First floor.

It doesn’t move.

Cardboard covers the walls. There is no mirror.

After several long minutes of waiting, of pressing the button for up, I climb back out.

The entire lower floor of the hospital has become a city of ghosts.

The rooms where, as a medical student, I once had my clinical rotations have fallen into ruin.

I walk up the stairs to the first floor.

In an empty waiting room sits an elderly woman.

Behind the reception desk, no one.

Every room is empty.

She is waiting, like me.

I go back down to the lower floor and make my way through the cracked corridors.

Plaster crumbling from the walls.

Floors taped over.

Doors left ajar to abandoned rooms—anaesthesia, radiology.

Here and there, a sign:

We have moved to the second floor.

I hurry through the corridors.

My time is running out.

I still know them by heart, even though almost twenty years have passed since I waited in them for my clinical rotation.

For a patient.

For the assistant.

For an exam.

The same knot in my stomach as before an exam.

Only this one feels like the exam of a lifetime.

An exam where there may be no next attempt.

I reach the other side.

The city of ghosts becomes a ward.

There is still life here, but only on the monitors.

Tiny beeps remind me that one form of life is still present.

What kind, no one really knows.

Room one.

Two.

Three.

Four.

I stop outside the head nurse’s room.

I have come to visit her.

“Room five,” someone says.

She has three roommates.

Unresponsive, like her.

Who knows if she knows they are there.

No, I am not afraid.

I am a doctor.

I have seen everything.

I look at her body.

Since my last visit in June, it has shrunk by at least two sizes.

Or perhaps the bed has grown.

She has two little pigtails made from tubular gauze.

I am certain she would have laughed at this terrible sight.

Her body is threaded with tubes, keeping alive whatever remains of her infectious joie de vivre.

A stiffened body.

The skin of her hands is still soft.

I can barely feel their warmth.

Half-open eyes that no longer see.

Half-open mouth.

As though someone had frozen her in time.

No.

I am not a doctor.

I am only what remains of a broken heart that has understood that she is leaving.

Five minutes.

I am here.

Your Jasnica.

Her breathing quickens.

I whisper to her everything that has filled my mind these past ten days.

She swallows.

Frowns.

Blinks.

As if to say:

I know you are here.

Automatisms, medicine says.

It is not enough to make her wake up one day and say to me, in that rough voice:

Kokica moja.

Someone has forgotten me.

Five minutes become an hour and I don’t know when it happened.

Automatisms.

Medicine says.

The words have long since run out.

And they bring no relief.

My hands are damp from holding hers.

From stroking her hair.

A state of timeless presence.

The body knows, my body says.

Mine and hers.

Automatisms, medicine says again.

And like a desperate daughter, I don’t believe it.

Because it feels as though this is all I have left.

Her body.

I say goodbye for the seventh time.

And then I come back again.

As though there were something I still had to add to the final question on the exam paper.

I look at her and once again imprint every fragment of her face into my heart.

The face that carried all the unconditionality, all the boundlessness, for which I had no name before her.

Now it had a name.

A surname.

An address.

Thousands of tiny moments that taught me how to be a mother to my own two girls.

One last look.

On the way out, I get lost.

I no longer know the way.

There is only the city of ghosts.

She died three days after my visit. I could not cry for six days. These were the longest days of my life.

Prvo nadstropje.

Ni se premaknilo.

Oblepljeno s kartonom,

brez ogledala.

Po nekaj dolgih minutah čakanja

in pritiskanju gumba za gor

sem zbežala ven.

Celo spodnje nadstropje bolnice je postalo mesto duhov.

Prostori, kjer sem kot študentka medicine imela vaje,

so razpadli.

Po stopnicah do prvega nadstropja.

V prazni čakalnici sedi starejša ženska.

Za šalterjem ni nikogar.

Vsi prostori so prazni.

Čaka, kot jaz.

Spustim se nazaj v spodnje nadstropje in se odpravim po razpokanih hodnikih.

Razpadajoč omet, polepljena tla, priprta vrata zapuščenih prostorov – ambulant anestezije, RTG.

Ponekod napis –

preselili smo se v 2. nadstropje.

Hitim po hodnikih, čas mi je odštet.

Še vedno jih znam na pamet,

čeprav je minilo skoraj dvajset let,

odkar sem čakala v njih na vaje.

Na pacienta.

Na asistenta.

Na izpit.

Isti krč kot pred izpitom, le da se je ta čutil kot izpit življenja.

Kjer morda ne bo naslednjega roka.

