The film on the windows in the ICU casts the room in perpetual dusk. The fluorescent light, while politely dim, only adds to the gloom. The effect is meant to help the patient sleep, I suppose, but sleep seems to wait at the door for the constant shuffle of clog-clad feet and the business of monitoring, checking, asking, helping. Since we got in here, Dad has been in a half-sleep, like he’s covered in the same film from the windows.

His surgery went well — less than the four hours we were warned it might take, and they took the ventilator out right after surgery. He lies wizened and tiny in the big hospital bed, arms folded over his chest and whole body covered with a blanket, which hides the various devices and tubes that do more of the business of monitoring, voiding, squeezing and helping him get better. Which it looks like he is doing, thankfully.

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