Hospital silence

It’s hard to have silence in a hospital. Beeping, overhead speakers, nurses, pa, np, dr, always talking. Assessing. Biweekly cleanings. Clank, beep, buzz. Noise. And with all the cacophony of sounds together it creates a holllowness of silence. The sound waves interrupted within themselves so at times you hear nothing. My baby slept. And slept. And when she woke and cried out she was medicated quickly to ease the pain of no flesh on top of muscle and tissue. I saw it once... in the raw. Unfiltered. Unmedicated. Post second surgery. With a cry so deep and, and, and no physical words could describe it. It was beyond the scope of what I could comprehend. Just pain. When the band of people left the room we were left with silence and a baby that slept as the morphine and sucrose, and phentenol all kicked in numbing her pain. I went numb. And a ringing in my ears that heard nothing else. I still can see it. Flash across my eyes even now I can still smell the sterile gloves and sucrose water. Sticky sweet mixed with dry powder of clean. That silence is repeated just before you drift off to sleep. With your body slowing down for slumber and your breathing soft.  It’s a void that almost nonexistent, faintly present. There in that moment when I thought tears would come I cried not. I held it there, for fear of losing it and not making it out of what would surely have been a dark hole. Silence. We sat there together frozen in a space while our baby lay in a bed so small, sleeping as if nothing happened. And we sat there together. Completely alone in a hospital full of people. Silent.