All his life he had traveled. Traveling was home to him. Now all that had changed. With the pandemic and his illness he was stuck in one place.
So, he had to figure out something. How do people stay in one place? He wasn’t sure.
Then he met the nurse Pam. He had more than attraction, when she was giving him a bath in the mornings, He wanted to see inside her to be one. This had never happened to him. When she came into the room, he felt that old feeling like he was traveling, but it was more like scuba diving in this case.
He had never scuba dived but now could imagine it through his feelings for Pam.
This must be why people stay married, he thought, and just choose one person to go deeper and deeper with, into the endless mystery of identity. Or something like that anyway.
Still, even with Pam, he needed to get out.
The courtyard of the old red brick hospital was lined with Crepe Myrtles—pink mostly but one had pink and white blossoms on the same tree.
He noticed them daily, in order to keep in sync with the seasons through his window on the fourth floor, but he felt so removed from them, like looking at a painting, but not being able to smell and touch the subject. Life had become a simulacrum, and he wasn’t sure he could live in a copy of life without touching the real thing.
So, he asked Pam one day—“Can you take me down to the courtyard?” She said the doctor had forbidden him to leave the floor he was on. But she would “See what I can do.”
One night, he heard a creak at his door. It was close to midnight, so he was startled. It was Pam.
Come on Sean, let’s go.
She had a flashlight, which was the only light on the floor. She took him to the fire escape down the hall, and quietly opened the door. The night air arrested him with life. He was suddenly intoxicated feeling.
He grabbed her hand, so as not to stumble down the steep steel stairs.
Once at the bottom, she turned off the flashlight and everything was moon illuminated. She led him to a bench just beneath the half circle of trees.
He could not see their color at night, but the powdery fragrance they emitted seemed to enter his pores. He suddenly felt so alive again!
They sat down together, at first at a distance, then Pam drew closer. It was almost too much stimulation for Sean.
“I wanted to tell you something.” She said.
“The doctor said, you may not have long, which is why I’m sneaking you out.”
At first, he didn’t respond, as he was so overwhelmed by all the new sensations.
Then snapping out of it, he said: “Well then, would you marry me?”