A Leaf on The Tree

She is not an attractive young woman. Her face is all I can really see, and it is puffy. Not puffy like chubby, or like a medically challenging acne-case puffy. More like allergic to bees and fell on a nest puffy. Her whole body is heavy and, well, the same kind of puffy. She is bundled in blankets and strapped to one of those bright yellow Stryker gurneys, a bed on wheels that one rides around on when one is injured or when one cannot even function well enough to sit up in a wheelchair. I can't tell if she arrived by ambulance, stranded on the gurney waiting to be admitted, or if she came from home on it, living with that yellow Stryker day after day, arriving at Admissions, having been unloaded in the parking garage by her father, pushed into the admissions waiting room by her father. Waiting on her back, unable to move, she was making guttural noises with a nasal accent through her puffy face. I looked quickly her direction as I walked into the same waiting room to be checked in...