I nod.
In this lobby, I can see and hear other families waiting. Some look somber but most look okay. There is a mother with her young daughter. They are reading a book. There is a young boy holding an ice pack to his face next to a father who seems annoyed. There is a teenage couple holding hands. I don’t know why they are here, but judging from the smiles on their faces and the way they are flirting, I can only assume it’s not dire and I . . . I want to scream at them. I want to say that emergency rooms are for emergencies and they shouldn’t be here if they are going to look happy and carefree. I want to tell them to go home and be happy somewhere else because I don’t need to see it. I don’t remember what it feels like to be them. I don’t even remember how it feels to be myself before this happened. All I have is this overwhelming sense of dread. That and my anger toward these two little shitheads who won’t get their smiles out of my fucking face.
I hate them and I hate the goddamn nurses, who just go on with their day like it isn’t the worst one of their lives. They make phone calls and they make photocopies and they drink coffee. I hate them for being able to drink coffee at a time like this. I hate everyone in this entire hospital for not being miserable.
The man in the red tie comes back and says that Ana is on her way. He offers to sit down and wait with me. I shrug. He can do whatever he wants. His presence brings me no solace, but it does prevent me from running up to someone and screaming at them for eating a candy bar at a time like this. My mind flashes back to the Fruity Pebbles all over the road, and I know they will be there when I get home. I know that no one will have cleaned them up because no one could possibly know how horrifying they would be to look at again. Then I think of what a stupid reason that is for Ben to die. He died over Fruity Pebbles. It would be funny if it wasn’t so . . . It will never be funny. Nothing about this is funny. Even the fact that I lost my husband because I had a craving for a children’s cereal based on the Flintstones cartoon. I hate myself for this. That’s who I hate the most.
Ana shows up in a flurry of panic. I don’t know what the man in the red tie has told her. He stands to greet her as she runs toward me. I can see them talking but I can’t hear them. They speak only for a second before she runs to my side, puts her arms around me. I let her arms fall where she puts them, but I have no energy to hug back. This is the dead fish of hugs. She whispers, “I’m sorry,” into my ear, and I crumble into her arms.
I have no will to hold myself up, no desire to hide my pain. I wail in the waiting room. I sob and heave into her breasts. Any other moment of my life, I’d move my head away from that part of her body. I’d feel uncomfortable with my eyes and lips being that close to a sexual body part, but right now, sex feels trivial and stupid. It feels like something idiots do out of boredom. Those happy teenagers probably do it for sport.
Her arms around me don’t comfort me. The water springs from my eyes as if I’m forcing it out but I’m not. It’s just falling on its own. I don’t even feel sad. This level of devastation is so far beyond tears, that mine feel paltry and silly.
“Have you seen him, Elsie? I’m so sorry.”
I don’t answer. We sit on the floor of the waiting room for what seems like hours. Sometimes I wail, sometimes I feel nothing. Most of the time, I lie in Ana’s arms, not because I need to but because I don’t want to look at her. Eventually, Ana gets up and rests me against the wall, and then she walks up to the nurses’ station and starts yelling.
“How much longer until we can see Ben Ross?” she screams at the young Latina nurse sitting at her computer.
“Ma’am,” the nurse says, standing up, but Ana moves away from her.