37 Days

I recently spent 37 straight days in hospital.

I had major, very complicated surgery, and for two weeks after the operation– first thing in the morning– the attending nurse would always ask me if I knew where I was. It was a simple question, one that I found a little bit insulting even, but the truth was that I just wasn’t sure.

I mean, I knew who I was, that I’d had heart surgery and was in hospital, but I wasn’t clear on what hospital, or where this hospital was located. Some days I thought I was in Montreal, other days Ottawa, sometimes when I heard the rhythms of an African tongue, I believed I was in Cape Town. Depending on the accents, language and ethnicity of those around me, I imagined I was in India, Australia or China, occasionally, even in Toronto, the city in which all of this was unfolding.

Each day was like waking into a dream, a realm where things were still being shaped. The people moving about in my field of vision were distant from me. It was like they existed in another dimension, and communication was mysterious, even impenetrable, as if something fundamentally untranslatable existed between us. I was, I guess, still disconnected from the conscious, living world and through fogs of trauma and medication, remained a spectator to the existent.

I communicated with very few people during this time, but I did send texts to my wife Rachelle. These are some of the ones I sent to her during the early stages of my recovery:

*******************************

Very thirsty. Want popsicle but they won’t let me have popsicle. The nurses are all very mean! Don’t understand. Please bring popsicle. CHERRY.

Why are you not here with popsicles? Very lonely. Very lonely for popsicle.

I love you.

Did I miss the spring?

Why are we in Africa? Were we visiting Douglas?

Oh. Not in Africa. Nurse said that, but thought she was lying.

Am scared when the machines beep. They are sounding an alarm to say that something in my body is broken or on fire.

I miss your blue, blue eyes.

My nurse is an assassin. Cruel eyes and self-loathing. Might be a serial killer. Am terrified when brings me my pills. Must kill her patients and then gets drunk at night, feeling powerful.

I want to be in a lake. Dog just about to jump in from the dock.

What’s going on in Game of Thrones? Has everybody been raped and killed or do some survive?

Food here not made with love. Sort of thing you give jailed enemy.

Do I have jailed enemies now?

Would like to have several jailed enemies. That would be AWESOME.

Brian and Laura should be thrown in tower.

Never heard a word from them. They only care about volleyball and renting house for Pan-Am games.

Is Hunstman spider fastest land creature? Can’t remember.

I want to sit on a sloped field of green with you and our son Jones, drinking lemonade on a checkered blanket, the world around us.