I am the chair that belongs to no one.

Hard, slightly uneven, never intended for the long waits that define this place. I stand just outside the ER, beneath lights that do not sleep. People lower themselves onto me without ceremony. They doze in broken intervals, weep without sound, argue in lowered voices, make phone calls, pray, and fix their eyes on the doors as if attention alone might compel them to open.

Over time, I have come to notice what’s left behind.

A handbag. A helmet. A blister pack of tablets. A child’s water bottle. The remains of a meal. Objects carried in without thought and then, when the world inside moves, simply released, onto the floor.

Fear does this.

It renders the living briefly incapable of holding the ordinary.

One night an old man sat upon me. His wife lay beyond the ER door. Every few minutes he turned his face toward the resuscitation bay.

He asked nothing of the nurses, made no calls. He simply kept his hands clasped between his knees, a small yellow plastic bag resting at his side.

At first, he appeared composed.

He wasn’t.

He was terrified.

The distinction is one I have learned to recognize in the quality of stillness: the quiet of acceptance, and the quieter vigilance of those still waiting for the worst.

Later, he rose to speak into his phone. The bag remained. From its opening the worn soles of a pair of women’s sandals pressed against me. Old leather, softened and shaped by years of the same two feet.

That detail lodged itself more firmly than it should have. Hospitals are filled with objects that suddenly acquire weight. A wedding ring, a photograph, a house key, a child’s drawing, a pair of spectacles. They are invisible in ordinary life. Here, they become evidence: a person existed before this bed, that they had a place to return to, someone who had said, only that morning, I’ll be back soon.

Patients arrive with their vital signs and histories. Families arrive carrying the remainder of a life. They set it down, piece by piece, on whatever surface will receive it.

Often that surface is me.

I have held schoolbags while mothers were examined. Walking sticks while sons were taken for scans. People think they come to the emergency room carrying their belongings. They don’t.

They come carrying their lives.

An hour passed, and a voice called his name.

He stood too quickly. The bag slipped. The sandals scattered across the floor. For a moment he regarded them, then gathered them neatly.

I do not know the precise words that followed. I only know the change that enters a room when certain news is delivered. He sat again and placed the sandals beside him and began, with careful attention, to fold the yellow bag. Once. Then again. And again, as if reducing its size might render the night itself more manageable.

A doctor sat down beside me for a while. Neither spoke.

I held them both.

The silence between them. The folded bag and the sandals. The terrible fact that there would be no reason to take them home.

By morning, I was empty.

Someone had wiped me clean. No bag or sandals, and no old man. Nothing remained to indicate that only hours earlier, an entire marriage had rested on my frame.

Another family took the place. A young mother, her boy, and a school bag between them. The boy drew on the floor. His mother watched the doors.

I forget, because I must. There is always another weight, another alarm, another pair of hands releasing what they can no longer carry while they wait for the door to open.

This is the only work assigned to me. I cannot bear their grief or give them answers. I cannot tell them that the person they love will be all right.

I can only receive what the living set down. A bag, a phone, hope and prayers, and sometimes, nothing at all. I hold it for a while.

Then they rise.

Some leave carrying everything they brought, some leave carrying less. And some leave carrying something that cannot be put down again.

Then I am empty. Until another soul, frightened and exhausted, lowers themselves onto me and waits.

I belong to no one.

Perhaps, that is why, for a little while, everyone can belong here.

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More soon.

Another moment.

Another reminder that we are still, somehow, human in all of this.

Yours,

Adarsh Nath

Letters from the ER