I'm not in the throes of it all, but I'm not so far away that I can't still smell it wafting through the air. I don't know if I'll ever get that foul stench off my jacket.
I'm living in the middle, but it's hard to walk that tightrope.
I keep making plans for the future. The distant future. The future where our kids will have to fill out their own medical histories and will have learned to spell all of those things that once coursed through their veins. The future where there are graduation parties and weddings and grand babies.
The future where they take us, old and fragile, to the doctor. The future where they plan our funerals, and not the other way around.
But part of moving ahead is knowing where you've been, so I can't let myself get too comfortable daydreaming.
I don't want to think about it coming back, but that doesn't stop my mind from going there. The further out you get, the chances of it returning go down. But that isn't much comfort for the parent whose child happened upon it in the first place. Chances were slim back then, too.
There's only one thing I know for sure: no amount of shampoo is going to get that smell out of your hair.
Oh, that smell! For me, it was a mixture of disinfectant and coffee from the java hut. A juxtaposition no person should ever try to understand. In the basement, I can smell the sedatives, where they use them most, and also the faint smell of some mysterious meat dish in the cafeteria. The hospital is a lie to the senses... you smell one thing, but it is overshadowed by another, more familiar smell. They want to keep you guessing.
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