I Want That.

This post is will not be similar to the other stories I have told before. It is something that happened to me about one hour ago, I couldn't help but skip over the other chronological stories and tell this one. This story is not really a telling of a story, or for me it doesn't feel like that, but more my thoughts and feelings that occurred at a point in time.

This morning at eleven o' clock, Rocco's baby sister was born. I was in French class praying to God that time would speed up, while Anna was probably praying to God asking for the pain to stop. We went to visit the baby this evening with Rocco.

I stepped out of the car and away from the seat-warmer and felt the cold but refreshing air hit my chest and continue it's way up to my chin, on to my cheeks, around my nose and into my eyes. The cold air seemed to clean my lungs from the hot humid air of Palermo. With every breath I took I felt my body freeze and reheat with my exhale. Over and over, I concentrated on this cleansing feeling while I almost unconsciously walked toward the hospital. Then I realized where I was going, this had been the first real memorable time I had been to a hospital since my father's accident. I had never thought about it, but I hadn't experienced the feeling of being in a hospital for over a year. I stepped through the sliding doors, and even though the smell of cigarette smoke overpowered the room, images of the Roseville trauma center flashed through my mind. At first I wanted to remember what it was like, it seemed that I had forgotten a familiar feeling, whether it was good or not, it was familiar and had left my mind for a long time. I wanted to feel it again, so I tried to remember as much as I could. Images overtook my mind and it seemed uncontrollable, I saw my family sitting in the waiting room, I heard Dr. Bosco telling us what was going on. I was finished, the memories became too overwhelming, it became hard to breath, and my vision blurred. I concentrated as much as I could to remove the feeling that I brought on. I heard Rocco's voice asking to push the button on the elevator, and it was gone, I felt free almost, but trapped at the same time. A couple seconds later I managed to forget that that experience had ever happened.

The elevator doors opened and we walked into the room where Anna and the baby were. We greeted them with the usual "Congratulations" and "she is so cute!". They began to speak Italian very fast about things that I probably wouldn't have understood in English. I began to look at the sleeping baby, but not just look, I examined all I could see. Her head and her hands were the only things showing outside of the blanket. She was asleep, her eyes closed, moving slightly every minute or two. I stared at her for so long, I had never really gotten the chance to really look at a baby for a long amount of time. All the sound in the room seemed to disappear, the congratulations, the laughing, even the sound of people moving and breathing faded into silence. It was just me and this baby that was born mere hours before. Her skin was perfect, not a blemish, or wrinkle anywhere, her eyes were closed and I could have examined just her eyelids for hours. There was nothing, completely blank. There was a small circle right in the center of her noticeably larger upper lip, followed by small folds that waved out from that circle. Her hair was never consistent, a spot of hair here, another one there, a noticeable hair line was nearly impossible to find. It just seemed to exist, there was not a starting or stopping point of her hair, it faded from skin to hair, it's almost impossible to explain using words. And her hands, I can't even begin to talk about her hands, because there is no way that I can possibly describe the perfectness of them. They were small and seemed so frail, she had no control of where they went or what they did, her fingernails were long and hard to distinct from her actual finger, they seemed to blend in with the rest of her hands. The color of her skin never changed to a different shade, there was no tan line, there were no freckles, no moles. It was her skin that I was most fascinated with. She seemed so peaceful lying there, people all around her congratulating, eating, giving flowers, and there she was, completely unaffected. All I could think while I spent what seemed to be hours staring at her was "I want that". Over and over, the words ran through my head. I knew that I could not have that peacefulness for myself, but I wanted to get as close to it as possible. All I wanted was to have something close to me that was unaffected by the world, untouched. Then, all of these wonderful thoughts were destroyed within seconds.

A smell floated across the room. A dreadful and yet alluring smell, A smell that not only took me away from this peace, but put my mind in a place that seemed to be a hell at the time. The smell was simple. It was a disinfectant that they use in hospitals. In January 2006 we had to put a disinfectant foam on our hands before entering into a room where one of the most unpeaceful men lay for six weeks. This smell ripped me away, punched me in the face and threw me back to January 2006. Now instead of not hearing anything, I heard one of the most spine tingling noises I know. A calm and yet choked breathing, that sounded as if it was being breathed through a tube. Slowly, and calmly, it never changed it's pace, it never changed it's tone. Then another noise followed, two high pitched beeps, quickly and then pausing, then again. Never in time with the rhythmic steadied breathing. Then came the images, I saw myself turning the corner and entering room number 11. I was shaking and my palms were sweating, along with the images came more sound, I could hear the nurses walking and talking as if nothing was wrong, but something was wrong. I saw my father, whiter than I have ever seen any man, there were tubes and wires coming out of holes all over his body, tubes that didn't seem to go anywhere, and wires that didn't seem to do anything. Then I turned to my right and saw the small bottle hanging upside down with the nozzle pointing at the ground. I pulled the nozzle towards me almost as a reflex, a muscle memory. The disinfectant foam fell into my hand and the dreadful smell that would haunt me two years later flowed into my nose and implanted itself in my mind, making sure that I would never forget those weeks. A tube was going down the throat of my father preventing him from speaking, and providing yet another haunting memory that was to be planted in me. He had very little control of his head and could not move it easily. I walked in the room and his eyes opened, scanned the room for someone or something. His small shrunken pupils found me, and watched me put the latex gloves on. I walked over to the left side of the bed, and his hand reached out and limply grasped my fingers. I was pulled out of this memory once again, by a screaming baby. Although she seemed to show it more than I, she was not the only one who felt like screaming. I felt limp and loose, again my vision was blurred and I was dizzy. It had been a long time since these memories had hit me this hard, and at such an unexpected time. I couldn't breath and I felt sick, I had to find a chair but they were all taken by the women tending to the screaming, helpless child. I fell up against the wall praying that I would be able to take control over my body and my mind. The smell still lingered, and although I was not thrusted as violently into the memory as before, disturbing images and sounds flooded my mind. Tubes filled with flowing bile, thousands of machines beeping uncontrollably, my father's face cringing from the pain of the dozens of cuts and slices in his body, nurses yelling at others to get various implements. In and out of reality I flashed, both unbearably chaotic. The last thing in the world that I was thinking was "I want that", I didn't know what I wanted, it was to riotous to know. And all of a sudden, it stopped. I don't know why, or how. All I know is that the baby stopped crying, and I was once more able to think clearly.

I don't know why I wrote about this, but afterwards, I stood there leaning against the wall and thought to myself, "The only way I am ever going to understand this is if I write about it". The only problem is, is that now that I'm done, I still don't understand. If you began reading this hoping that there was going to be some end point or some moral, I apologize. I originally thought there was going to be.

-Dustin Douros