Director, the first time I put on my white coat, it felt like home. From having moved around so much and with no childhood or ancestral home to return to, I didn’t think myself capable. I didn’t prioritize home or comfort, because if everyone did, then immigrants like my parents, brother, and sister-in-law couldn’t exist. Home was not a viable concept for them until later, and it wasn’t a concept for me until the day I put on that coat, this coat. I pulled at my white lapel to show him. From then on, I knew that my occupation would become my home. To have a home is a luxury, but I now understand why people attach great value to it and are loyal to defend it. Home is where you fit in and take up space.
My director rubbed his eyes. He said he was touched by what I said and insisted on shaking my hand.
His campfire-for-hair secretary had come to the door already, had lightly tapped to say that his next appointment was here, and without realizing, I’d extended my hand forward toward some invisible flame. Bending over his desk to shake my hand with vigor, the director said that while we still had to follow protocol, once I was back in full force he would put my face and those words on a brochure. Because if I could feel at home in this hospital, then more physicians like me would come.
I spent my last hour at the hospital with ECMO and pushed its cart to a window overlooking Morningside Park.
This park has seen changes, I told ECMO. My doorman says that just ten years ago, no one went into this park past dusk alone. There were areas shrouded from view by overgrown trees and shrubbery. Long stretches of bumpy asphalt, twisted metal fencing, and sudden cliffs, playgrounds with no kids and gunshots heard at night. But in recent years, an immaculate green lawn was put in, a new baseball diamond, a kidney-shaped pond with turtles, floodlights at night for safety. In summer, the park was nice to run through, and when I first moved here, I had taken a few jogs, up into the secluded terraces that at a certain point opened up to a sprawling view of the city.
ECMO, I said, you would love it. It’s tidal volume, that view.
Tidal volume is about half a liter. It’s the amount of air in a single breath taken at rest. How to remember this term, I had written in my handouts, is to imagine yourself sitting on a beach. The beach is empty and the sand is clean. You watch the tides roll in, tides that are controlled by the moon, that big rock orbiting us out in space. You put your chin on your knee and inhale, exhale. This is the kind of quiet breath we mean.
* * *
—
MY BEREAVEMENT DAYS BEGAN with television, alternating between local news, the weather, the home shopping network, cooking competitions, and daytime television that played reruns of old sitcoms and shows about nothing.
Kramer barges in, takes out from Jerry’s fridge half a pound of deli meat, two slices of thick bread, and makes himself a sandwich. After taking one bite of the sandwich, he spits the bite out. Too mushy. Leaves the sandwich there on the counter and barges out.
Kramer eats a chocolate cupcake. He writes the word cupcake down on a small slip of paper that will be his running tab at Jerry’s apartment and that will now allow Kramer to take whatever he wants.
Jerry calls Kramer “Hobo Joe.”
Is this your half can of soda in the fridge? says Jerry, holding up the can in question.
No, no, says Kramer. It’s yours. My half is gone.
Daytime television transitioned into prime-time movies. Action movies, superhero movies, horror, romantic comedies, and the classics. Or what commercials promised to be a classic.
An empty New York City street, under the light fog of dawn, gray and blue buildings rising up all around, monolith-like, and down this empty street, down Fifth Avenue, comes an old, boxy yellow cab. Out steps a tall and slim woman, black dress, gloves, and sunglasses, a long white scarf with fringe, and reams of pearls draped across her neckline and back. Idyllic music plays, a lush violin, many violins, an oboe, a choir, as this stunning pearled-up woman peruses those curtained window displays of that famed jewelry store, Tiffany’s, while eating a croissant. Inside the store hang large chandeliers, heavy with crystals, draped in the same way as the pearls around her neck, because the woman herself is a chandelier, a fixture and an object.
Holly Golightly is a runaway orphan turned call girl, and being at Tiffany’s calms her down. She talks about the quietness and the proud look of the place, how nothing bad could ever happen to you in there. She says, If I could find a real-life place that makes me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name.
Proud, quiet （on a slow day）， how nothing bad could ever happen to you there （under the right care）。 Which was I bereaved of? The temporary loss of the hospital or the permanent loss of my father?