This is from my grandmother’s pacemaker installation in May of 2010. She pulled through just fine, but it was a traumatic couple of weeks.

I‘ve been working and going to visit grandma in the hospital all week. She had the second surgery on Wednesday. I woke up at some unholy hour at Matt’s house and made it to the subway platform at 8:30 a.m. I walked through the passage under 42nd St. to the Port Authority to my long ride on the 166. I made sure to press the “stop” button far before the hospital, as a few days ago the bus drove past the hospital to the cemeteries on both sides of the road north of the hospital. Not the kind of images I want in my head when visiting my grandma.

It’s hot, blisteringly so, as I walk through the doors, pronounce the spelling of my last name to the people at the front door, fasten the badge on my backpack and walk to Elevator D. I could do it in my sleep now. I am proving this by being partially somnambulant today. I know every single item in the Draper Family Café on the first floor. I wonder why they donated—I imagine a fantastic 18th-century death for them—as I walk past the glass-walled eating area. The hospital is remarkably modern, chock-full of enamel, walls covered with subtle patterning of purple and taupe mathematically calculated to evoke peace of mind, and automated announcements in the elevators. Each elevator bears a frosted glass plaque with the name of whoever donated them. Would it bear the name of the surviving relative? Or would one donate only if their family member died?

“Seventh Floor. Patient rooms 7125 to 7293,” the elevator recites. The thing I notice most about the elevators is that they have no feeling of movement whatsoever. It could not move at all and I wouldn’t really know. The only way I know I’m on the seventh floor is the anodyne views through UV-treated glass of the forest to the east of the hospital, punctuated with schools and suburban homes. The window closest to the bank of elevators faces towards my house, which is somewhere on the Palisade too far away to see.

Every time I begin walking down the hall I expect someone to stop me or ask where I’m going, but there is no group of people clamoring to visit people in hospitals. I remember her room number by heart now, 7473. I walk in, and she’s glad to see me. I sit down in the chair opposite her and we manage some banter about my mother being at work and my aunt coming up later in the week. When I talk to her, so cognizant of her mortality, “NO FOOD AFTER 12:00AM” marked in red dry erase marker on her board, I end up talking like a book of trite, overused phrases. I distinctly remember hating the fact that I used the phrase “right as rain” more than twice.

The only way to banish the thought of death, especially when it is your constant companion, is to feign absolute optimism. That I was sure she would fully recover was immaterial—there is no other appropriate thought.

Almost as soon as I arrived, a nurse came to wash grandma up and help her brush her teeth and give her a sponge bath. “Give me 10 minutes,” she said, drawing the curtain around the bed. I went downstairs to the hospital café, washing my hands in the bathroom and meticulously not touching anything at all other than my food. The only thing that freaks me out more than HIV is MRSA. I sipped my coffee that I had convinced myself I wanted but really wasn’t in the mood for, while eating pieces off of a cranberry scone. The café looked out onto a small courtyard that no one ever seemed to go into. I assumed it was locked, but my mother and I went in there a few days later and were indeed locked out. You can go in, but you can’t leave without taking an unmarked door that ends up in the parking garage and climbing up two flights to the lobby level. I looked at my watch: it was 11:47; the gallbladder surgery was scheduled for noon.

I nervously finished my scone and headed upstairs. To my chagrin in my role as grandma’s caregiver, she had been whisked down to prep for surgery before the nurse had even started her routine.

Reluctantly I took the elevator down to the third floor, and followed the signs to the surgery waiting room. There were very few people there. Momentarily not sure that it was the correct place, I settled in anyway. I tried to pair my phone and Bluetooth keyboard in order to type out something, but to no avail. I ended up reading my entire issue of the New York Review of Books cover to cover, even this uninteresting comparison of Rembrant with his friend and contemporary, Jan Lievens. I was, however, enraptured by the article on the American Jewish establishment, and of the food movement. I’m a big supporter of organic, sustainable farming. Judge Joe Brown was on the TV. There was a gay guy and a woman that looked a lot like Suzanne Vega. He loaned her money and she didn’t want to pay it back. There was a lot of moralizing about what being a “friend” is. I never watch television, but I needed something.

The surgery took three hours.

I had my headphones on as an elderly man entered, dressed in scrubs. I took one earphone off. “Anna?” I heard him say, then, after catching my eye, “Hann?”

“Hanna?” I said.

“Yes,” he started in a light Korean accent, “you the grandson?”

“Yes.”

“The surgery went all right, we just moved her to recovery room. You can visit soon.”

“Thanks,” I said, but he was already leaving.

The camaraderie of a hospital waiting room is one of frayed nerves. The phone kept ringing and someone would have to answer it. When one lady came back from the bathroom, she asked if the phone had rung. “Did they ask for Yost?” she asked in a weary and penitent tone. I’d just answered the phone, but it wasn’t a name that was even close. She seemed relieved, and sat down in the next room. Two in the other adjoining room were yammering about Jerseylicious, the latest ephemeral Jerseysploitation reality show. Everyone would hold their breath as the phone was answered.

My cell phone rings, and it’s Mary, from my office. I go into the other room where I get better cell service. I am absolutely sure I’m annoying the other people in the room.

“Yes. Now go to your Applications / Utilities folder. No, don’t try to connect yet, first go into your Applications folder. Are you there? There should be a folder inside that called Utilities. Then open an application called Keychain Access. See it? Good. There should be a list of usernames and passwords. Go down to the one for the server, and double-click it. Yep, check that box, and then hit ‘allow.’ That’s the server password, write that down. Now go over to the other computer and enter it, and you should be able to connect to the server.”

