Walking Out Alone

Clean gleaming floors stretch before me,

Corridors leading to elevators,

Which lead to more corridors.

I walk alone toward an exit.

I have walked out of this hospital

And left my mother as a patient,

My father, my mother-in-law,

And most recently my father-in-law.

Each in their turn,

I have left behind in a bed,

As a patient in this hospital,

And I have walked out alone.

But this time is different,

Painfully, achingly different.

My husband is in the bed.

The love of my life is the patient.

We did not anticipate this event,

He eats healthy, he exercises,

He is still a runner.

The last person you would expect.

I cannot wrap my head around it,

The slurred speech, the drooping mouth

The symptoms don’t compute,

It can’t be happening.

But this is the reality,

He has had a stroke,

I walk toward the exit alone.

More alone than ever before.

I feel his mortality,

I feel my mortality,

I am walking in a dream.

And I am by myself.

Weeks pass and he is better,

The stroke was minor,

The residual is minimal,

A haunting melancholy remains.

A flashback of walking out alone.