#everytime I pace and think about him he's always ticking those boxes

[holyxvi]

// . I got some reassurances and I appreciate it, so I think I’m gonna work on Matthias’ bio later and include the undiagnosed asd.

[sentimentalica]

THANK YOU FOR NOT WEARING PERFUME

The poster "THANK YOU FOR NOT WEARING PERFUME" makes it clear that this area of the hospital has other and more clinical demands for hygiene. Anti-bacterial gel dispensers loom at every entrance, where the duty of decontamination provokes fear of bringing any dangerous microbes into this establishment. One is even encouraged to wash hands before entering the unit where the very few patients rest, the kind that lingers in between life and death and the kind that have so many tubes in and out the body that the general memory of them once being active Homo sapiens with erect posture and bipedal locomotion, is undergoing a great deal of torture. My mother has just been transported here from the cardiac intensive care unit. I´m starting to understand the few available waiting rooms they have to offer as spaces of laborious distress, feverish uncertainty and acidic hope. As if the sanitisation here promise something that cannot be promised. The second nurse that knocked on the door sits down with us. Me and my family are piercing her with ambiguous desire for truth. We read her body language, voice intonation and pauses between words with such a suspicion that even the slightest deviation in any of these languages could turn us into birds falling off a stick. We´re scared, and even though we realise quickly that the nurse simply cannot consolidate us from the dire pain, we turn to her as if mother earth has re-incarnated herself into the nurse´s veins and we are witnessing the beginning of the world. For a moment I believe that she has secret powers that can be utilised if one manage to crack a certain code. A code that would absolve my mother´s artificial coma and further alleviate the pharmaceutical burden of hollow cylinders. I fantasise about my mother´s return to the real world where I would ask her how the deep sleep was, and tell her that the three weeks she´s been gone, nothing much has really happened. Christmas will come again next year. A week ago, one of the first doctors had brought us all in for a serious talk in a small office with dark windows. Apart from her low voice and general scepticism in regards to survival rates of heart ceases, all I detect is her sharp hair cut(right under the chin) and narrow thick glasses that reveal bad eye sight and not bad judgment, as I would have preferred in this case. I want her to simply be mistaken, and that she´s one of those doctors that always make you get a second opinion from someone else. Her age is close to my mothers and for a moment, I consider my stepdad by my side and think that if this goes terribly wrong, he must find another woman. I almost forgive myself for having that thought at the same time as I wonder if that will happen and who she might be. Hospitals ads so much pressure to life, and what life even mean outside of this building. I recall my grandfather after my grandmother died, where he would juggle at least three women at the same time at the age of 76. The last one he dated I think was even blind, so the bachelor scheming made it easier for him. Silver lining, even towards the end.

