I'm writing this to you as the nurse prepares the hypodermics in the next room and looks at her watch, twice, then opens the bottles of clear liquid and puts them in the drawer, one by one. She takes her stethoscope and places it around her neck, then puts on a white coat, as if she has been waiting all night for this. She is a big woman, wide-hipped but thin, and is all skin and bones where it matters most, and now when she looks at the clock on the wall she is closer than ever to the right time. Not the time that the clock says, but the time when the nurse finishes her preparations and leaves, by the same door by which she entered, without knocking.
The door closes. The lock turns. There's a key in the lock. When it's locked from the inside, the key is the only way out. At the hospital, they are careful. They want to protect the patients. It's their role.
But the night isn't over yet.
And suddenly the door is not a door, but a wall, and there is no window. When you dream, you enter and enter and enter, until your imaginary body, illusory and therefore perfect, is invincible.
I'm awake.
The floor is shaking.
But that's the only thing that is shaking—the only thing that can be heard in this room.
That's the only noise.
I'm dreaming. This I know.
I'm dreaming of a woman.
A woman whom I want.
A woman who comes from the sea, lives in a house on a cliff, and comes to look after me when I am sick.
She is a nurse, to overhear the whispers of the patients: "She's a good nurse."
I write this to her, as the ocean springs up and the sky turns green in the storm in the distance. I am crying, but not with any emotion. This is not about love. This is about power. And sense.
And life.
And I realize she's in this place with me now, like me. And that she knows this place as well as I do, and that she has lived here before, like I have.
I sit up. I am shivering, but my hands are warm.
I know the next part of my story.
This is the part that gets you.
This part from here, after the storm.
It is night, now. The sky is clear and my eyes are wet from the salt that sticks to my lashes. She opens the door and sees me. She sees me as if I had never been as sick as I am. That's what she sees me as—as if I'm not ill at all. We go together to walk up to the cliffs. I can't stand without her shoulder. She carries me up there. I feel her smell. She bathes me with her right hand, as she watches me.
We lie in our bed and listen to the wind. Then, just before we fall asleep, she says: "You look at me as if everything I do is right. You look at me as if every word I say is just right. As if you believe everything I do, and I do everything.