I’m grateful for the distraction. Explaining a process has such clarity—such simplicity.

“No, that’s not the server name, that’s just the hard drive name. Just click on it—yes, anywhere on the name—and give it a new name. No? Did you click on the part that’s the name? There you go. Oh, anything, as long as it isn’t the name of the old computer.”

I can picture her in our old office, covered with the oversize maps of the world that my editor and I put up on the walls one day. I wonder what they did with my desk.

“All right, that should be it. Oh yes, she’ll be fine, I’m just waiting to see her now. I will … bye.”

I walk back over and take my old chair across from the phone, unconvincingly attempting to look like I’m reading my Review, but the only article is something about Stalin that I don’t care about. I answer the phone a few times, but nobody is here. Finally, a voice comes on: “Hanna?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“She’s ready to see you. Just hit the black button and we’ll let you in.”

“Okay…” I replied cautiously.

“Do you know how to get here?” she asked.

“No.”

“Go to the end of the hall, take a right, then a left, then another right.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I took the time to turn off my cell phone, remembering the nurse’s admonition last time around. I found my way to the operating room recovery area, but was hesitant to come in. I walked in slowly, and eventually the nurses waved me over to one vestibule in the line of curtain-divided beds. Grandma was there, eyes like slits, lying motionless, her face blanched of all color, hooked up to nothing more than an IV.

I walked up to her, feeling that my presence at such a vulnerable moment was too much, that I was importunate in wanting to see her even though it was standard practice to let a family member see their loved one after surgery.

Not sure if she was conscious, I walked over to the left side of the bed, my backpack brushing against the green patterned curtain that separated her from the next bed.

I looked her in the eye, and as I did they grew wider. I could see she recognized me. Without a word, she reached over, with the clear tubing of the IV snaking up her arm, and took my hand in hers. Her grasp was strong, and her lipid eyes spoke volumes. I was trying hard not to break into tears—I wanted so badly to do anything to make her well again.

“Did you see the doctor?” she said, surprising me.

“Yes, I did, he came into the waiting room after the surgery. He said everything had gone well.”

“He’s a nice man,” she said softly, “I met him a few times before.”

A loud beeping sound started behind the curtain across from me. It varied in tone and almost played a very loud tune, an allusion to the Maple Rag or something similar. Something was unplugged, but the nurses didn’t seem to pay much attention. Grandma and I looked in the direction of the noise, as if it would go away if given a disapproving look. I was shifting my weight from the front to the back of my feet, not sure if my grandma wanted me to go away so she could rest or whether she wanted my presence. One of the nurses wandered over and said that I could go up to the room, that they were just waiting for someone to come down and wheel her hospital bed out of there. I was so stretched to the breaking point I forgot to say goodbye, I just started to walk out, and the nurse had to repeat to grandma that I was going upstairs. I walked back and waved ineffectually.

I went back up and waited in the room for a good ten minutes before I heard the orderlies coming down the hall with her. We talked a little as she drifted in and out of sleep. It was 3:30 by now and I knew my mom should be walking in the door at any moment. Finally, she arrived. My mom is good at the kind of small talk grandma likes, even when grandma isn’t in a great mood. I was too involved mentally with the life-and-death-ness of the situation to be a good conversational partner. It was hard to believe that she’d been operated on a scant hour before she was in this room. We left rather early, as grandma had slipped off into sleep.

On the drive home, it was my mother who was in a dark mood.

“Do you think that this is the point? You know, the point where her health is just going to get worse from now on? She is 87.” I hadn’t even considered until that moment that 87 is just two years from 90. It was horrifying to think that each year that marched by brought with it an exponentially higher risk of grandma’s death.

I replied that I didn’t think so, even unintentionally using the folksy, repellent phrase “right as rain” again. It rang so hollow in my mind that I wished I’d said nothing. These days, I can only express optimism in trite, humorless aphorisms.

Grandma looked better the next day, and even better the day after. She’s even getting discharged tomorrow at some point. I just hope she is truly cured. There is this lingering spectre of heart problems, as her heart rate was oscillating from around 90-110 while she was in bed. None of her cardiologists think this is a problem, but as we all know, 110 is not an appropriate resting heart rate for an 87-year-old.

I just want some return to normalcy. Do any of you remember that scene in Magnolia where Julianne Moore’s character is ordering the liquid morphine for her dying husband at the pharmacy? The pharmacist jokes that she could “have a party” with those kind of drugs, and her character loses it.

Julianne Moore: Who the fuck are you, who the fuck do you think you are? I come in here, you don’t know me, you don’t know who I am, what my life is, you have the balls, the indecency to ask me a question about my life?

Pharmacist: Please, lady, why don’t you calm down – ?

Julianne: Fuck you, too. Don’t call me “lady”. I come in here, I give these things to you, you check, you make your phone calls, look suspicious, ask questions. I’m sick. I have sickness all around me and you fucking ask me about my life? “What’s wrong?” Have you seen death in your bed? In your house? Where’s your fucking decency? And then I’m asked fucking questions. What’s… wrong? You suck my dick. That’s what’s wrong. And you, you fucking call me “lady”? Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on both of you.

A similar rant is pretty much on the tip of my tongue any time I’m at the hospital.