Exotic yet ordinary

The phone rings. It's 4:30. Who's calling? No one I know would call at this hour. Ah, except my mother. With news. About my grandfather. Shit. I lurch down the hallway and somehow successfully navigate around the love seat toward the phone. 'Hello? Amanda, the hospital called. It doesn't sound good. We're going to the hospital RIGHT. NOW. Do you want to go?' Pause. Thinking. Do I want to go? I need to be there. Do I want to watch someone die? No. I can't. I should go. I'll go. I'll go. 'Amanda?' 'I'll go.' I throw on some clothes, whatever I wore the day before. She arrives ten minutes later. Drive. It's raining a bit. I don't want to hear the conversation in the front seat. I stare out the window. I start to pray in the dark. It takes thirty minutes to get to the hospital. I hate hospitals. I walk in with my family. We talk about nothing. Down the hall. A corner. Through this doorway, that one. The elevator. Sixth floor. Room 680. We're stopped outside the door by a nurse. She tells us that my grandfather's oxygen level has fallen to sixty...something. Sixty-six? Sixty-nine? There are signs of dying. Three days. I hear the hiss of oxygen first. Then his labored breathing. He is not awake. Still, I notice he nods in response to his nurse's question. We find empty chairs around the room and stare and talk about nothing. I watch the sunrise from the sixth floor. I watch my grandfather breathe. The nurse has given him a low dose of morphine so he is less agitated and restless. The morning passes. Breathing treatments. Lasix. Blood gas. Double oxygen. Chest x-ray. At some point, we start to tell my grandfather's stories. By 11:00, his oxygen level has risen to eighty-one. Good news. We leave long enough to grab some lunch and then resume our post. More of the same. An uncle arrives. We talk about nothing. More treatments and hourly morphine and levels and another x-ray now that his breathing is better. His oxygen rises to ninety-five. Better news. Exhausted, four of us decide to leave room 680. Three stay on. I thank God for another day.