#108 Hospital

Once Janne knew of her diagnosis, her oncologist put together a weekly plan for treatments. This would need that Janne stayed overnight for one or two nights.

If Janne stayed, I came to see her every day. As she sometimes would get into a shared room, we thought it was better that she’d come out to spend time together. We’d sit in a blue couch in the common area of the seventh floor of the hospital. The first time we did that, we turned on the TV. There was nothing but a Russian soap opera with Estonian subtitles. We started watching that episode as if it was one of our series.

If she’d get a private room, we’d watch something together in her iPad while talking about anything. We weren’t really sad nor worried during those times. We had already agreed that if something could be done, it would be done. Otherwise, why worry about what we couldn’t control. We just kept being ourselves.

Every time that I’d come pick her up, I would wait at a pizza place downstairs having a coffee. I would be sending Janne photos or texting her funny comments about what I’d watch.

That last month it became Janne’s home. I made sure she had everything in her room (private, fortunately). She had chargers for her devices. She had food that she wished for, particularly fresh nectarines from our local market. I’d do laundry for her to bring her fresh clothes. She had her coffee with oat milk every morning. The boys would come see her often.

Her doctor recommended to take some step in the hallway with a walker. I would do that with her as often as possible. If someone was visiting her, I would let the visitor take the walk with her so she could have her private conversations. Janne told me that a nurse had asked if she wanted to take a walk, but she said no. Then the nurse told her, “you only want to take walks when your husband is here, right?”

I named the area with the blue couch, “the botanic garden” because of that big fern. Janne smiled and kept using that term. That was the place where I took our last selfie. Even though we saw only a cold hallway, in our imagination we were walking through our favorite places. In truth, any place where Janne was, that was my favorite place.