Nine Days

We lived in a netherworld
For nine days. Time ticked
From drips of machine-metered medicine.
Daylight fled, strewing mocking glints
Ephemeral in its wake, hissing and
Humming. Sighs and moans decreed fierce
Night-watch vigils. You were our nurse, too,
Those nine days.

Nights spent hoping not to hear
Alarm, struggling not to doze, bleary eyes
Alert for any movement from our patient or
Caretaker. We are inept
Witnesses riveted by unknowable signs.
Your steps a nimble balance of kindness and
Science, solid warmth and blue uniform -- personality
To mend and annoy, inhibit and console.

You gave hope yet said so little,
Just the incremental facts of life: numbers
Counted and procedures executed
In those nine days. Dread
Eclipsed the sun. Our primitive souls shook,
Unsure if her radiance would return. You were
Shaman -- peering, listening, measuring -- unable
Or unwilling to counsel past each night. Her

Pendulum swayed back and forth in a rhythm
Out of sync with shift changes and daily
Reports. Recovering tempo labors all, an
Imperiled body breathing by tubes
Fights to find its own pace, its place either here
Or there, yet each day is a day. We were the lucky ones
Standing in the hall, stewing and fretting
This time.

Was it your care or her will or our cries that
Urged a bruised heart to beat again?
If not to meet old age then
Mark, perhaps, five more precious years.