Wendy and I had English together and I barely knew her when she told me she was going to the hospital after class to have her thyroid removed. Would I visit her?

At that time in the morning, between my second and third cups of french roast and after a brisk speed-walk across the quad, pink scarf wrapped tight over my neck, hospitals were the last thing on my mind, though I wouldn’t have minded an IV drip and medical-grade acetaminophen for my hangover. When she asked, I didn’t have an easy answer, so for a moment I sat silent and then I asked her if her parents lived nearby. Most of us were far from home, but I thought with it being surgery and serious one should have family on hand.

“My mom has to stay with my younger sisters and Dad can’t take time from work—but he actually just doesn’t like hospitals. Please Laura, come visit? Even five minutes.” She glanced at me like it was a test. Did I not like hospitals? Wasn’t our English lit friendship more than just the convenience of not having to sit next to Crystal the bagel-eater or Simon who never showered?

We were in our fourth year of university, so it would have been natural for both of us to have other friends. But I’d spent the past three years singularly focused on Manuel whenever time off from studying allowed, and Wendy had recently transferred from somewhere on the West Coast, which is perhaps why we always sat together in class.

I asked Wendy if her surgery was for a dire condition and she assured me it was rather common. Not seeing any way to get out of it, I took the paper she handed me with her full name, her doctor’s name, and her cell phone number cursively scrolled in deep purple ink, and then the professor began lecturing and we couldn’t talk anymore. I realized I’d have to find out which bus to take to the hospital later.

By the time I got through my classes, my headache had mostly subsided and I texted Manuel to see how he was feeling.

He texted back almost immediately—Most alive I’ve felt in months thanks to you, but pretty dead on my feet.

The night before I’d been up late visiting my former boyfriend who was in the city and staying at a hotel downtown. The hotel was a beautiful change from my soggy dorm room and my roommate who had fallen hard into Theology and went to bed by ten o’clock, buried under a handmade beige afghan and emitted a smell something like rotting oranges.

Manuel was the kind of old boyfriend that I saw again and wondered why we’d broken up. Although, to be honest, I didn’t need to lay eyes on him to wonder that. We’d decided to break up only because we were young and he was moving away and surely one of us would be temped by the offerings of the world. In the ten months I’d been single, I hadn’t found anyone new. I still sent Manuel regular text messages when I thought of him and he always replied. So we got together as soon as he was free from work.

We met in the marble-floored lobby of his hotel. He wore a black button down shirt and had a chin of rough growth that added a heavy-romance to his dark eyes. He invited me up to check out his spacious suite. I smiled and said alright, and laced my arm through his elbow on the way up.

When we got thirsty, we walked to a nearby liquor store, jackets pulled up to our noses to protect against the October chill. We talked about things like what life was like for him now that he was done with college and had moved to Montreal, and what it was like for me now that I was in my last year. We bought a twelve-pack of Bud and a mickey of Cinnamon Schnapps and on the way back to the hotel we talked about the people we knew in common and discovered that none of them were doing anything worth talking about—school or work and that was it.

“Do you remember last year when you said you wanted to go to Paris?” Manuel asked. “What happened to that dream?”

“Still there,” I said. “I’m hoping to squeeze it in between graduation and starting a new job—once I have one. You were right about not taking any more loans—at least not until I know I can start paying them.”

I pulled him to a stop and twisted the cap off of the Cinnamon Schnapps. I took a slug and felt the scorching, pleasant burn of a hundred burning hearts. “I just want to be done. I’ve had enough of the tiny dorm room, three-year-old shoes, and another thanksgiving at home with my parents. I’m so jealous of you!”

Manuel took the bottle from me and chugged. He winced and smacked his lips. “Once you’re out, you’ll appreciate the potential surrounding you now, just underneath the surface. You can do anything now. Another two, maybe five, possibly ten years, and you’ll get married, have a family, and then what. Now,” he glanced down at me, only a couple inches of height difference between us. “You can make anything happen.”

By which he meant he knew how to have a great fuck, which we did, but soon enough it was over and we had hours of the evening ahead of us.

I got out of the bed, shook my skin, tried to kick off the hum that had settled in me like an idling engine.

Manuel handed me a beer and we danced to music videos on the television and still I couldn’t settle so he pulled me over to the window and showed me that it opened and had no screen even though we were on the tenth floor. The opening wasn’t large enough for us to crawl through, which was a good thing as I might have squeezed outside if I’d been able to fit, hung on by my fingernails just to feel the possibility of falling.

