ALAN SEMROW
Hospital: Night The one smell I hate more than any other is that of hospitals—of that alcohol they use to cover up the smell of death, only to cover everything else around it. I truly believe I never could have worked in one, though it should have maybe been that way. I always preferred family clinics with the doctors, who say things to each other— complain over drinks maybe on Friday evenings when the schedules allow for it. I walk to the nurse’s station and tell her who I am. She says I do not have to sign in, that I am family. I thank her and think about how I might take the dogs for a walk when I get home tonight. I knock and enter her room. My gut sinks like it has every time I’ve entered before. Once, she took me and Monica out to see the redwoods. That was the day she told me that, no matter what happens, a mother’s love is always stronger than a father’s. That day, she wore a red house dress. Now, house dresses like that are known as vintage. About nine months after that trip to the redwoods, she divorced my father. He still brings it up. Tells us stories about when we were kids, when my mother was there—how happy we were, how proud he is of us now. She turns to me, the stringy oxygen tubes running through her nose. She smiles at me and, somewhere in it, I can still locate her effortless, eternal beauty. The one she passed onto me. That day when she smelled smoke on me for the first time, I thought she was going to slaughter me. She told me to look at her. Did I want to be like her? Monica is in Alaska; she hasn’t been to visit yet. Me, I’ve been here each night. Each morning, I drive south for a little over an hour and a half. After work, I drive the same route, but north. I tend to the dogs and go to see Mother.
57