Vigil

Vigil

By Charles M. Sumid Copyright 2025 Written 2017

Room 347 breathes different around 2 AM.

Not the slow tide of sleep,
not the morphine float,
but something catching in the exhale—
a flutter like a bird against glass.

Three rooms away, she hears it,
sets down her charts,
moves through the dimmed corridor
toward what hasn’t yet become a cry.

Mrs. Krupp’s eyes are closed, vitals steady,
monitors content with their green stories.

But her breathing tells another truth—
the pause before inhale lengthening,
the small sigh that means
the medicine’s edge has begun to fray.

Not pain yet, but pain’s shadow crossing the threshold.

She adjusts the drip
before Mrs. Krupp can surface
to knowledge of her body’s betrayal.

A half-turn of the valve,
precise as a pianist’s pedaling,
keeping the pain submerged.

Her fingers find pulse at the wrist—
that old conversation of blood and touch—
while she hums too low to hear,
a vibration more than sound.

She listens:
kidney stone’s sharp staccato,
cancer’s low drone,
the particular silence
of a heart preparing to quit.

She learned first from Janet,
who’d worked since the wards had windows you could open,
who said:

“Listen to what they’re not saying.
The body tells truth in the dark.”

The monitor’s blue wash makes an ocean of Mrs. Krupp’s sheets.

Her breathing has found its deeper rhythm,
pain held at bay for another hour.

The nurse straightens, writes nothing in the chart.

This care leaves no evidence.

Outside, first rain taps its morse code
against sealed windows—
another language only the night shift understands.