Next you meet a virtual jogger on the path for walking and you know this
by her quick gait and the earphones drooping from her ears and the player of
some description to be left un-described because not describable, being tucked away under the shirt. You greet her by stopping to ask if you're on the path to hospital and she recovers from the start to offer you assurance and pointing the way, then you start that way up a rather steep incline that in itself causes you to pause in your assessment of the trail to think what dear thought to lead the path in this direction, or to build the hospital Up the hill you're on and must now wind your way up. You reassess the wisdom of your plan entire and decide to favor the heart.
You come to the crest of the winding path, wanting awfully much to pray for a breeze, but recall that praying for things resembles less the perfect prayer of the Greek Orthodox and more
the magic of primal times, like trying to anoint the body of self and twist the arm of God
in the same act, or more like the bargaining stage of grief than unconditional acceptance
of the way things happen to be today. So you accept your sweaty, smelly self at the path's summit then you spot a face you know you know not and never have seen, this particular one, and yet you do know that look the face is wearing, the one you see often in hospitals, the one that harbors the sorrow of the biblical Job from a verdict you'd rather not hear or hear about,
some dreadfulness this way come for him or perhaps for one he cares for.
No sooner do you reconcile that account by your observation than you see another face, grown and grainy and attached to a body that could be that of a child, the legs so short and thin, but then you notice how with extraordinary grace and grit the woman navigates her way across the gateway using limbs of another order made of metal and attached to her arms by braces of
a lighter element with Velcro bands. You get nearer to get clearer on the face, earthy in its appearance, at once beaming but with an ache you know a little of, and you avert your glance
to look at your watch, embedded in the pedometer that you walk with as a constant prayer,
and you see how late you are for the blood work and you assume, as if a virus catching,
the look that you recognize on the old woman's face.
Still you are led to think not There But for Grace but, in its place this thought,
What Radiance She Shows. There's sorrow there to be sure and no way the woman could deny it but by the look on her face you would not find it if you were not paying close attention to her,
a look not in denial but of delight at being alive, bipolarities and all. Then you start to grieve for your own self because you know that soon enough you will leave the building before you with several vials less of your old blood as assigned by the needle signature of various powers,
and you will be dressed no doubt in what you are sure from previous visits will be the pinkest of pink armbands that you think is shockingly so.
If you were donating blood there would be some nobility in that. In their taking blood to test your triglycerides, there's but raw anticipation of an outcome that could someday mean disease or your life. So your concerns for twice standing and hospital regulations and the color of armbands and the degree of inclines all dissipate with the breeze that finally comes on its own and picks you up and eases you into the building of blood work, alone, but not in the least lonely.
