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On Hospital Visits

Ines Lopes

The first time I was in a hospital was when I was 14,
lying in bed almost watching the Golden Girls,
nipples protruding from a wispy gown,
IVs and little circular flesh colored stickers covering my half naked body,
sucking out the Excederin and depression.
My father sat in the corner until even espressos couldn’t keep
him up, or until he could not stand the smell any longer.
It was the first time I thought I saw my father cry,
but he didn’t look me in the eye once the whole night,
and maybe if there were silent sobs only my mother
heard them later, in bed, together, asking each other
where they had failed as parents and how
their daughter, with a smile so wide, could be
half-dead, down the street in the children’s ward
throwing up charcoal, orange juice and halves
of little white pills. “Am I going to die?”, I asked the nurse,
and though she tried in the nicest possible nurse voice
to assure me that I wouldn’t, her hesitance
or maybe my perception of a pause, made me cry,
and she could see that so she stroked my hands, and said
to get some rest, and I tried to hold on to my teddy bear
that my parents had brought in the bag they packed
as they were rushed out of the house at two in the morning
on an idle Sunday in April, but I was too weak, even for that.
I sat up only to vomit, half expecting my liver or intestines
to come out onto the half moon shaped cardboard.

The next day, after my first time spending the night in a hospital,
I remember lying next to a Mickey Mouse border, mostly red,
and being questioned by a few doctors about why I did it or
“Were you trying to kill yourself?”, but I can’t recall my answers now,
only my mom sitting in trying to explain to them that
she is a good mother and nothing had ever really been wrong,
and if my mouth wasn’t still black from the charcoal and my throat wasn’t numb, I might have agreed and said,
“No, mom, you are the best mother.”,
but instead I just lie there playing with the tie on my pajama pants,
and nodded and shook my head though I couldn’t hear anything either.
I went home later that day, I haven’t been to the hospital since,
and to this day, I still can’t drink orange juice without gagging.

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