16 squares on the hospital ceiling. 16 squares.
I don't know if every stuffed bear can count. Frankly, I don't know if any one wants to. I suppose they could if they wanted to. Because, I guess, I can.
I sit on my shelf all day and night now. It used to be rare. Hard wood on my backside. Come to think of it, I'd never felt hard wood before. Only soft pillows. White and fluffy soft. Like my fur but smoother silk against my fuzzy face. No. Cold hard wood was new to me a month ago. Sometimes now I forget that it ever wasn't all that I now know.
But I've known Julie long before all of this. Long before this deep descent into endless hell. Endless hell. But what do I know about hell? About anything? I'm just a stuffed bear after all.
That breeze is cold. Whoever thought to put the A/C vent on the ceiling was no friend to my kind. No friend any more than the smiling woman with the dark red hair who put me up here. Kindly, though. She was so kind to Julie after all. Everyone was.
Well, not everyone.
Not the man in the blue. The blue shirt and pants. And that hat! I never trust a man who wears a hat indoors. A paper hat of all things. So much authority. So much command and yet
And yet a light blue, transparent-topped simple paper hat. With paper ties like that of a child - on this grown man's head.
He wasn't nice to Julie.
Julie is the best human in the whole world. I love her and she loves me. I'm sure of it. Blonde hair and blue-green eyes and soft. Like her pillows. Like me. And she always smelled like citrus fruit vaguely. I never knew why. Maybe she ate them at school or maybe it was her shampoo. She never told me anyway, and I never asked.
We spent the years together, Julie and I. She doesn't remember, but I can still smell her as a baby after bathtime. Still hear her giggle and her cry. And, when she went to the hospital the first time, I was with her. In her room when she got her first heart.
I was scared for Julie, though I didn't understand back then. Not really. I knew that I loved her. I knew she was scared and weak and sleepy. She never played with me anymore.
But then, at least, I got to be near her. There on the windowsill or on her bed. Not this awful cold, wooden wardrobe. Who puts a wardrobe in a hospital room anyhow? Why? Are we moving in?
Today was a hard day for Julie. She was in pain. I knew it. I'd know it even if Mama wasn't here in the room now, tucking her in and crying. Even if I didn't hear her gasping for breath and turning over, over and over again.
Even if I didn't know Julie, I would know. It's her face - the little divot of skin between her eyebrows - that gives her away. If she's talking, silent, or crying - the divot gives her away.
There was only ever divot now.
The man in the paper hat came here today. This morning. He said, "You had surgery. It's going to hurt. You need to get out of bed if you want to breathe or you won't get better."
"But it's torture!" shouted Mama, "You can't know what it's like! She's in pain! And those G-d awful chest tubes were poking up on her shoulder before, right? How do you know it's not that again?"
"It's not." said the man in the paper hat. He pulled up something on the computer by Julie's head. A picture. Black and white shapes. "See. No tube near the shoulder." I had no idea what he was talking about.
"Please." Mama said, "just make her more comfortable."
"We could give her more meds" he said,"but then she won't move. The pain will help her. It will make her get better."
"I'm not okay with this." said Mama "So what now? We have no choice?"
With a nod, the man turned. His funny paper hat-ties flapping uselessly as he walked away. On to see another patient. On to another day.
"He just doesn't care" said Mama to her hands, "why become a doctor if you're not gonna care?"
"He's the best, Mama" said Julie, week and sleepy, and in so much pain, "He's the best."
Neither of them knew. Neither thought the man in the paper hat was anything more than rude and careless and cruel. And he was! Certainly! But I had also been there when they brought Julie back from surgery. When they brought her back to this room. Asleep and tied by tubes to noisy machines. Machines to suck blood, to give meds. To breathe.
When Mama wasn't there. She couldn't be yet. And I saw the man with the paper hat. Hands on his hips. Deep in thought. He stood at the door and stared at Julie. At her chest, sliced and bandaged, with tubes coming out almost comically. Her hands, IVs flowing, blood bruises forming in small patches even then.
Her face. The beautiful, perfect Julie face that I loved more than anything. All that I exist for. He watched her face as a father in prayer. As a man begging G-d for forgiveness. For hope.
And he watched the monitors. Now and again mouthing a number as I saw it appear with the beeping above.
Twenty-six minutes he stood there. Sixteen ceiling tiles, twenty-nine year old Julie, twenty-six surgeon's minutes and a dusty, worn stuffed bear. That's all that bore witness to the change in that room.
All that bore witness to the man in the paper hat.
And when another man came in to pull the tube out of her mouth, and the room filled with people holding and shushing her as she retched and coughed and gasped.
"You're alright. You're in the hospital. You're waking up now. Your surgery went well."
And the lights were on. And they walked Mama in. And Julie was in pain now. Crying. And the man in the paper hat - so rude. So callous. So ashen-faced just moments before - he smiled.
"She'll be alright." I heard him say, to himself as much as to the nervous-looking man behind him,
"She's going to be just fine."
