By the time I realized the ceiling above me wasn’t mine, the beeping had already crawled under my skin.
Hospital ceilings are too clean. Too white. At home in Columbus, Ohio, the plaster above my bed has a faint crack that looks like a crooked little branch.
I used to stare at it on sleepless nights, tracing the shape in my mind until my eyes finally closed.
The ceiling over me now was seamless and bright, a square of fluorescent light glaring in the corner of my vision. The air tasted like metal and disinfectant. My tongue was thick.
My right hand trembled when I tried to move it, and something tugged at the skin on the back of it.
A plastic IV line.
A monitor to my left chirped at a steady pace, a metronome counting out the beats of a life I almost left.
I swallowed and thought, with a clarity that scared me more than confusion would have, I am in a hospital bed, and I do not know why.
A shape leaned into my field of vision, the soft blue blur resolving into a face framed by a disposable cap. “Mrs. Eldrich?” The nurse’s voice was gentle but practiced.
She’d said this a hundred times to a hundred strangers. “Can you hear me?”
I nodded. The motion made the room tilt.
My neck felt like it had rusted overnight.
“You gave us a scare,” she said, adjusting the IV pump with quick, sure hands. “You came into St. Catherine’s late last night.
Loss of consciousness, depressed breathing. We had to intubate briefly in the ER.” She paused. “You’re stable now.”
Stable.
That meant I’d been unstable.
I tried to rewind. The last solid memory I could grab was of my own kitchen. A mug warm between my palms, the faint scent of honey and something bitter under it.
My daughter-in-law, Clara, standing near the stove in my house, her manicured fingers curling around the handle of the kettle.
“Mom, you’re not sleeping,” she’d said. “You can’t go on like this. Drink this before bed.
I talked to the pharmacist—it’s mild. It’ll help.”
She’d pressed the mug into my hands with a smile that never quite reached her eyes.
I had taken the mug because I was tired. Tired of lying awake.
Tired of arguing over every tiny suggestion. Tired of being the complicated one. The trouble.
I had swallowed the drink because trusting felt easier than questioning.
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