The Ward Flowers by Timo Teräsahjo

The flowers on the oncology ward balcony are dry and wilted. A small cluster sits on the floor at the far end, and a few grander ones rest in large pots atop a green plastic table. All of them are exposed to the merciless sun, which has been beating down on the city with record heat for the past month.

I pour half a can of water into a geranium and try to gauge whether its leaves and blooms have perked up at all since yesterday. They still look droopy. I go and refill the can, then repeat my watering round. Then I place the can on the floor and lean on the metal railing, which is covered in city dust and nearly scalding from the sun.

The people five stories below live their lives as if on a distant planet. A steady stream of cars flows forward on two lanes and returns on two others. On the sidewalks, people walk, cycle, and zip by on electric scooters. The traffic is busy. Car windows shimmer in the sunlight. The roar of motorcycles rises above the general hum. It’s the end of the workday at the government offices. Now people are free — to swim, to go to their hobbies, to eat out, to sit on shaded terraces for the evening.

Up here, life is different. About twenty rooms line a corridor that wraps around the building’s façade. Each room holds two patients. Along the corridor hang monitors that display the vital signs of strangers, in plain view. Nurses move about quietly, astonishingly tireless, considering the kinds of patients they care for.

Some of us are treatable.

Others are not.

Hope exists here in varying degrees.

I’m probably not the worst off, but I’m far from well. I cough so much, every part of my body aches. At night, lying down isn’t even an option — I sleep sitting upright, my back straight like a meditating monk. That way the coughing eases. Or eases a little. I’m supposed to leave this place — if they can get me well enough. Maybe they can. I’m already able to move around a bit. Brew tea in the corner kitchenette. Come out here to water the flowers. To look down at the street.

“It’s good that you water them,” a nurse says.

I offer her a quiet smile. She smiles back before vanishing down the corridor.

“We wouldn’t have time to take care of them anyway,” she calls out, already hurrying down the hallway as a call bell rings from one of the rooms.

I’ll sit down for a moment in the chair in the corner room to rest. Then I fill the can once more and pour water into the pots, their soil again bone dry.

I feel sorry for the flowers. Neither of us can survive on our own. They’re trapped on this sun-scorched balcony, living a life that depends entirely on passing patients like me. They can’t escape and begin a wild, free existence in the grasslands around the hospital.

And I’m no longer independent, either. My life is dependent on help — without it, I wouldn’t last long. If I’m not watered with medicines, IV antibiotics, and whatever procedures they think up, I too will wilt and dry up just like those flowers.

I write a text message to my wife, who is taking care of things back home, and try to express something of this new life of mine on the balcony. I say, “I don’t think I’ll ever be the same man again.” I don’t know if she understands, even though she knows my inner tides better than anyone.

Illness, after all, has brought new kinds of depths into my mind.

I return to the balcony, pacing back and forth in the light of the setting sun, running my hand along the still-hot metal railing.

Trying now to think of something to take the place of my former freedom, in this state of withering.

Image Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/Dave Campbell