Alpha : Omega

After naming the sickness, they wheeled my father into a room with a view. One wall was a window which gave respite from all that hospitals hold, but the view was nothing to speak of, really.  Looking down, one saw a sliver of sidewalk, the busy road beside, and a bird's eye view of the hospital's largest parking lot.  The lot was gray and dull, with cars stacked in tidy rows.  Every so often, we watched a miniature someone, wrapped against the season's first chill, scurry toward a car, climb in, and drive away, and a new someone immediately slip in to fill the empty space.

When the nurse entered with her arms full of tubes, Mom took my place by Dad's side, and I turned to the window, drawn to the parking lot, as if by searching I could find that blessed patch of pavement where, a decade before I was born, they first locked eyes.