Departing Dawn

“Two cups of coffee with room for milk in one”, he said, as he stared with a day-dreamy gaze at the morning sun just beginning to rise, piercing the floor-to-ceiling, glass windows, leaving him captivated by its brilliance. Hopefully this is just another episode and the caffeine will help her through, he thought. He sipped his coffee, as he strolled past the tiny gift shop ensconced behind a shiny, metal gate. A bouquet of sunflowers, would have brightened her eyes, he imagined as he thought of her beautiful smile. Well, the coffee will have to do, he muttered to himself.

The peaceful quiet of the empty lobby was accentuated by low-volume, musical renditions of dated pop songs. As he sat for a moment in the solace of sunlight streaming through the blinds, the sleepy elevator tunes stuttered momentarily until interrupted by the sound of chiming bells. He smiled at the coincidence, recalling the early morning sunrise the day, seven years ago, that his twins were born. He’d affectionately nicknamed them Sunnyside-Up and Over-Easy since they arrived at the crack of dawn. The sun’s golden yoke spilled over the mountain range that morning and seeped into the crisp winter air, lighting the thick morning fog with an almost ethereal presence that seemed to crawl across the valley’s grasslands, embraced by the heat. It was heavenly, he remembered, as his heart warmed with thoughts of his precious family while his mind and body slowly woke from his java infusion.

He was still lost in his reminiscing when he stepped back into the bright, sterile atmosphere of the emergency department. As he approached the sliding glass door of his wife’s room, a nurse stepped between him and the smoke-tinted, tempered panes. She turned her gaze down the hall and led him to a small, quiet room just outside the ER doors. Emptiness filled the room except for several tapestry club chairs arranged next to an industrial style end table. “Please have a seat in here for a moment. Your wife’s doctor will be right with you”, she spoke softly as she quickly drew the windowless door to a close.

There, atop the cold metal tabletop, he set the second cup of coffee down next to a gold embossed Gideon’s Bible and a box of Kleenex. While waiting, he scanned the newsfeed on his phone as he mindlessly sipped the last drops of coffee from his cardboard cup as he wondered what tests they were ordering, again, for his wife.

Moments later, a tangibly foreboding presence entered the room along with a man cloaked in the dark, navy blue of hospital issued scrubs upon which the starch-white cotton of a knee-length lab coat, embroidered with matching navy blue thread, was draped. The blood emptied from his core to his feet when his eyes looked away from his phone and upward to meet his rising mourning, head-on, in the compassion filled eyes of the young physician standing there. As if he had been struck by lightning, his body was suddenly coursing with fear and adrenaline. He could feel everything and nothing — all at once.

The Kleenex was useless to comfort him as he had yet to shed any tears. The shock made it impossible for him to process what had just happened. Scattered in thought and trembling, he tried to collect himself as he floated with weak and numb legs back toward his wife’s room.

Grief began to seep from every pore as he slid the heavy door behind him and the weight of seeing his daughters’ pain and suffering crushed and pierced him simultaneously. There, he left his bride, growing cold, as he stammered with sorrow back to the bereavement room to call their family and make arrangements for their girls to say goodbye before technicians transferred her lifeless body to a chilled vault in the morgue.

It was just where he had left it. The odor of her, now cold, cup of coffee nauseated him as he hesitated to dial the phone. For a moment, the tragic loss remained with him and him, alone. How could he form the words to tell his mother-in-law that her daughter was dead? Despite his tunnel vision and sweaty palms, he was cognizant of the fact that once he uttered the words by his own mouth and heard them with his ears, his mind and heart would collide with demolition force. His teeth began to chatter uncontrollably and all he could do was replay the moments before he had left her side. If only I had realized the episode was more than a migraine, he wondered.

If only he could have known that an aneurysm was about to rupture their family apart. Dawn would forever be marked by both the happiest and the most heartbreaking days of their lives and mo(u)rning held new meaning for them from that day forward.