Polar Winds

Too many icy drinks, too fast on a hot summer day, my core center chilled beyond bearing and my stomach reacted violently, throwing up the offending liquid. One can’t go from steamy summer to frigid winter without a physical reaction. That glacial feeling from last summer, came back to me when I saw the doctor come from the operating room and head in my direction. His words did not register with me at first. It was as if they were frozen in time. They hung in the air, singly and slowly like a slow moving storm of ice pellets. Bleak and raw they whirled around my head before settling in my startled stomach. They struck like ice cubes inadvertently swallowed and too big for their landing place. The words were cold and cruel and cut into my very soul as surely as a surgeons steel scalpel slices through soft flesh. My foggy brain afraid of reality, chose to be critical of the messenger. I decided that he had said these words too many times before and his well of empathy and emotion had dried to a hard crust. That is why he was being so direct and frigid. Then as if driven there by a strong wind, my thoughts veered off in a different direction. I felt a flood of pity for the doctor. He looked so tired and well he might. The operation had started eighteen hours ago. Finally my brain filtered out the non-essentials and leapt onto his words. “ He didn’t survive the operation.”