Out in the hallway, I sit down and try to fathom the severity of the dramatic timespan; from waking up to 21 missed calls and a taxi ride to the hospital on Christmas day at 7 in the morning to camping here not knowing whether the gozzip magazines help or make the perspective on life worse. All the white coated labourers that are rushing, sometimes slow paced in and out of string opening doors, wearing comfortable sneakers. One of the first encounters with a nurse was a young and blonde woman with this particular dialect that somehow render spoken Norwegian into a high pitched cantata. If she would have brought on terminal illness as a diagnosis, even the worst kind possible, I would have taken it as an optimistic verdict.  As she shifts her weight from one hip to the other, I notice a round shaped snus box in the bulging pocket of her hospital pants and a funky piercing on her left ear cartilage. From her earlobe to my brothers blue eyes checking her out, I can tell that everyone is sort of moved by her more as a character than a nurse conveying crucial information. She´s not exactly Elle Driver from Kill Bill, but the fantasy of a nurse, and not just the uniform makes a lot of sense to me in this moment. She speak of my mom´s current condition with youthful grace and maternal sincerity that make me google professions in the health care field, as I wished it was me in there, taking care of her body and not someone unknown. I feel useless in this room which is half-hearted installed with standardised christmas decorations, itchy pillows, flavourless cookies and sour coffee. The view from the window is blocked by a crane and a man in orange workers clothes. His face will become my most graphic memory from these three weeks. The sky has never looked so grey and insignificant, it has compressed any imagination of a possible heaven. The blonde nurse asks if theres anything else and we all say no and thank you so much, where she replies; oh of course, I´m just doing my job. I look at my stepfather who hash´t slept for 2 days, still wearing the same clothes as he wore the morning he followed my mother in the ambulance. I listen to my sister who talks more or less to her own self-conscience about how she never wants to drink aquevit ever again, and that showing up at the hospital after a party is lethal to your nervous system. Especially on a day like this. She wants to hold my hand and rejoice into sisterhood which I quietly recoil from, not knowing exactly why, only that her touch feels like a forced contract I haven´t felt compelled to sign. A knock on the door in this room is characterised as an angst driven sigh catalyst- but many of the knocks are in fact from muslim women that are looking for empty seats and a place to crash. My mother is not the only patient at this hospital, and no one will ever, I retell myself over and over again, will be the ONLY PATIENT in a hospital. Over the next couple of days, these women as a tight knitted group and us as a tight ruptured family is at occupational war in this unit. Firstly because there are not enough chairs, and there´s only one tiny waiting room which holds so many conflicting emotions, that even to consider both parties in one space would create cumbersome discomfort. The prerequisite for potential grief is a self-centred affair that I cannot simply explain. As if the skin is eroding and extra coats become necessary, and you still feel cold. The brain feels like clouds of cotton, and not like the woven fabrics circumnavigating these female bodies as they humbly nod every time their scarfed heads pop into the glitch of the door and realise that today, this room is also occupied.

It dawns upon me that the sharing is caring concept doesn´t abide to this floor. The women eat out in the hallway, seated a part and not longer as a family. They´re spread out on one wallflowerish line, filling the X and the Y of the corridor. The smell of spices lingers in the clinical air, carried seamlessly by light human traffic. Everytime I go to the toilet I try to look at their faces for some compassionate contact. It´s difficult to put on a smile for them, although I deep down know, that this will be my only facial and gestural path to redemption. My step brother has just arrived with two bags filled with Big Macs and chilled fries from a drive in nearby, and that particular smell of burgers in itself puts me off next to the more oriental affair enclosed in styrofoam- both at combat and both appealing as its food produced outside of this institution. The Big Macs bring me back to my fast-food forbidden childhood and as I pick one up and unwrap the ordeal, I add some ketchup to make it more colourful. I take bites without chewing while my oesophagus cracks and forces by nature the happy meal further down into the stomach where it will stay as long as it wants. A late afternoon in the hospital, my father rings and as with all the consecutive correspondences over the phone during this period; the calls are being held in the hallways while walking up and down the architectural alleys. While I try to feel his far away presence perceived only as a cold digital voice today, a woman from the segregated group approaches me, and as I feel annoyed by this interruption I give her the time of the day as I already feel bad for my white middle class family being superior to the waiting room as camp site. I remove the shaking phone from my ear for a reluctant second, as I am sure this device could need a break too, in order to hear what it is she wants to say. The woman reaches out her frail hand from under the loose garment, as Mother Theresa would do it, and touches me on that part between the elbow and the shoulder cap. This area of the arm a parent deals with quite a lot I am sure, especially when dragging a difficult kid around who refuses any form of behavioural obedience. She simply says; stay strong. I nod and accept the kindness and attention of this comment directed at me, and once uttered, I conform to the idea of the universal notion that we all, during difficult times, must stay strong. I once saw this imperative "stay strong" tattoed on a strippers but cheeks. The openness that emerge from empathy sometimes doesn´t fly with strangers, as this memory of the stripper didn't fit as an incident to be shared with this elder woman.

