Read the original in Croatian. She runs a creative writing workshop, writes columns for newspapers and magazines, and teaches as a fellowship professor at the European Center for the Study of War and Peace in Zagreb.
She is a past president of the American Literary Translators Association. In the early morning, two pairs of strong hands shift me adeptly to a cot parked on the right side of the bed where I live, a strong man and an even stronger woman.
Her breath smells of tobacco and cheap Turkish coffee. I like inhaling it, I nourish myself with smells like these, the only tastes still available to me. My nightgown is hip length to make it easier to keep me clean; they do not change my clothes here every day, even though the doctor did once give a little talk to a group of students about how devastating the depersonalization of patients such as myself can be, the vital importance of human dignity that must be preserved by dressing the patient every day in the clothing the patient likes best, attuned to their style and personality.
I always liked short skirts, the casual kind, over Doc Marten high-tops; I loved pretty dresses, long and flowing, stovepipe jeans, comfy knitted sweaters, bare shoulders, a slender waist, lots of shoes, boots, sandals. For an instant my gaze is aimed at my bed and on it, before the nurse gathers up the first layer of dirty bedding from the plastic sheet, I see brown stains.
Maybe these are bed sores, or the stigmata. Maybe he touched me after all. Today is not a day for bathing; today is only a rub-down with a washcloth, then ointments and lotions, a declarative swivel of a stiff, frayed toothbrush in the oral cavity, and a hairbrush pulled through the slicked-down brown hair. Then back onto the white snow to leave my tracks there again. When they shift me back onto the bed, their work is done, and until the rounds and the physical therapist, nobody else comes by.
