Laurentides
She’d been recovering from the operation in a small health center hidden above the 45° parallel in Quebec. The road that led to the wooden cottage was solely accessible during Summer and the only other patient there was a satin white hair woman who slept through a coma. For all intentions and purposes, she was alone with the nurses who stayed one at the time on shifts of one week each.
It had been long since she’d lost her will to go back to the metropolis. The fast paced life and crowds didn’t attract her anymore. She wasn’t happy here either, but she wouldn’t be anywhere in any case. She’d lost her uterus and the little ball of cells that was inside of it almost 5 months ago. The man with whom she shared her life had also been lost in that same car accident. Nothing but half the body of what used to be a woman and even less of what used to be her soul was left in her. The nights were the worst, she had the same dream canvas over and over again: a pressure in her chest, she could not draw or exhale at all. She walked through a bog, it’s stale water was thick and warm. Waking up was a relief, she’d take deep breaths and take a cold shower to take away the warm feeling in her legs.
Her balcony looked over a creek, which swirled slowly down the fiery Laurentian Autumn trees. There she sat and read every article, every political cartoon and every ad of a pile of old The New Yorker magazines that she’d found in the nurse’s room. She realized she was going to finish them all before the first snows, she had not yet figured what to do with her life after that.
The first week of October the coughing started, the old woman on the room on the end of the corridor sounded like a humid windpipe. At first she was relieved she couldn’t fall asleep to the same old dream, but seven days of sleep deprivation got the best of her. That night she entered into the old woman’s’ room. The high pitched voice of an eastern European nurse reminded her that the wrinkled woman was beyond consciousness, there was no use in complaining. The nurse had been staying by the old woman’s side with hot towels and water to sooth the coughs. A feeling of compassion struck the widow, a feeling that she’d forgotten for she had no one to care since the accident. Not having anything better to do with her life she struck a deal with the nurse: more The New Yorker Magazines in exchange of her taking care of the sleeping elder at night. The nurse simply smiled, nodded and left to her own room.
And so the snow covered the hills, the lake froze and the magazines kept coming. All the nurses had accepted the deal and now had more energy and will during the day to do their tasks. Their full night of sleep made wonders to the cottage: old things were thrown away, windows were cleaned, walls repainted and even an inside greenhouse was accommodated. Meanwhile the two patients stayed side by side, one helping the other one breath, one giving a purpose to the other. The intermittent coughs allowed the widow to wake up before the dream started, but long enough for her to rest.
And for the first time in a year, she felt well. The pain, the memories and the nightmares would follow her to the grave, but in the meantime she would live again. Taking care of a human who needed her to survive, a childlike situation.