November 29, 2025

At the beginning of November, my father went into the hospital for a simple procedure. It lasted five minutes, and should have released him two hours later. But the medical team botched the procedure, and my father wound up staying in the hospital for eight days. For his first two days there, he had a room in the intensive care unit. Whenever he’s been admitted to the hospital, he starts out in the emergency room, sometimes for a whole day, and then is transferred to the second, third, or fourth floor, and always having to share his room with someone else. Here, his bed stood in the center of a cone of fluorescent light, which seemed softer than on the other floors, because in this room, darkness had so much space to collect itself in the corners, against the windows, near the door. The intensive care unit was located on the highest floor in the hospital, which was also, according to the woman who rode up the elevator with me and my mother, the quietest. She had been able to take a nap once during a visit to her sister, and no one bothered her for an entire half hour. It was quiet here, yes. Devoid of voices, of people rushing around. But the beeping of machines marked time, marked space. The machines did not let us forget that we were in a hospital and that visitor protocols had to be followed. But sometimes I forgot to stay solemn and quiet. Most times my sister forgot too. No, it wasn’t that we forgot: if we could make our father laugh, then he was in good spirits. It felt like the most useful thing for us to do. When my sister visited him on his second day in the intensive care unit, she tells me, they laughed so loudly together that the nurse appeared and announced that she was going to shut his door. If he could laugh, it meant he knew where he was, knew what was expected of him, and he knew when the hospital staff had made a mistake.

When my father was moved to the emergency room following the botched procedure, and later to the intensive care unit, I heard a percussive rhythm in the machines. This rhythm reminded me of listening to music I was unfamiliar with or had to concentrate to find entry, in particular the moment when that entry opened up to appreciation. I could then follow the thread of understanding for the duration of the piece, until I opened my eyes (I would have shut them at some point), feeling as though I’d stepped through a door, pulled back from wherever the music had taken me. I say concentrate, but when aural synchronies are unexpected, as with the hospital’s machines, as often with trains drifting over their tracks, then I mean I am arrested. I am stopped. I pause and wait for the rhythmic pattern to repeat itself, and when it does, I know that I had heard correctly and that something unusual had penetrated the day.

In the hospital, my father breathed with his mouth open, which dried out his tongue. I gave him my lip balm, and he applied it with relish. He kept asking for water, despite the nurse’s orders—no water or food until further notice—and we kept telling him to breathe with his mouth shut, through his nose. He struggled with air. He smacked his lips, which were cracked. Eventually, the nurse gave him ice cubes to suck on, but only for a minute. It turned out that fluid had leaked into his lungs.

By the third day, my father was moved to a room on the fifth floor. Not as spacious as the intensive care unit, but at least he didn’t have to share it with anyone, and the move meant his condition was improving.

Before I go on, I should say that he is home, and recovering. I saw him for Thanksgiving last night. He was smiling. He moved slowly. He shook my hand with surprising energy. I showed him the mockup of the artist’s book, and told him that it would be published next year. He laughed while paging through it. So much heart, he said.