One Morning in Hospice
by Anita Kottapalli
The house sits atop a hill in an exterior built with the language of a barn. I follow the nurse to a side door. A piece of paper taped to it reads in letters warning of oxygen use in the house. Our four footsteps become eight as a friendly dog welcomes us. A lady with showered hair greets the nurse and welcomes me inside. In the bedroom to our right, there are shelves organized with gauze pads and alcohol swabs among varied supplies. The place exudes the systematic organization of a practiced caretaker and the devotion of a selfless wife. We move further into the house. He is sitting in an armchair deep into the corner of the living room covered in blankets.
“It feels as if there has been a glass dome placed over us that separates us from the rest of the world.”
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The nurse takes a seat in front of him. She asks how he is doing. He clears his throat and begins slowly. His words are stripped of any glamour and wrapped in frank candidness. He says, “I don’t have the energy to do any of the things I want to do anymore. I wake up every morning and sit here. There is nothing for me to do except…” he leaves the sentence unfinished. “The problem I have is that — there is nothing for me to look forward to.” We sit in silence.
It feels as if there has been a glass dome placed over us that separates us from the rest of the world. For a moment, I see each one of us sitting in that armchair, weak and jaundiced, having lost the ability to do any of the things we once enjoyed and left with only the thoughts of the life we lived and the life we would leave behind. This lasts only for a second. The glass dome breaks, and the nurse goes on to mention citalopram and stool softeners. She asks about the discharge from his drains. She explains the problem with ammonia levels in this type of cancer. Then she says with a practiced softness, “I will let you rest now.”
The lady with showered hair joins the nurse and I at the kitchen table where the nurse is making calls and updating her charting. The leg of my chair squeaks and for a moment I picture the family having eaten the last Thanksgiving dinner with their father at this table just a few weeks ago. The lady breaks the silence and nods towards the large fish tank behind me. She points to one of the fish with a long tail I had never seen before but that I likened to that of a beta fish. She says, “Those ones are the males.” She points to the ones without the tails and says these are the females. She jokes with lightness, “All they do in there is breed.” She talks about the peculiarities of each fish. The large one with big lips is identified as a goldfish. She says goldfish are so dumb that if fed continuously, they will continue to eat until they die in complete oblivion. This makes the nurse laugh in the midst of her typing.
The lady gets up and walks over to me. She points out one of the fish that is hidden in a plastic tree. It is oddly shaped with a prominent bulge to its midsection. She asks me if I can see the distinct stripe of darkness in its stomach. I move closer. It almost looks like thousands of tiny eyes. She says the fish is pregnant. She walks away to collect a pellet of food and drops it in the tank. In the bustle of hungry fish, this particular one remains hovering alone in the tree. I notice that back in the living room, he has moved into an armchair closer to us where he, too, can see the fish. I feel the glass dome over us again as we watch the tank. She says the fish will give birth any day now. We sit in silence.
Anita Kottapalli is a third-year medical student at the UTCOMLS.
