White Sheets — turned yellow then brown
4 am, as I entered the hospital. The smell of hand sanitizer mixed with bleach entered my nostrils, went up to my brain, then through my lungs, down to my toes. My whole body started to burn like someone had set it on fire. I did not know for how long I would feel this way or stay in this place, I just knew that I wanted to get out of here. But I had to stay, because he was here, on the bed with all white sheets, so many machines plugged into him. A needle inserted from the left side of his neck into his heart would kill him even if it moved a centimeter more and he kept on insisting on touching it because it was bothering him so much.
Soon those white sheets turned yellow, and then brown. The nurse came in and asked me to leave the room. Standing outside his room, I continuously stared at a patient’s room next to his. The patient’s family gathered around him, while he was in there alone.
I was in that hospital for a week, around the same smell, my body unable to relax, every food I ate smelled like bleach. Every drink I drank turned color like the sheets, white, then yellow, then brown. Every conversation I had with him turned into something that happened years ago. Every person he talked about either wasn’t alive or not in the same country. His sodium level was low, then fine, then low again, like his memories of his son’s death was there, then not there, and then there again. His heart got weaker as the sanitizer and bleach smell got stronger.
Then all of sudden he was fine again, he could walk, he could talk. He was still a little mad at the world and especially at me and my family for saving him, forcing him to not give up and live again. He fought with us every day.
6 months later, he was sick again, his heart got even weaker this time, his left side wouldn’t work at all. It was him having a stroke the third time. The doctors’ couldn’t even believe how he was still alive. The trips to the hospital resumed again. The same familiar smell of bleach and sanitizer entered through my nostrils but this time it didn’t burn as bad, my food didn’t smell the same again. My drinks started turning colors again. Daily trips to the hospital turned to weekly ones when he was in rehab for three months. Those weekly trips turned into once every two weeks. Soon, it has been a month since I have seen him, due to restrictions that the nursing home placed as a safety precaution for COVID-19.
That month felt like a year. I started missing the little things that we used to do together. Such as making chocolate (which went terribly wrong by the way, ended up being too watery), and him joking about how whenever he enters the kitchen I am making Ramen because I barely know how to make anything else. I missed him telling me, “Oh, let’s go on a walk,” and us walking to a McDonald’s four blocks away from our apartment, and then end up eating a full meal before walking back home.
Three weeks before finals started for the Spring 2020 semester, my dad got a call from the nursing home that a few patients have died due to COVID-19, and he might have been exposed to it, but there is nothing to worry about. Of course, my family and I were worried about him. With all that he has been through over the past year, there was a really low chance of him surviving COVID-19 if he got exposed to it. After taking everything into consideration, we brought him back home.
I was really happy to see him at first but then realized his left side still doesn’t work properly, and that he was more furious at all of us than he has ever been before. Soon, our apartment started smelling like bleach, the burning sensation was something I got used to by the second week of him being back home. But my happiness turned into constant frustration and heartbreak because he was acting like a five-year-old. He was silent for the first week, then started yelling at random hours of the night, wishing he was dead, questioning God why he was still alive.
A few weeks ago, he actually tried entering the kitchen while I was in the living room. A large smile came across my face, me wondering if he was ready to have those conversations about food again. He was trying to spell out a sentence, but I was unable to understand him. My smile soon turned into worry, my body shaking with fear and frustration when he somehow knocked down the glass table, with half-filled open boxes of cereal and pasta, spread all across the floor. I just stared at him in shock, while he stared at me, gave me a half-smile, turned his wheelchair around, and went back to his room.
He has been home for six weeks now. The color of the sheets changes every day multiple times, so does the color of my water every time I try to drink it and that smell of sanitizer and bleach, mixed with the smell of porridge and boiled beans, has not left my mouth ever since.
