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On Hospital Room Occupancy and Ocean Tides

On Hospital Room Occupancy and Ocean Tides

"If he asks me to hug him," I wondered, "am I really going to have to wear this mask?"

Riding up a rickety elevator to see my grandfather, this thought crossed my mind – over and over. Grandpa was occupying a room on the 12th floor of Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, California. This is not the floor that you, I, or anyone else want to be on. It's part of the hospital's cancer ward, and the floor we plummeted toward housed patients in their end stages.

The hospital itself was magnificent-- at least as far as hospitals go, anyway. It was sanitary to the point of being sterile, and it had that generic, kitsch art hanging on its walls that we've all come to associate with hospitals. Little children playing in fields of grass. Prints with frayed corners. Dogs chasing babies. Warped mattes that had yellowed over time. Landscapes that bring the sun to life. It was located just a stone's throw from the Pacific Ocean, though, and that was the real show-stopper. All windows pointed out to the endless blue horizon.

The repetitive, cyclical nature of the ocean suited the hospital setting quite well. The sapphire blue swells encroached upon the land as the moon tugged the tides along with it. Then, as the moon retreated the cool water responded accordingly, receding and exposing the slick, wet sand that it had worked so hard to pack down. It occurs like clockwork, the tide does -- it's just as certain as death and taxes.

Having walked past the windows and taking in that same Pacific Ocean view, my father, my sister and I prepared ourselves.

We were there to visit a ghost.

We had visited grandpa a few times since he'd been admitted to the hospital, but this time was different. Our dad had gotten a phone call the night before our visit, and he was told that anybody who wanted to see grandpa before he passed should rush to the hospital immediately. Somehow, we managed to wait 16 hours before we made it.

On the outside, my dad seemed to get tougher as the news got worse. He said that we should probably go visit grandpa, but that the doctors didn't know what kind of man they were dealing with -- my grandpa was notorious in our family for being a tough son of a bitch. He was the antithesis of the Labyrinth; his walls were tall and strong, but they were meant to keep people out -- not in. It’s said that he only cried three times in his life: once each when his two grandchildren were born, and once when he spilled a full glass of his favorite Scotch. Emotional expression was foreign to him; I doubt the word love had ever been spilled from his purple lips.

Prior to entering Grandpa's room, nurses instructed us to put on medical gowns and to cover our faces with masks if we were to get close. Grandpa's immune system was so fragile that the doctors worried he might succumb to a visitor's airborne pathogens before the lung cancer even had a chance to claim him.

After throwing the faded blue hospital gown over my t-shirt and fastening it around my waist, I looked up and asked my dad if we should put our masks on. He replied, "no, I doubt we're gonna need them."

We opened the door to grandpa’s room and walked through it, taking great care to make sure we closed it all the way behind us. Grandpa talked to my dad first and then to my little sister, and then turned his attention toward me. He asked me about school mostly, and wondered how my baseball team was doing. Once our small talk had ended, there was an awkward silence in the air. Dad, my sister and I took it as our cue to leave, and we were sure that grandpa felt the same way.

Then, in one of the most uncharacteristic moments of the man's 69-year-long life, my grandpa's eyes fogged over, just as the marine layer covers the outstretched California coast. The undercurrent of emotion and finality of it all hit him. The dams that built his emotional walls crumbled under the weight of it all.

"Get over here and give your grandpa a hug," he said to me in his trademark guttural tone. I’m not a damn ghost yet.”

I obliged, reaching up to fasten the mask to my face as I'd been instructed. What began as an awkward one-armed half-hug turned into a close, warm, meaningful embrace. His skin was leathery like a well-worn baseball glove; I felt his bones at every contact point our bodies shared; his eyes swelled with each heartbeat of the Pacific’s crashing waves. He smelled of spent tobacco leaves and cheap chest ointment. Our breathing synched up, and neither of us rushed to let go.

It was the first time that I'd touched the man in years. It was the last time I'd ever see him alive.

I ended up needing my mask after all. And finally, at the end of it all, Grandpa was ready to take his off.

On Hospital Room Occupancy and Ocean Tides
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