The elevator doors open and I roll That Baby in his stroller out into the waiting area of the critical care unit of this hospital. A good hospital. One of the very best.

Immediately, I am not so much slammed as teased with a smell that I have never knowingly experienced.

I see my aunt and my cousin. My cousin is puffy eyed. I park That Baby with them, introduce these two to him and get out the requisite toy cars and dinosaur and silky (little blankie). I kiss him and move out.

I enter what is the first section of the critical care unit and I am assaulted by the previously teasing odor. Is it urine? Catheters and bed bans? No. It is definitely like nothing I have ever smelled before. And yet somehow I know the smell. Instinctively, I am absolutely sure of what it is.

While I attempt to find the room I look around at the patients. Searching for a familiar face. These patients are each in their own room with large sliding glass doors. There is no sharing of rooms in this unit. And yet they are not private rooms. These beds can face the doors, it is easier that way sometimes. All of these patients are surrounded by machines and hooked up to wires and cords. There are accordian shaped hoses coming from most of their bodies. It reminds me of Star Wars. I am not sure why. Maybe Darth Vader.

These patients can have as many visitors as can fit. Whenever the visitors arrive. The visitors who are mentally doing the paperwork are the ones that stay the longest, regardless of the stink. The visitors who are mentally counting the money are the ones that leave the most, and won’t acknowledge the stink.

The smell hammers my senses. I blink more. Maybe that will help.

All of these people are old. Or they seem old. They look pale and gaunt and wispy haired. Their skin is stretched to the skull or saggy and thin. One or the other. They look haunted. Or empty. Or scared. Or resigned.

None of the staff is eager to help this stray woman who is me. Not because they are lazy but because they are busy. A most true kind of busy. Putting out fires. Doing no harm for as long as it takes. Until the patients ignite. Until this patient, or that patient is discharged. One way or another.

I feel my throat trying to close out the odor seaping through my nostrils. I purse my lips in a subconscious attempt to reduce the assault. I want to blow all of my air out. It is just about unbearable.

I ask for the direction, blinking madly. A harried, sweating woman sends me through another set of doors to another critical care unit. I wonder how she sits in this place.

Beyond these doors the smell subsides, but only just. This staff seems less disheveled. Less frantic. Every room in this unit is filled with the same machines and people as the first unit. Staff, patients, visitors and tubes. The awful smell is less. But it is still here.

The coronary unit. I didn’t think it was her heart. I was told it was her blood.

I walk to the room. She is surrounded by the same machines as the other unit. She is Darth Vader.

I do not go into the room. I have nothing to say. Also she is flanked by others who do have something to say. Who do not think the way I do. Who do not know what I know. I see my mom just outside the sliding doors. I am here for my mom. That is all.

For some, this is what it is like to die. In a room in a hospital. Sustained by tubes and wires. A mask providing breath - stunting speech. Semiconscious to a steady stream of the truly-sorry and the required-to-appear. Monitored by mostly able people who facilitate this every day.

Saturated in the stench of death.