On the paper, there’s more and more ink. More and more nurses are filling reports. These are everyday things he needs. Oxygen tanks. Malto-dextrose. Pain killers. For real, every day they replace the tanks eight times. And when it’s time for him to eat, a tube through the respirator.
Not that he notices.
The question is always: Can he hear us?
The doctors say he can’t. He’s all groggy from the dopamine. They do this so he doesn’t feel the respirator, he’ll choke otherwise. The moment he wakes up, if he wakes up, he’ll gag himself to death.
The crowds build gradually. One person at a time, an aunt, an uncle, a few cousins. Even only old friends, and the room is full in a way that would warrant another room. Everyone wants to pay their respect, visiting when really they mean condolences.
He can’t talk.
Neruda posed the question, How long does a man live, after all? Does he live a thousand days, or one only? For a week, or for several centuries? How long does a man spend dying? What does it mean to say “for ever”?
He doesn’t know they’re there. He can’t hear them, or see them, barely even feel them. The people inside the room are dead to him. Like ghosts that waft by feeling only the lightest of sensations.
They spend every free moment in there, unable to go on with their lives. Some of them before work or school, some of them after. They go there and they sit, staring at the man laying in front of them and ask: Can he hear us?
The hospital has become a house of the spirits.
(notes for an entry "The House of the Spirits")
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