Pittsburgh, PA
I hear geese.
They are hooting under a starlight too thin for shadows—over and over again—except that it’s me shouting gibberish to the ones that move beneath, silent and mute, until one of them pins an arm to the gurney, and says, Sir. It’s ok. You have cancer. Oh, and thank you, I say, and start trying to find a window with my eyes.
Three days until I’m on my feet but the nurse’s aide has her own set of problems: Rita, that’s my daughter, dumped the grandbaby at my door before I even got to sleep. 12-hour shift. Didn’t get a wink. And can you believe? Won’t find a job. I was almost too late to make the bus, but here I am, she says, slow-shuffling me and my IV pole the fifty feet from my bed, down a mine shaft of fluorescence and bleach, to the window at the end of the hall.
It’s hard work. When we get there, I spread my free hand and press cold glass to feel the sun. It’s better than the images of nature on the wall studies show help patients heal faster, as if green pastures could preserve us until some brighter spring when we begin to flower again. I study those pictures, anyway, with each revolution of the floor—past all those moaning, dinging patients’ rooms, the nurses’ station, the break room smelling of Dinty Moore stew, the laundry room with its princess and the pea tower of blankets, and the medicine closet with its rows and rows of plastic baskets, labeled, little refrigerators side by side on the floor.
But that west-facing window was always my reward. There was a warmth I could feel no painting could describe. Once, it streamed like belief from under a cloud bank overhanging the Alleghenies; it set fire to the Monongahela and the little pool of rain water on the flat tar roof an iridescent congregation of pigeons walked around and around, taking turns, stepping in, to preen.
When I get back to my room, the young woman one door down is standing in the doorway. Maybe she’s lost, or has come to see me, I don’t know. She asks how many times it’s come back like a riddle I must answer before I can pass. Two, I say. Four, she replies, pointing to her chest. I’m stunned. Ten hours on the table each time, staples sternum to pelvis, chemo all over again. Good luck, she says, turning, two bags swinging overhead.
That night, I hear the geese again. They are hooting above a line of cars that disappear into a tunnel. They hoot and hoot—over the ancient Ohio, over the folding mountains, and town after town blinking beneath the trees. Honk, honk, they say, to the one’s walking after dinner. Honk honk, to the ones on their knees in the garden who look like they’re trying to pray. Honk honk. Honk honk, as they keep passing over and over where I lay.
It’s ok. It’s ok. says the night nurse. You’ve been dreaming. But I’m so tired, I say.
Bill King is a Pushcart Prize nominee who has published in many journals and anthologies, including 100 Word Story, Columbia Journal, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Still: The Journal, Kestrel, and Appalachian Heritage. He grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia, holds an M.A. in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Georgia, and teaches creative writing and literature at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, WV. His chapbook, from Finishing Line Press, is The Letting Go (2018).