I.
The air is fat with the mist of burning newspaper. The couch is a tad better than threadbare, all its original softness gone, the hard wooden skeleton jutting up through the crimson fabric. The high-ceilinged room is lit by the chandelier that hangs above the underused grand piano. Oriental rugs adorn the floors, disguising the ancient wood beneath. The heavy, pleasing scent of wine clings to every fixture of the building. A wooden chess board rests on a glass coffee table, the black and white soldiers abandoned mid-battle. Large pieces of three-layer German chocolate cake float on white plates nearby.
Something cuts through the fog and reaches my addled brain. I open my eyes so that I'm staring through the cloudy lens of my lashes. There's a couple at the door. They must be family friends, but I've never met them before. They wear coats to guard themselves against the cold. There is a broad-shouldered man with muscled arms, the hair shaved cleanly away from his head so that it gleams in the winking firelight. He surveys the room like a bird of prey. His knuckles look like eight miniature fists, and earlobes mesh with his neck so that it forms a fleshy bridge. A short woman with hair pulled tight into a ponytail and quick eyes stands anxiously by his side. She wears a scratchy green shirt with a sewn on badge over her right breast. Their eyes find the couch.
"Are you the one?" the bald man asks.
Am I the one what? I pause.
"Yeah, it's me," I say confusedly.
They rush at me. The bald man pushes a stretcher, a can of oxygen riding the plastic bed like a giddy toddler in a shopping cart. I sit up quickly, but the women pushes me down and cautions me to take it easy, slipping an oxygen mask over my mouth. The flimsy plastic crinkles with my rapid breath. The man forces the stretcher down with a metallic crash, ready to move me from the warmth of the hearth to the cold of that bed.
"What are you doing?" Mom says quizzically from the entrance to the dining room. "She's in here."
The paramedics rip away the mask from my mouth, click the stretcher back into place, and race into the dining room.
II.
Opa and I wait in the lobby. His hair has left him, only a few white strands clinging on at the sides. His eyes are Aryan blue, and his words are heavily steeped in Dutch, his two souvenirs from his early years in Holland.
"Why are we here?" he asks me. His mind is old, it doesn't carry him much farther than the door.
The room is filled with tacky chairs with China-made fabric covering their metal interiors, cheap seating for the masses who wait to see their loved ones in the upper floors. A secretary's desk is at the far side of the room, the woman taking a break from the phones to drink he coffee out of the Styrofoam.
"Oma's sick," I answer. We sit in silence on the stiff chairs, and wait for Dad to park the car.
III.
Oma's propped up by the overused hospital pillows. She's wearing the thin standard issue dressing gown. She's swimming in blankets to combat the sterility of the hospital and the dreary grey slush of March that's just outside the window. Physically, she is very much like her husband, thin and wrinkled, but with a head of wispy, ice-blond hair.
"How are you?" Mom says, taking a seat next to the IV-drip. We all situate ourselves around the bed.
"I'm," her voice is high-pitched and weak. I lean closer to try and distinguish breaths from words. "I'm fine."
"We brought you some flowers," Mom finishes. The men sit idly, unsure of themselves.
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