The place we used to go

It started about five years ago, when I was a regular at the hospital. The visits were mundane, each one a series of registrations and waiting, taking off clothes and putting on clothes. That time, the ultrasound technician wiped up the goop from my pelvis with paper towel and told me I was done. I sat up, put my clothes back on, and reintegrated myself in the waiting room. I'd become familiar with these motions.

By then I knew that there was a vessel of broken cells nestled somewhere deep inside me. The doctors were convinced that the cells were dead, but my body seemed to disagree. If the doctors were right, there was a short window before the dead cells would start to rot. If my body was right, there was a short window for the cells to be brought to life.

So I sat there, waiting for a doctor, or a miracle - whichever befell first.

The doctor will see you in a few hours, the nurse said kindly.

I nodded. And waited. The hospital felt sterile.

Let’s have lunch, he said. I looked over, his eyes drooped slightly. How often we forget about the fathers, that their hearts break too.

Disrupting the usual sequence of events, we drove away and arrived at a diner. We walked inside, the decor was simple. Booths along the wall on both sides and a row of tables and chairs in the middle. The kitchen was at the back, exposed, two men wearing hairnets flipping eggs. When the server saw us, she gestured to sit wherever we liked. We picked a booth near the back, close to the kitchen. The menu was straightforward: eggs, bacon, sausage, sandwiches and burgers. We ordered the tuna sandwich with soup special, and two coffees.

We joked about having a baby. We joked about losing the baby. We made fun of our dark sense of humour. We giggled to soothe the gripe.

We didn’t know then, but we would become regulars at this diner. When the doctors concluded that the cells were in fact dead and needed to be expelled from my body, they prescribed drugs. But the drugs didn’t work as the doctors had intended. My body absorbed the poison before they could reach the cells. So the doctors prescribed more drugs. And then my body absorbed those too. Back and forth ensued, my body was steadfast like a protective mother. And who could blame a mother for trying? So we kept going back, back to the hospital, and back to this diner.

Months later, the scan showed that I was clean. My body had, on its own terms, released all of the expired cells. The nurse told us we wouldn’t need to come back to the hospital again. Not until I’m ready to give birth, she said generously. We stopped going to the hospital, but we kept coming back to the diner.

The nurse's prophecy fulfilled a year later. The contractions started the night before, and they hit hard while we were having lunch at the diner. Breathing got difficult as I paced up and down the aisle to ease the pressure. The baby was coming.

Our little guy was born in the hospital that night. The same night he was removed from me, placed in a plastic box and poked with tubes. The doctor mentioned a bunch of tests and operations. I pretended to understand. Okay, I said, doped and empty-handed where my baby had been.

The weeks and months that followed were a blur, apparently, when the heart breaks, so does the brain. There were memories of holding my sick child. Fanning him to sleep, wiping, cleaning, trying to provide comfort. Provision was futile. Providence was encompassing. There was constant fighting and hating; fighting the urge to hate my child but to hate the thing that happened to him. Later on, in the deep of the night, surrounded by soil and blood, I'd misfire. I'd hate the wrong thing. My sick child would remain innocent, but I'd get to know guilt like I'd never known before. Shamed, would become a terrible way to live.

In the midst of the chaos, when we needed a break, we went to the diner. It was during the pandemic when dine-in was allowed but unpopular. They welcomed our new family of three and seated us outdoors with extra diligence, assembling a private patio behind the kitchen. There I finished my over-hard eggs, quelling my hunger and escapism.

Three years went by. During that time, then and again I’d sunk into some dark places. The diner was no stranger to my anger and viciousness, sometimes put on public display. Week after week, year after year, as people came and went, the diner stood still, keeping its patrons' secrets, careful never to tell. 

Gradually, my heart mended. I was relishing in happiness as our family of three squished into a booth, rowdy and alive and gentle and loving, when the server came to tell us that they’d sold the place. In a week or so, we’d notice new management. 

We asked to take a picture with her to commemorate. The three of us took up most of the frame while she poked her head out from the back, holding a coffee pot. She confirmed our suspicions over the years: the diner was a family run business, her name was Jen, and the older cook wearing a hairnet was her dad. We also learned from Jen that the diner’s been good to them for over a decade, but her dad’s growing old now, and it was time for her family to move on.

She thanked us for our support over the years. Our weekly bill started at thirty dollars and then grew twice as much. We thanked her back. Our exchange was courteous and restrained, as if an ellipsis hung in the air. There were the untold stories of my heartbreak, threaded together by this place. I'd been carrying them because they were meant to be kept. But how much of what we keep, must we carry?

So I left them at the diner, keeping them there. We said our last goodbyes and I pushed open the door, the little ones following, all of us moving on.