Pridem na drugo stran.

Mesto duhov se spremeni v oddelek. Življenje je še tu,

le na monitorjih,

drobni piski spominjajo,

da je ena oblika življenja še vedno prisotna.

Kakšna, nihče zares ne ve.

Soba ena, dva, tri, štiri.

Postanem pred vrati glavne sestre.

Prišla sem jo obiskat.

Soba pet, reče.

Ima tri cimre.

Neodzivne, tako kot ona.

Kdo ve, ali ve zanje.

Ne, ni me strah, zdravnica sem,

vse sem že videla.

Pogled na njeno telo,

ki se je od mojega zadnjega obiska junija pomanjšalo za vsaj dve številki.

Ali pa je postelja zrasla.

Ima dva čopka iz mrežastega cevastega povoja.

Prepričana sem, da bi se ona nasmejala temu strašnemu prizoru.

Telo prepredeno s cevkami, ki ohranjajo tisto, kar je ostalo od njenega nalezljivega joie de vivre.

Otrdelo telo.

Koža rok je še mehka. Komaj zaznam toploto.

Na pol priprte oči, ki več ne vidijo.

Na pol priprta usta.

Kot bi jo nekdo zamrznil v času.

Ne, nisem zdravnica.

Sem le ostanek zlomljenega srca, ki je dojel, da odhaja.

Pet minut.

Tukaj sem. Tvoja Jasnica.

Dih se pospeši.

Šepetam ji vse, kar je moje misli preplavljalo zadnjih deset dni.

Požre slino. Se namršči. Pomežikne.

Kot bi rekla: vem, da si tukaj.

Avtomatizmi, pravi medicina.

To ni dovolj, da bi se še kdaj zbudila in mi rekla s hrapavim glasom: kokica moja.

Nekdo je pozabil name.

Pet minut postane ura in jaz ne vem, kdaj je minila.

Avtomatizmi.

Pravi medicina.

Besed je že zdavnaj zmanjkalo in ne prinesejo olajšanja. Moje roke so potne od stiskanja njenih rok. Božanja njenih las.

Stanje brezčasne prisotnosti.

Telo ve, reče moje telo.

Moje in njeno.

Avtomatizmi, reče medicina še enkrat in jaz ji kot prava obupana hčerka ne verjamem.

Ker se zdi, da je to vse, kar mi je ostalo.

Njeno telo.

Že sedmič se poslovim.

Spet se vrnem nazaj.

Kot bi še nekaj morala dodati zadnjemu vprašanju izpitne pole.

Gledam jo in si še enkrat vtisnem v srce vsak delček obraza, ki je nosil vso brezpogojnost, brezmejnost, za katero pred njo nisem imela imena.

Zdaj je imela ime, priimek in naslov.

Tisoče drobnih trenutkov, zaradi katerih sem vedela, kako biti mama svojima deklicama.

Še en pogled.

Po poti ven se izgubim.

Ne poznam več poti.

Je samo še mesto duhov.

Umrla je tri dni po mojem obisku. Šest dni nisem mogla jokati. Bili so najdaljši dnevi mojega življenja.

The nights stretched into long hours of searching through our conversations, through the messages I had sent her, looking for that one sentence that might have told her how important she had been to me. Something that might bring me at least a little relief.

The last time I saw her was in June, when I unexpectedly went to visit her. For the first time in a long time, I was alone. Without my children or my husband. As if I somehow knew that I needed uninterrupted time with her, fully present.

After the visit, I felt a different kind of farewell settling inside me. I told my husband, “I have a feeling I’m saying goodbye to her.” As if some part of me already knew. An invisible bond, beyond anything I had ever experienced.

I had never found the words—or the message—that could adequately express my love for her. Only approximations.

As I packed and bought plane tickets, I wondered whether she would hear me. Whether she would know that I was there. That I had come.

No one really knows what people in comas experience. What they hear. Some say they heard the voices of people they loved. Some say they felt their presence, that some part of their consciousness remained connected to the world around them. Not knowing. Science without answers. Terror.

The night before we left, I dreamed that we were sitting together and I was holding some kind of microphone, a device through which we communicated. It was broken. The entire dream revolved around my unsuccessful attempts to fix it so that we could communicate. The effort to repair it defined our encounter.

Before I woke, I realized with relief that we had actually been sitting beside each other all along, and that we did not need a device to speak to one another.

People in comas are, in some way, between two worlds. And so our relationship, too, began to exist in this threshold. I kept trying to repair the bridge between us.

