just me, you, and salinger.
i leaned on one of the metal bars along the side of boy's hospital bed, and i stared hopelessly at the monitor above his head. i put my hand on top of his. i combed a few fingers through his disheveled hair and rubbed the back of my hand on his mountain man stubble.
a long heavy sigh came out of my lips.
i searched my bag and pulled out franny and zooey which i had been trying to reread unsuccessfully through the flight. the words just swarmed up and over my eyes, meaningless constructs of letters stabbing at some apex in my brain.
"well, darlin, it's just you and me. might as well include a classic." and i began to read to him, slow and steady, voice rising and falling over syllables and punctuation for page after page of hypnotic paragraphs until i realized that i was choking and sobbing after every word. until i realized that even i couldn't understand what i was trying to say.
he was hearing my voice, the same way he heard my sobs, as a presence, as a life in the room. i could only hope for him to hang on to that, to hear me not necessarily as me but as anyone here waiting for him.
but the pulse of the respirator remained steady, and his body was still.
and i put my head near his chest to hear his heartbeat, that warm, gorgeous, rhythmic thump that always took me home.
and i lifted my face with a small breath and continued reading, a snippet here, my favorite part there....
"Franny took in her breath slightly but continued to hold the phone to her ear. A dial tone, of course, followed the formal break in connection. She appeared to find it extraordinarily beautiful to listen to, rather as if it were the best possible substitute for the primordial silence itself. But she seemed to know, too, when to stop listening to it, as if all of what little or much wisdom there is in the world were suddenly hers. When she had replaced the phone, she seemed to know just what to do next, too. She cleared away the smoking things, then drew back the cotton bedspread from the bed she had been sitting on, took off her slippers, and got into the bed. For some minutes, before she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, she just lay quiet, smiling at the ceiling." - j.d. salinger