Manuel thrust his arm out the window. Down fell a can of beer. It smashed the sidewalk ten stories below, exploded into a fountain of foam.

My heart stopped and started. I wasn’t breathing and then I began again “Someone—”

Manuel leapt on my lips, pushed me back against the cold glass. The hot pushed in on one side of me and cold from the other. We dropped more cans, sometimes calling out, sometimes not. Each time my eyes combed the street for pedestrians. Each time my heart stopped because something—anything—could happen. Someone could walk out of the lobby and be injured,—perhaps killed—by a falling beer. Someone could report us to the police. I could be carted off to jail, embroiled in scandal. Each time we dropped a can, it took only seconds to hit to ground. Seconds that were loaded—exploding—with possibility. Seconds that could change my life.

When dawn broke, I was in bed Manuel, head full of hazy smoke, body full of pulsing adrenaline working to push out the toxins from the night before. My heart fluttered and soared as Manuel and I enjoyed each other, once more, quickly.

The room was humid and smelled of old beer and sex. Manuel showered and came out smelling like the fresh rind of a melon. He dressed in his business clothes and soon enough I was pushed out into the street because of his business meeting and my own need to get to class. It was warmer and sunnier than the day before. The sky was blue and there were no clouds, but the morning air was cold enough to need a jacket. I searched the grey sidewalk for a sign of the cans we’d tossed out the night before. There was no trace of them, and I wondered if they’d been there at all.

The hospital was a sad box with beige walls and chipped, plastic baseboards. I scanned the note but still ended up at the help desk, asking an elderly volunteer where I could find Wendy. She wasn’t out of surgery yet, so I had to wait. I was directed to a place to sit but I couldn’t because my body was still humming. The humming had built in intensity since the first exploding fountain, and, like the fountain, it couldn’t—wouldn’t—be contained. I wandered the hospital halls, surprised what I could do without people—nurses, doctors, volunteers—stopping me.

I hadn’t spent much time in hospitals, just once that I remembered when I’d accompanied my mom and brother for my brother’s check up on his torn ACL. Hospitals were not a place to just go—they were a place to be avoided with wild abandon, and now I saw why. 

My immortal youth was over.

Here was proof that people not only lived, but died. Evidence of bodies giving out, going under, being crushed in their fragility. There, a bald child sleeping as men in mint green scrubs rolled away his bed, across the way, a young woman in a wheelchair, feet on the ground as she bent double in a coughing fit.

The truth was I hadn’t wanted to visit Wendy because it so easily could have been Wendy visiting me. It was luck, really, the length of the telomeres you were born with, a single string controlled by some invisible hand at conception, maybe even before.

This life, what had I done with it? Years of school, keeping to the same friends, the same connections. I hadn’t even tried seeing anyone new since Manuel left. I worked and waited to finish my degree. Finishing being the supposed starting point for my new life—but it was all connected: same body, same spirit moving ever onward, unless I got stuck in a shallow spool at the side of the stream, which, I saw now, was exactly where I was. Trapped in an eddy, going round and round. Waiting for a degree to say I was officially employable. Waiting for a career to say I could afford a relationship that could turn into marriage and kids least I throw away the years of school to give the rest of my life to a family.

This all reminded me of a year before, when Manuel had begun to talk of leaving and I had seen, clearly, the path of pulling up roots, following him, transferring to another university and finishing my degree there. So what? So why? So we could get married? Live together? There were years left for that. Fewer years left of school and all those things I wanted to do on my own, my secret list of plans like: get a job, have a secret office romance, work internationally, but here almost a year later—a year closer to my death—and all those same things still on my list, and me back to having the fun of my life with Manuel.

I passed patients in wheelchairs, walking with the support of an IV drip. Patients unconscious, being wheeled to or from surgery. I recognized equipment and roles from years of watching televised hospital dramas; there was a doctor, there a nurse, there a social worker. 

I wandered halls, peeking into rooms shared by four patients at a time, some with curtains pulled around their beds, hiding what ailed them. There were young with broken bones, women with bandaged, wrapped heads, elevated casted legs. There were moans and groans and the constant beep and whirr of unnatural machines providing ambiance that that could never be mistaken with the sweet, soft, muted sounds of trees and birds. These mechanical sounds pierced my body, made it weigh heavily with the simple effort of hearing.