Would she come back?

Longing, concentrated inside a broken device. The hero.

And yet, in these thresholds, everything unnecessary falls away. The wise part of me knew: you don’t need the device. You don’t need an explanation. You don’t need to fix anything, or have proof, or find the perfect words.

You are already together.

Just be here.

And with that, I meet the fear. Not only the fear of losing someone who was closer to me than anyone else, but the fear of losing everything she represented within me. Tenderness. Safety. Love. A living witness. Belonging.

The dream did not fix the device. It became irrelevant. What an irony: a desperate attempt to create a connection that already exists. A form of relationship that does not depend on repairing the impossible. What was most essential between us had never been contained in words.

The dream had begun preparing me for a transition my waking mind was not yet able to accept. It opened a path toward trusting that my presence beside her was enough. That words and responses were not necessary.

When I was grieving the loss of my pregnancy, what I missed more than anything was the experience of presence—the people who could have witnessed my loss. Who could have stayed with the suffering instead of trying to explain it.

Most of the people I encountered, with the best of intentions, tried, just as I had in my dream, to fix my experience, to find a positive perspective, to make my loss easier.

Sometimes the deepest communication does not happen through a better therapeutic technique, but through simple presence. The deepest form of speech I know.

Science without answers. Perhaps this is a gift, not a terror. I can choose what I believe without being crazy.

I believed her body would know.

Ten years ago, when I was researching attachment, I learned that attachment begins in the body, long before language exists. A baby recognizes its mother’s voice before it can understand words. It is soothed by tone, breathing, scent, rhythm, touch.

Is it possible that when a person is leaving and can no longer speak, they return to this most basic form of attachment?

If I arrive in time, my task will not be to expect a miracle. Not to change the outcome of her condition. Not to say the right words. Not to wait for her to respond.

But simply to be there beside her.

Sometimes love asks us to be witnesses. An opportunity for something profoundly human.

Even if my presence does not change the course of her dying, it will honour our relationship.

Now life is asking me to give her what I myself had longed for.

My presence.

It will not lessen the tragedy of her leaving. It is as if suffering has deepened my capacity to love.

Within less than a month, I have lost a child and a woman who was a mother to me.

As if I had lost the future and the past.

All that remains is the present moment, filled with pain.

Perhaps this is a gift—the moment I do not lose to memories or projections of the future. Just this moment, its weight grounding me more deeply in the earth, listening for its otherwise inaudible pulse.

“Grief as a gift,” Mary Oliver once wrote.

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.”

No. I am not there. Perhaps one day I will.

I will not offer the cliché that it is only through death that we realize how much we loved someone. And yet, I was surprised to discover how much of me she inhabited.

The heartbreak I earned by loving her.

So be it.

Noči so se razpotegnile v dolgo brskanje po najinih pogovorih, mojih poslanih sporočilih, da bi le našla morda tisti stavek, ki bi ji dal vedeti, kako pomembna je bila zame. Da bi doživela vsaj malo olajšanja.

Junija sem jo nazadnje videla, ko sem jo nepričakovano obiskala. Prvič po dolgem času sama. Brez otrok in moža. Kot bi vedela, da potrebujem neprekinjen čas z njo, povsem prisotna. Po obisku sem začutila, kako se je vame naselil drugačen sloves, kot sicer. Rekla sem možu – občutek imam, da se poslavljam od nje. Kot bi del mene že vedel. Nevidna vez, ki je bila onkraj vsega, kar sem kadarkoli izkusila.

Sporočila, ki bi izrazilo mojo ljubezen v besedah, ni bilo. Le približki. Med pakiranjem in nakupom letalskih kart sem se spraševala, ali me bo slišala. Ali bo vedela, da sem tam. Da sem prišla.

Nihče ne ve zares, kaj doživljajo ljudje v komi. Kaj slišijo. Nekateri pravijo, da so slišali glas svojih ljubih, nekateri, da so čutili njihovo prisotnost, da je del zavesti ostal povezan s stvarnostjo. Nevedenje, znanost brez odgovorov, teror.

Noč preden smo odpotovali sem sanjala, da sva sedeli skupaj in jaz sem v naročju držala nekakšen mikrofon, prevodnik, preko katerega sva komunicirali. Bil je pokvarjen. Vsa vsebina sanj je bila skoncentrirana okoli mojih neuspešnih poskusov, da bi ga popravila, da bi lahko komunicirali. Napor, da bi ga popravila, je zaznamoval najino srečanje. Preden sem se zbudila sem z olajšanjem ugotovila, da v resnici že ves čas sediva ena zraven druge in da ne potrebujeva naprave, da bi govorili.

