According to Plan

I'm a neat freak, and I hate hospitals. It's passing strange. I think there's just some recess of my brain that can't reconcile the fact that a place so clean could also be so depressing.

We walk past an elderly couple in the lobby who call the security guard by name without having to stop and move with the resigned familiarity of frequent visitors. My niece is walking next to me. Well. Walking is an imprecise term. She's bouncing along the sterile tile floor with a youthful spring that makes my own joints simultaneously achy and jealous, if such as thing can be said for knees. She looks up at me through downright adorable wire framed glasses and I have the petty sense of satisfaction being reminded that my eyes, at least, are still better than hers. Again, I blame the hospital. It brings out the worst in me. Weirdly, I think it's because I have more experience as a patient than a visitor. I'm not used to peering behind the other side of the curtain like this. We pass by the security guard and I wonder why the hand sanitizer I've bathed my hands in doesn't smell. I realize it's probably because it just blends in with the natural aroma of the place.

"Do you think he'll get to leave right away?" she asks. Impatience is inevitable at eleven years old, but in this case, I mirror her thoughts. There's a youthful optimism so sweet in her voice that even I believe it could be possible.

"I sure hope so," I say. "As long as everything went according to plan." They'd said the final treatment would just be a minor procedure, but I have my doubts. If the previous visits are any indication, we will, in fact, not be leaving right away. When you have cancer, especially brain cancer, almost nothing happens right away except for the fear. And the crying that sneaks up on you when you least expect it. And the bills. Those for SURE happen right away. I'm still astounded at the number of oaks and elms and whatever else that had to have been felled to send those colossal financial novels. You'd never think it would take nine pages to ask someone for eight thousand dollars. You'd be wrong.

Luckily, insurance is holding up so far. More than I can say for myself and the rest of us some nights. I feel like I've aged a decade in the last eight weeks and I'm not even sick. I can only imagine how his wife is feeling. As we down the eerily silent hallway to the elevator, she turns to me again.

"How come she couldn't come too?" She means my wife. Her aunt. Maybe her favorite person in the world. It's all a very convoluted family connection, but I knew her dad and his wife long before she was a twinkle in anyone's eye. So when I married her aunt, it was just confirming legally what had been true for years already. We were family.

"She's watching your sister to give your mom a break," I say. I think my wife has spent more time at their house than she has our own over the last couple of months. The quality of food I've eaten over the last couple of months has also suspiciously cratered.

She nods seriously. "That's good. Mom needed a break. I tried to give her one last night." She looks down. "It didn't go very good." Her voice sounds ashamed and sad and I have to steel myself before I start crying myself. Her sister is seven and the two of them are good for maybe five minutes together most nights with both of their parents around to mediate before it's a fire and gasoline situation. The fact that she tried to give her mom some time alone is probably more selfless than anything I've done in a year.

I pull it together as the warbling chime sounds and the elevator doors open, breathing a sigh of relief as I see that it's empty. We shuffle in and I let her press the button, noticing that there's no smell lingering. Some days, stepping into the car reeks of something that reminds me of high school science experiments and death. I wonder idly, not for the first time, if maybe this moving metal car can somehow tell the future and the lack of smell is a good omen. I'll take what I can get at this point.

The metal doors grind open with another struggling chime and I gesture that she should lead the way. She does and immediately is multiple steps ahead of me, beelining for the nurses' station where a couple of familiar faces light up at seeing her arrive. One of them, a woman probably halfway between my age and my niece's, squats down and wraps her in a hug. Smiling faces all around. Sure enough, as we leave the station for the final approach to her dad's room, she's got a fistful of candy, some of which has already gone into her mouth and is now being masticated with vigor and noise.

"You trying to announce us just by chewing?" I ask.

"Blerghgieehg," she responds, chocolate muffling any coherent words. But she chews with her mouth closed the rest of the way. As we approach the door at the end of the hallway, I take a few nervous breaths. This is the moment of truth. They didn't expect any complications, but anytime you're doing "procedures" on someone's brain, there's not really such a thing as a "minor" one, in my non-medical opinion.

We walk to the door and she runs inside without knocking, leaving me pointlessly rapping on the door a heartbeat later, shaking my head as I follow her in. Her mom is sitting in one of the upholstered and magnificently uncomfortable chairs in the corner of the room with a smile on her face as her daughter launches herself onto her.

I look at her with a smile and a nod and, hopefully, a look that says "is everything ok?" without having to ask it out loud in front of her daughter. She understands immediately and gives me a tear-adjacent nod without actually crying, which means it is. My shoulders slump and I fold into the other magnificently uncomfortable chair as months of tension slowly start leaking out of my body. I have to check the seat of the chair to make sure it isn't physically staining the furniture. Not that anyone would be able to tell.

"Is he still knocked out from surgery?" she asks her mom.

"No, honey. Just sleeping. I talked to him earlier," she says. She smiles and this time a tear does sneak out. "He's doing great." She looks at me. "You just missed the doctor," she says. "Everything went according to plan."

"Can I wake him up?" she asks, almost hopping up and down. I go to grab her hand, to tell her he probably needs the sleep and none of us are going anywhere, but he starts to stir. I sigh. The damage is done, so I sit back in my chair. Heavy eyelids flutter and there's a small groan as he pulls his arm connected to the IV. I know that feeling. It doesn't tickle.

He looks over at me, calls me by name, thanks me for being there. Today and for the rest of it. He asks if his wife is still here, or if she left. Good sign that he remembers seeing her earlier.

I incline my head to the other side of the room. He rolls over, slowly (I don't blame him), and smiles as he sees his wife. He tells her he loves her, how glad he is she stayed.

His daughter leans over the bedside, handing him a homemade card that my wife helped her draw. I'd never tell my wife, but the art would've been better if she'd done it on her own.

He holds the card a moment, smiling.

"Well. Aren't you adorable," he says.

Then the smile falters. Just a little.

"Who are you?"