I made up stories for the interesting patients—the young woman with a half shaved head and a tattoo on her neck had an upcoming surgery for a previously unknown brain tumour; the bald man with the broken hip: sexual experimentation accident; the unconscious, thin, indistinguishable person buried under mounds of tubes and wires: car accident—speeding to get to an ex’s wedding to declare undying love just in time to change things.

Wendy’s story: a cancerous tumour she was keeping secret from her family because then they would make her go home and she would never find someone of her own.

I walked until I was sure Wendy would be out of surgery. I turned around, confused about where I’d ended up. A green leaf poked out from down the hall. I went there, hoping to find a map, but there wasn’t one. Instead, I found a room made for convalescing. A room with enough windows and plants to give a semblance to the outdoor world. I walked to the window and looked down at the parking lot. I pulled out my phone and saw I had a message from Manuel. I stared at the message, taking it in, weighing the words and finding myself unable to answer. Then a deep, washed out voice battered by age and possibly the dry hospital air said, “Go”.

I turned and spotted the old man tucked between a window and a giant green palm plant. He wore thin blue hospital robes, had an oxygen tube shoved up his nose and he stared at me with an unblinking, clouded gaze. About five grey hairs stood up at the back of his head. His skin was wrinkled, spotted with brown moles and pink patches, he had to be at least ninety.

“I—” I’d barely started speaking when a fit, middle-aged nurse with dark skin and sky-blue scrubs bustled into the room. In a rushed, panicked air she said, “There you are, You aren’t to go off on your own. I told you I’d bring you down here.”

I slowly backed out of the room as the old man grunted. When I checked again, Wendy was out of her surgery and settled into her observation room.

When I first saw her, I wasn’t sure she was the same girl from my English lit class. The young woman in my class had shining blonde hair, pink-tinged cheeks, sparkling, bold eyes—all of that was gone now and instead I saw the old man from the room on the fifth floor.

Not Wendy’s floor. Wendy was on three. As I greeted her and asked her how she was feeling, some of her colour returned, she grew younger, pinker, told me she had to stay overnight, wait for the doctor to release her.

I heard the old man again, like he was seated in the hallway behind me. Go. Go.

Wendy asked if I could take notes for her for the next couple of days. Her voice was raspy, struggling to exist, to come back to life from under the bandages around her throat.

“Of course, but, well, could you do the same for me? I think I’m going on a trip soon. To Montreal. There’s a school there I want to check out.” I stood beside her, my back brushed the curtain that separated Wendy’s bed from the next. “Not until you’re feeling better, of course.”

Wendy nodded and said she would. We spoke some more about class until the pressure of the silent intimacy, that of being in a hospital visiting someone dressed in a gown that opened in the back, burst me open like a lily in midsummer. I confessed to Wendy what I’d done the night before with Manuel: the sex, the beer, the cans.

“You could have killed someone,” Wendy paled further as I reddened and rushed to confess I felt terrible about that bit.

“It was like speeding, like moving faster than anything around you. Like a race car. We weren’t trying to hurt anyone, we—”

“I never speed.” Wendy’s hand went to her throat, gently prodded her bandages. “You know, I’m actually pretty tired.” She glanced away, and it was a like a needle to my balloon.

“Oh right. Five minutes you said. I’ll get going.” I gave Wendy a small smile and she returned it. As I turned to leave the room, the sun disappeared from the window as clouds closed in over the blue sky.

I left Wendy and headed for the elevator. Then, on a whim, I went up to the fifth floor. The old man was there when the elevator doors opened. “Are you going down?” I asked.

“About fucking time,” he grumbled, and wheeled his chair toward the elevator. I saw what the problem was when he reached it. He had a difficult time getting the wheelchair over the break in the floor. I gave him a final push, sliding his chair into the elevator. The buttons were too high to push, but he took one look at the light on the M and gave a singular grunt in approval. I gave the old man the final push out, but that was all the help he needed from me. He raced ahead, smirking as an unexpected visitor held the door open for him to pass. He wheeled right out onto the street, where the snow had began falling in tiny white specks. He aimed down the sidewalk, blue robe flying open at his sides. I followed behind, moving slower. A woman bumped me as she ran past.

“Stop right now!” she cried, her blue legs pumping over the concrete. The man was rounding the corner now, his chair picking up speed as he headed downhill. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew his wild smile.

– Jennie Hunter

Author’s Note: “The Tenth Floor” was inspired by my interest writing about women in the working world, work-life balance, and the liminal space between school and work.