Ljudje, ki so v komi, so na nek način med dvema svetovoma. In s tem je tudi najin odnos začel obstajati na tem prehodu. Na vsak način sem poskušala popraviti ta most med nama.

Bo morda prišla nazaj? Hrepenenje skoncentrirano v pokvarjeni napravi. Rešiteljica.

Vendar v teh prehodih vse nepotrebno odpade. Modri del mene je vedel: ne potrebuješ naprave. Ne potrebuješ razlage. Ne potrebuješ popravljanja, dokazov, popolnih besed. Sta že skupaj. Samo bodi tukaj.

Ob tem se srečam s strahom. Strahom ne le pred izgubo osebe, ki mi je bila bližje kot kdorkoli drug, temveč pred izgubo vsega, kar je v meni predstavljala. Nežnosti, varnosti, ljubezni, utelešene priče, pripadnosti. Sanje niso popravile naprave. Postala je nepomembna. Kakšna ironija, obupan poskus vzpostavljanja povezave, ki že obstaja. Oblika odnosa, ki ni odvisna od popravljanja nemogočega.

Kar je najbolj bistvenega med nama, ni bilo nikoli znotraj besed.

Sanje so me začele pripravljati na prehod, ki ga moje budno stanje še ni moglo sprejeti. Odprle so pot k zaupanju, da je moja prisotnost ob njej dovolj. Da besede, odzivi niso potrebni.

Ko sem nedavno žalovala izgubljeno nosečnost, sem bolj kot vse pogrešala izkušnjo prisotnosti, ljudi, ki bi lahko bili priče moji izgubi. Ki bi lahko bili z trpljenjem, namesto da bi ga razlagali. Večina ljudi, ki sem jih srečala, je dobronamerno poskušala tako kot jaz v sanjah, popraviti mojo izkušnjo, najti pozitivno perspektivo, olajšati mojo izgubo.

Včasih se najgloblja komunikacija ne zgodi skozi boljšo terapevtsko tehniko, temveč skozi preprosto prisotnost. Najgloblja oblika govora, ki ga poznam.

Znanost brez odgovorov. Morda je to darilo, ne teror. Lahko izberem, kaj bom verjela, ne da bi bila nora. Verjela sem, da bo njeno telo vedelo.

Ko sem pred desetimi leti raziskovala navezanost, sem ugotovila, da se ta začne skozi telo, dolgo preden obstaja jezik. Dojenček prepozna mamin glas, preden lahko razume besede. Potolaži se skozi ton, dihanje, vonj, ritem, dotik. Ali je možno, da se človek, ki odhaja in ne more več govoriti, vrne k tej osnovni obliki navezanosti?

Če bom prispela pravočasno, moja naloga ne bo, da pričakujem čudež. Da spremenim izid njenega stanja. Da izrečem prave besede. Da se odzove. Ampak, da sem preprosto ob njej.

Ljubezen včasih od nas zahteva, da smo priče. Priložnost za nekaj globoko človeškega.

Tudi če moja prisotnost ne bo spremenila njene poti proti smrti, bo izrazila spoštovanje do najine vezi.

Zdaj življenje od mene zahteva, da ji podarim to, po čemer sem sama hrepenela. Svojo prisotnost. Ta ne bo zmanjšala tragičnega odhoda. Kot bi trpljenje poglobilo mojo zmožnost, da ljubim.

V manj kot enemu mesecu sem izgubila otroka in žensko, ki je zame bila mama. Kot bi izgubila prihodnost in preteklost. Vse, kar je ostalo je sedanji trenutek, napolnjen z bolečino. Morda je to darilo, ta trenutek, ki ga ne izgubljam s spomini ali s projekcijami prihodnosti. Samo ta trenutek, čigar teža me še bolj usidra k tlom, k zemlji, da prisluškujem njenim sicer neslišnim utripom.

Žalovanje kot darilo, je Mary Oliver nekoč rekla. Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift. Ne, nisem tam, morda nekoč bom.

Ne bom klišejsko rekla, da šele s smrtjo spoznaš, koliko si nekoga imel rad. Vendar me je vseeno presenetilo, v kako širokih pokrajinah mene je prebivala.

Bolečina srca, ki sem si jo prislužila s tem, da sem jo imela rada.

Torej naj bo.