Physical

            After lunch, I take my newspaper to the hospital. I hand it to the Labor and Delivery nurse on the fourth floor. She wears sunshine scrubs. The newsprint will dye her fingers. I’m late for my 1:00. My 1:00 doesn’t show until 1:12 and he talks on about feral cats while I hold the stethoscope against his smooth chest. He is an electrical engineering student and his new wife is Cherri; they want four children—two girls, two boys; his mother recently died of lung cancer. While he unbuttons his jeans, his belly alone is hairy, like my brother Austin’s when he was thirteen. This man has cancer as well, but we don’t know it yet; he smiles as he pulls on his shirt. He smells like soap, and the rest of the day the office will remind me of his hairy belly, my brother, also gone.

             Near 4:00, I’m tired of touching people today, but I have one more hour. A woman in a blue suit and smart shoes needs something. She talks while I touch her briefly, about her grandson’s graduation. In the hall, a child is crying. The young man’s smell still lingers—does she notice? She looks at me and stops. She says nothing, then talks about her job. She is an accountant and her office overlooks the west side of town—the poor side—so she thinks about people washing dishes, mowing the lawn, or playing video games while someone else cooks. Her husband has been dead for four years; now she’s seeing someone online. We don’t know how long she will outlive this new love, but she shakes my hand and closes the door, her voice like an echo without walls. My brother is gone.

            Just past 5:30, the Labor and Delivery nurse with the paper waves goodbye to me, and I want to get home to watch Survivor. A girl, sixteen, wanders down the hall in a short skirt. I want to chide her, but I am no father. Out the lobby window, the sun wants to be somewhere else, almost, and I am reminded of the lady in smart shoes and the young man with just a hairy belly and nothing spectacular makes me cry.

             I am alive.