Western Hospital

On the eighth floor of the cardiac wing at the Toronto Western Hospital a man sits on a bench near the elevators.

This man has his shoes and socks off, his winter coat on. His feet, which are both resting lightly upon one of his wet shoes that he had turned on its side and covered with a sock, look swollen and cracked. Painful. He sits like this, his eyes closed, the palms of his hands facing upward, his lips moving gently. He has been called to prayer. His feet must not touch the ground. Behind him, there is a window through which you can see a huge, blue sky. The sky looks like it goes on forever. It looks like it’s everywhere. Sunlight takes seven minutes to reach the earth, and at the end of the journey it falls through this hospital window, illuminating a praying man. It’s all such a mystery. And all the people streaming in and out of the elevator give him a hard look when they first catch a glimpse of his exposed, wounded feet, but after a moment the looks become softer, much softer– each one of us there, now in the midst of prayer, too.