A week more, and we find ourselves in a new hospital. The main nurse this time belongs neither in the sexy Kill Bill category or holy Mother Theresa. She has this idiosyncratic tick, involving her eyes slightly rolling backwards whenever she is saying something that is stuck between a thought and the tongue. Her eyeballs go completely white while this is happening, and as freaky as it may sound, she does return with her eyes directed at either the grim edge of the sofa or the empty kleenex box on the table. She tells us about the 50/50. A number I relate to bidding, and not to the status of a human being. She also tells us about the possible outcomes of my mother´s condition if she survives. The word "vegetable" is mentioned. My sister is asking if my mom would be a "vegetable" if she wakes up from the artificial coma. The nurse correct her, and says vegetative is the right word. Being a long time fan of words and their meanings, the difference between vegetable and vegetative has never been so irrelevant to me. Another doctor arrive with a crew of the "rolling eyes" nurse, a skin headed anaesthesia supervisor and another nurse with a pony tail lowered to the bottom of her neck. The third member of this interchangeable staff strike me as someone who might be dating the doctor secretly. The mood is clay in here- and by that word I mean terribly dark grey and mouldable. Like the material I despise more than over cooked spaghetti. The patriarchal doctor begins to formulate something we have already been told million times, and before he can continue my mind wanders off to his fancy Mercedes(maybe in chromatic silver?) and a swiss villa on the West side of Oslo. He probably has two healthy daughters that both study law and goes skiing on the weekends. I have forgotten the name of this doctor. I imagine him in the shower, longing for a mistress and a new carpet. But before I get to build my bitter and societal judgmental story around him as a figure, he says: "It doesn´t look good." And as I think to myself that there are a lot of things in this world that doesn´t look good, this one better. Denial is not a bad status, I tell you. It´s just impossible to sustain unless you want to make the leap of becoming delusional. Mixed emotions at stake, as I for a second wants him to be my dad and adopt me into his high educated life that must include a jacuzzi and a rottweiler longing for emotional cues that would enable him to be tamed like a golden retriever. I connect that fleeting disruption to me just wanting to get out of a situation that simply can't be escaped. I apologise with my eyes. I look at my sister trembling in her denim jumpsuit and red knitted sweater. She tells me that this outfit was a joke between her and my mom. I give her a hug, and one, that will last longer than expected because anything that would make the interior of this space worthwhile would be of a human interactive kind. She's way older than me, but right now, she is a 6 year old girl sobbing because my mom is late and haven't been able to pick her up on time in those solitary hours at the end of the day in kindergarten. I gel my hands twice with the anti-bacterial liquid and ask to enter the room in which my mom is situated. The sky behind her is pinkish and baby blue, making my moms pale appearance more outstandish. Contrast, in life, can paint a far more interesting picture. I whisper something into her ear that I thought at that point she would hear, but like with most one-way monologues, the wall is your squash field, waiting for a bounce. They have given her 10 litres of water due to severe hydration, so my mother is simply not recognisable where she horizontally has taken up a hospital bed. After holding her hand for a while, another nurse enters in a jolly mood, and I immediately get hopeful as I´m sure one cannot be this smiling if they don´t think she will make it. The nurse tells me that she probably can feel that I´m here and says her name out loud as if a response is expected.  It´s New Years Eve and I´m wearing a mustard coloured dress. As the nurse leaves the room, I point with my finger to my mom´s closed eyelid and slowly lifts it up to get a glimpse of her eye. Like Medusa´s left or right eye in the painting by Caravaggio, it looks stirringly dead.

"We have tried everything, but we will give her one more day, as we need to see how she react without any traces of narcosis in her body." We are back at the cardiac arrest unit. The three rounds of different epileptic medicines are not working, because my mother doesn´t have epilepsy.  The "We have tried everything" doctor´s hair is remarkably long and heavy, bundled in a thick braid.  I want to grab it and pull myself up to the tower with it like the princess in the Rapunzel fairy tale. Maybe the view up there is better than this one. At least up there, a 360 degree angle awaits. Why is it that some womens hair stop to grow at a certain length? As we depart from the last seated waiting room, another family outside is ready to take over. They have worn blankets, bleak fast food and insecure faces, that evidently, we no longer look for.