"If you live to a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to leave without you."
- Joan Powers, Pooh's Little Instruction Book
"If ever there comes a day when we can't be together, keep me in your heart. I'll stay there forever."
- A.A Milne, Winnie the Pooh
...
I scanned the area for my team, and decided to take the empty seat next to her.
At that point her welling tears were progressing into soft sobs. She looked at him and then me, and in her thick middle eastern accent whispered, "That's my best friend. Married for 44 years, six children. I don't know what I'm gonna do without him."
Every day, she's there by his side.
Every day, she's praying that he'll wake up, that the surgery will be successful, that she'll have one more day with him.
She shared with me her innocent love story of how they started out as neighbours when she was seven and he twelve, that they married nine years later and now have six children and seven grandchildren.
Between intermittent sobs, she told me of the life she built with her best friend and the memories she collected through the years that brought her to right here, right now - completely heartbroken in the intensive care unit.
I cannot even begin to imagine the fear that must have plagued her, the overwhelming terror that threatened to crush her and life as she knew it the very second she let her guard down.
She wiped her tears, warmly laughed off my polite refusal to date her successful son, and thanked me sincerely.
And then I excused myself, and I walked away from her pain.
...
And across the department from her, was another woman who had suffered a massive stroke whilst in hospital and was comatose.
In his buttoned down top, shorts and a walking stick, he would come by to visit her every day since she was admitted for other problems, faithfully telling us of the progress he thought she was making.
After this incident though, he stopped appearing. She would be surrounded by loving children, but he was nowhere to be found. I later overheard the nurses say that he did not want to come in for fear of facing the situation. Put simply, he was in denial, because the truth was much, much too painful to bear.
Many hours later late in the evening, in the midst of my other tasks, I watched this small, old man slowly walk down the hallway towards his wife. He caught my eye, and cheekily raised his walking stick at me, pretending to aim and shoot. Compliantly, I playfully raised my hands in surrender. He laughed softly to say that he missed.
Still, despite our momentary playful encounter, he simply could not hide the massive sorrow in his soul.
I watched him continue his slow walk towards her, thinking of how brave he was, and how life would never be the same again after he saw her that night.
...
There is this look I've come to recognise in the intensive care unit.
Sometimes when I walk down the hallway passing bed after bed, I see it in succession. Room after room, it's the same look that sits for extended lengths of time by the patient's bedside, a private gaze in a tiny space amidst complex, supportive medical equipment.
It is an expression painted on the faces of truly loved ones - a silent plead, a yearning hope, a desperate despair.
