I get out of the hospital at 2 a.m.
The air is cold, colder than when I went in.
I breathe in, glance down upon a bloody loogie.
Looking altogether too private
for a public walk.
My fingers search for the zipper on my jacket.

I am doing my due diligence on the way to the deck:
     Looking ahead
     Looking behind
     Down the street
     Up the street:
     Nobody there.
As I leave the world of Grady behind, I think back upon the 1p-11p I just finished: That man's legs will never get better til heaven. They will always be like that until they're gone or he's gone. That woman will need to have her uterus out; it's inevitable. This other man - he will be lucky to be alive tomorrow. Or unlucky. But blessed, as we all are blessed tonight. The man who hollered his blood pressure numbers at me then, "You're on camera, woman, they're watching you walk away!" He could get better but he may not.

I feel so sad at those legs, that ill uterus, that man in cardiac arrest, and the other one just hollering like crazy.

I see a figure down near Hughes and I snap back to the night-
The city's lights are crisp. The night is quiet, even outside Grady. The chill has calmed it to a faint mechanized hum.
Another world indeed.

I have turned a corner, I walk to the deck all alone, not another Grady soul around. Surely I am on camera now. This camera is the normal type, lets me pass in silence. Lets me press "10" and be lifted to my tiny home on the top floor of this deck.

I step out again, this time onto a platform in the middle of a tall, bright city. I check behind corners as I walk, but mostly I am waiting to feel safe enough to stand, look, and breathe.

Everything is so bright, so clean. Even the top of the deck seems to have been scoured, whether by cold or sunlight who knows.

Who planned this bright night? Did the architects act in concert to give me this gift tonight? That would be a delusion as insane as you-are-on-camera, however, in a way they did. They calculated the time, the effort, the materials, the vistas, the PR, the building's contents and the lights each building would dress in. Tonight.

As soon as things seem too dirty to bear
I walk out into a new frost.
Frost on the subaru
Whose windows I left down
For no reason
Frost on the Chevy beside me. Windows up.