It is dark and cold as
I walk along the smooth tile floor
to her bedside.
There are wires and tubes, and
the machines that keep her alive,
are flashing and beeping.

One in a million they say.
She had to have the one.
The one routine surgery that had to go wrong.
I am shaking and terrified,
and my insides feel as if they are twisted in a knot.
A hospital, taught to be a safe place,
now feels like Hell.

Her eyes flutter open,
and we make eye contact.
Eyes which are so powerful,
that they can tell the feelings and the stories
that can’t be spoken,
now have fear in them.

She tries to speak, but the
long white tube down her throat
will not let her.
I read her lips.
“Are you ok?”
Even in such an awful situation,
she still worries about me.
I tell her, “I’m ok.”
The only person you need to worry about is yourself.”

We have switched places.
She who has always been there
to take care of me, now cannot.
I must take care of her,
and I am scared.