell her to go fuck herself, that I wish a car would strike her as she walked across the street with the right of way. I would say the most abominable things possible, so that she carried this with her and had no doubt about what she had done.
That will be my legacy.
Because this is her legacy to me.
Sunday, 10th July
I see nothing through the window but the empty bus stop—empty, because she can take a break from her useless vigil, although I cannot take a break from my pain. My anger simmers until the doctors arrive. I expect nothing, but they tell me the swelling has reduced enough for surgery.
From there, it’s all preparations, and I have no time for people watching. I change gowns, put on hospital underwear and a hospital cap. Then I am brought to theatre. I grimace as an anesthesiologist cannulates my arm and explains they’ll be using the same painkillers they did when they attached the external fixator.
They wheel me into surgery suite. It’s colder than the rest of the hospital, and a humming I can’t pinpoint fills the room. The surgeons are faceless in their masks and scrubs. The anesthesiologist puts the breathing mask over my face and tells me to count to ten.
I don’t get past three.
When I awake, I’m in recovery. A nurse tells me they’re bringing me back to my ward, and explains I have a clicker in my hand to control my morphine intake. My right leg sears where they’ve cut into me.
I flitter in and out of sleep as I’m wheeled through hallways because the anesthetic is a fog I can’t entirely escape. When we reach the ward, the old woman’s waiting by the entrance. I’m not surprised to see her. I expect her. The orderly pushing my bed goes to consult with a nurse to check on where I should be put. The old woman teeters, trying to summon the courage to approach me, her mouth moving wordlessly. I lift the hand that holds the morphine clicker; I want to tell her to stay where she is. It’s okay. She doesn’t need to tell me.
The orderly returns.
“All good?” he asks.
I nod.
He wheels my bed back into position against the wall, next to the window. The old woman smiles at me from the ward’s entrance, as if we’ve come to an unspoken understanding. I think about my anger, about the way I thought of her, about how I wanted to tear her down, but I see her now for what she is: an old woman who made a mistake.
I turn away from her and to the window. The sun blazes across my face and coats my body with warmth. The bus stop sits there although I register it as little more than an afterthought as I drive my gaze up, up, up the road, to where it meets the sky.
It’s the last thing I see before I fall back to sleep.
Les Zig is the author of The Shadow in the Wind (Pinion Press 2019), August Falling (Pantera Press 2018), Just Another Week in Suburbia (Pantera Press 2017), and Pride (Busybird Publishing 2017). His stories often focus on characters facing adversity who are trying to find their place in the world. He’s had three screenplays optioned, and a number of unproduced screenplays place and shortlist in various awards. His stories and articles have been published in various print and digital journals. He blogs, often yelling at clouds, at www.leszig.com. Facebook/Twitter/Instagram: Les Zig