2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College

Waiting
by Josh Goller
“So how did she meet you” the husband asked. He stood next to
me, staring out at the half-filled hospital parking lot as I struggled
against the wind to light the penultimate cigarette from my emergency
pack. I exhaled and watched the plume spiral out into the rain.
“We were reading the same book,” I said, daring to look at him. “At
a coffee shop.”
She’d told me he was a college professor, but I never expected him
to so exactly look the part. Crop of silver hair with matching beard, bifocals,
corduroy pants. He could have been her father. Despite my love
handles and crow’s feet, he made me feel like a kid.
“But I suppose she didn’t collapse in her nightgown at the coffee
shop.” The husband shuffled in place, as if the damp cement would climb
his legs should he keep them still.
“No, I suppose not.” I balled my fist in my pocket. I’d never been in
a fight.
A siren pierced the dark and grew closer. I noticed a glob of her
froth still clinging to the spot over my breastbone, where her head had
slumped as I carried her from my bungalow to the car after her seizure.
For a moment, I thought about keeping it there. But I loosened my fist,
pulled out my hand, and wiped.
“Did she say anything” the husband asked. “After it happened Did
she come to at all during the drive over”
The ambulance shot into the parking lot and its brakes squeaked in
front of the awning. The paramedics rolled an old woman on a gurney
past us and into the emergency room.
I looked at the husband, his eyes dark and wet with hope. If I could
have remembered his name I would have said she had called for him.
“She opened her eyes once, for a second or two, but that’s all. I’m
sorry.” My words tasted like chalk. Clouds overhead flickered with
cloaked lightning and winked out again.
“You’re not the first, you know that right You’re not special.”
I wanted to say I didn’t know what he was talking about, that he was
110 Santa Fe Literary Review