Truth

When I awoke in the hospital, I knew the truth. The agonizing pain in my back, the nurses rushing me to the operating room, with the walls spinning around me. The doctor's “everything will be okay, Katie.” But it isn’t.

I’m bleary eyed from the sedative, but I feel a hand in mine, my husband’s. I’m too weary and can’t speak, so I give his hand a squeeze, and he gently squeezes mine back. He speaks of his love for me and how he’ll never leave. Then the doctor comes in and he lets go.

“Will my wife walk again?”

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Memories

My grandmother tells me not to forget where she is. But she’s forgotten who I am. Would it matter if I was back soon like I told her I would be? Am I even a part of her fragmented memory? She lit up when she saw me (but she could have just craved company). The nurses have to be her companions now. The granddaughter role in her life doesn’t exist anymore. Are you a granddaughter still when your grandmother doesn’t know your name? Face? My grandmother lives in the past now but not the past I am a part of.

From Guest Contributor Olivia Bond

The Miqui Smart Home Device

When Blake brought Miqui home that first evening, he spent hours translating the instructions into a form of English he could understand. Miqui had evolved a language much more sophisticated than his own outdated vernacular.

By the next Tuesday, Miqui was finally in working order. It immediately diagnosed him with cancer. His was a milder variety. Six months to live.

Miqui is Blake's only company these days, other than the nurses. He remembers when fish still weren't able to talk. The fish said it was worthwhile he could still recall the good old days. Nostalgia is a uniquely human trait.

Muscle Memory

Other residents would cradle baby dolls, designed to match the heft of a newborn. But for Grandpa, who’d been one of America’s top reporters, only a typewriter would do. It didn’t even need paper; as the nurses discovered, simply sitting at the antique Olivetti was enough to quell his nightmares. Though his mind was gone, his fingers retained echoes of his memories, shaping them into the staccato sound of clacking keys.

He would sit there, morning to night, at his little utilitarian desk. And while he never produced a single page, we still cherished each and every word he wrote.

From Guest Contributor Keshe Chow