Home

I'm staring at a plate of curried chicken. My mom stopped by with tupperware and left hastily.

The light is yellow in my dining room. I sit at the table. I'm glad for this food. Not a day ago I forced down gummy, lukewarm pork and tasteless rice from a hospital tray.

At this juncture, homecooked food is not just a luxury, it's an indispensable therapeutic necessity.

I eat.


I don't really remember the ride home. I was in the car, and Vanessa stopped to get my prescriptions. That's all I really remember.

When you first leave the hospital, with all it's dank body smells, the endless pages echoing through the halls, the pulsing of the IV pump and the sickly food, the inclination of your senses is not so much where you are at the time, but where you aren't, namely, at the hospital.

But now I'm here, home, and it's 7pm. My gladness manifests in exhaustion and appetite.

Liam is also exhausted, out of order. He's been displaced at grandparents houses for over a week. For all their love and care and endless doting, the grandmothers can't replicate the routine of home and family. He'll take a while to get back in his toddler groove.

Vanessa, having carried the burden of a sick spouse, long commutes and a first-trimester pregnancy, is just as tired as both Liam and I.

I gobble my food, and bed finds us all at 8pm.

Before sleeping, Vanessa and I talk.

"You know, even if I need another transfusion, or if something else happens, I don't care. At least I got one night in my own bed."

"Yeah, you're right."

She's hesistant. But I'm less hesistant. I'm here, and not in the hospital. Good enough, one step at a time.

The bed is unspeakably sublime. I stretch out under my comforter, feeling the flannel sheets, the forgiving mattress, the warmth of my wife beside me. Delighted that my feet fail to find a footing of molded plastic.

I pop a couple of T3's so I can sleep with the slight burning in my midsection at the area of the stitches.

I sleep in fits, waking during the night several times. Coming cold-turkey off a steady diet of sleeping pills is not conducive to perfect sleep, but it's good enough. A few false starts and I drift off, wrapped in a cocoon.

I'm dizzy when I wake in the middle of the night. My calf hurts. I shrug these things off.

I wake in the morning and I'm dizzier. It's Sunday.

I'm just pushing myself a little too much. These stairs are beating me. Sit on the couch, no big deal.

My heart pounds.

Vanessa, at the kitchen table, lays out my medication, checking off a chart that she has created for this purpose.

"OK... so... come take your steroids, and your antibiotics."

I rise slowly from the couch. One foot in front of the other.

Gasp.

To the kitchen table. I sit.

My vision swims, and I barely get my pills in my hand. I'm hanging onto the table now. I swallow the pills. I need to lie down.

Something's not right.