I could not get warm. Or comfortable
on the pullout chair that passed for a bed.
But I got to be there—they didn’t send me
away, so far from home, him in the bed,
resurrected on an airport floor after
the cardiac arrest killed him. He returned,
blinking, startled, having no idea where
he’d gone.

I got to be there, hospital-chilled,
stepping outside periodically to soak up
a smidgen of tropical warmth, walking
downstairs to the basement cafeteria
as soon as it opened to buy green tea
and Spam musubi, taking it outside
on the lanai, to bask like the geckoes
in some of the day’s first rays.

I got to be there in the middle of the night,
patrolling the halls, me and my half-numb,
flip-flopped feet, searching for the tall
rolling cabinet cradling blessedly warmed
blankets smelling like bread out of the oven,
ones I gratefully pulled to my chest
like a swaddled infant, then walked
back to his room and unfolded one,
then two over him,

open parachutes floating down
to his sleeping form, tucking them under
him, then wrapping two others around
me, lying down on the hard surface,
closing my eyes to wait for the next kind
soul to arrive and check to make sure
that one of us in Room 207
was still breathing.

•••

With thanks to Deborah Bayer of Amherst Writers & Artists for leading the online Write Around the World session that prompted me into this poem.

And our deepest mahalo nui loa always to Pamela Foster of the AED Institute, Salesi Maumau and Claudio Alvarado, to Chris Ohta and the Hawaiian Airlines staff, to the remarkable medical team at Kaiser Moanalua Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, and the many friends who rushed to our side during and after Dick’s hospitalization in January 2019.

•••