The Winds Always Blow
The room they occupied in the small hospital was white. There were two patient rooms in the building. The hospital was in the arid Southwest. The dry wind blew outside.
Lying in the bed, the man looked at the whiteness and sterility of the room. “This is a far cry from the bar,” he said.
The son woke from his chair and asked, “What did you say, Dad?”
“I was commenting on how this room is so far from Mickey’s Pub,” the man said.
“Yeah, I guess so,” was returned.
The man looked at one of his hands at the spider-like blood veins. He articulated his fingers and closed them into a light fist and reopened them and played them gently like a piano. His tendons and hand bones moving made the vessels shift and change. When he stopped the spider web returned.
They heard laughter and commotion outside of the white room. The man looked away from his hand and towards the sound and motioned with his head.
“Go see what that is about,” the man said to the son.
The son left and then returned and said, “The Mexican couple in the other room just had a baby. The whole family is in there. Must be twelve of them.”
“Is it a boy?” The man asked.
“I dunno. But I heard one of the girls say ‘hermanito’. So I’m guessing it is,” the son said.
The man shifted in the bed and licked and sucked at his parched lips.
“You talk to the doctor?” The man asked gruffly.
“Yeah,” he replied.
“Well, what did he say?”
“He said the vomiting and weakness and not eating is probably from cirrhosis,” the son said. “Said you have jaundice, too. That’s why you look like a malaria victim. He said you drink too much.”
The man looked out the window at the dry and sterile desert.
“But they are running tests, and he said they’ll know more tomorrow,” the son continued.
The man lay there and thought for a moment about the past and the present. He was still looking out the window. Outside was dry, and the wind blew.
“Well,” the man said, “That’s that.”
The son put his hand on the man’s leg covered by the white sheet. The man looked away from the window and at his leg.
“I’ll drink to that,” the man said looking back out into the desert. “Dad, this isn’t a time to joke,” the son complained.
“Who’s joking? I’m in need of a better venue,” the man said.
“Besides, this place is too bright. It hurts my eyes. Let’s get out of this dump. I saw a place in town. I’ll buy the first round.”
With his outstretched hand, he made a motion as though he was holding a glass and rattling phantom ice cubes.
“But the doctor said...”
“Fuck the doctor,” the man said curtly. He paused and then said,
“It is what it is.” He smiled.
The son looked away from the man and out the window at the terra where the winds blow the red dirt, and sun dries the pools after the rain. The son breathed and thought silently.
The wind will always blow the terra. It always has. It always will. The son wept inwardly and thought, It is what it is.
He did not understand.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”