vancouver on pause

Out the window, in the distance I notice a sign. Sandman. It’s green. Beckoning. But I’ve never noticed it before. In my head a phrase repeats. Mr. Sandman take me away. I beg you to. Take me, take us away.

It’s 3am. I’m sitting, perched really, on the edge of the bed, my eyes blurred with sleep. Outside the city seems to be on pause. Still. Shiny and sparkling in the darkness. I search for signs of life, movement, but nothing, not even a car on one of the many bridges that connect a peninsulated downtown to the rest of the world. The city on pause for a moment – a strange thought. While beside me David writhes in sickness. He’s vomiting now.

Still.

I reach over and put my hand on his shoulder and silently encourage my arm to move, to rub his back, to provide him with some sort of comfort. As I whisper – it will be ok – I realize these words seem false and lifeless, but I have to believe, I want him to believe. I say it again. This time to convince myself.

He’s sitting on the opposite side of the bed from me, doubled over, a cytotoxic bucket clutched in his hands. From my vantage point his shoulders blades protrude precariously from beneath the hospital gown. I as I will my arm down his back I can’t help but notice the skin stretched so thinly over ever rib and bone. I resist the urge to run, to throw up, myself. I feel sorry for him, not because he’s sick, not even because he’s violently vomiting in front of me, but because I know he despises the idea of throwing up. The man that never throws up struggling to keep his insides from being expelled into a bucket of toxic waste. This is our reality now. The life we left behind seems distant, a memory too painful to engage. We’ve been here for two months now. Or has it been two years? I’m not sure. Time moves differently here. Moments that I used to categorize into minutes and days used to all line up in a row. But now it’s like moving through time in a haze. Like I show I saw once on driving in the fog. Apparently it’s difficult to judge your speed when your brain can’t disseminate passing objects. Trees, houses, invisible, coated and camouflaged under a wet blanket made up of billions of tiny suspended droplets of water. You rush forward blindly into whiteness with no sense of when you might reach your destination and what you could be missing on the way.