Secondhands

The distance between hurdles is getting shorter. I sit beside her in the OR Waiting Room. The clock ticks. Tocks. Ticks. The hands move but time does not. We've been here for what? One, two, three? Four hours. She's been in surgery for longer than that. There are four of us sitting here, thinking about her, here for her. One more so than the others, for this one, it's her love in there, her heart and her life, her partner. Maybe we're here for that one. The one in surgery, after all, doesn't really know who sits outside, just so that someone is, so that someone will be there.

We wait.

Tick.

I sit beside a friend I've known for almost half my life. I sit with her brother. I sit with another friend I've know almost as long as the one we're here for.

Tock.

It's not what you want to imagine, a friend's body cut open, pieces being removed, surgeons hovering. I can't help but put my mind in the room, imagining the surgery. Get it out, get every bit of it out. I say it over and over again in my heart.

Tick. Tock.

Another group of people, a large family, fills a corner of the room. They spill from the chairs and the couches, eat dinner, feed the babies, sleep. They await the announcement of a birth. They're joyful, hopeful, warm, connected. In contrast, we are quiet, pour coffee, read, glance at each other, bits of conversation and an occasional laugh, then falling back to the quiet. We are solemn.

Tick.

Tock.

The surgeons enter the room and they and my friend disappear behind a close the door.

Tick. Tock.

It was bad, but they got most of it, my friend tells me, it's grains of sand left. The doctor says that Chemo should get that. I look at her, fragile and tough, standing strong. It's a long road, this one. This is the beginning.

Driving home, I turn left onto a side street to avoid the traffic. Did I do this on purpose when I set out, going down this street? I look at the apartment complex still standing after 20 years, and it was old then, remember a keg party I went to, one she and her roommate threw. I remember sitting on the couch, drunk and laughing. I remember the neighbors complaining. I remember being young and not having a care, not knowing that one person in the room would travel my life with me, or that one day I'd sit in a waiting room with her while her heart balanced between breaking and hope. I look over at the building, think of the long journey between then and now, how far I've gone in age and experience, how much of this life I've held, how much of this world I've tasted, and yet here I am again, on this street in front of those apartments.

I pull from the little street onto the main road, leave that memory behind, focus on the present day and hour, reality and hope, prayers.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.