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Our car zooms along the road, a road that I don't know, but one that's familiar enough to be uncomfortable. A road that brings up memories that I thought I'd buried. Dad guides the Scion tC up the curving driveway, around the large gray hospital, and into the parking lot. As I get out, I feel the warm spring sun on my skin. It was colder the last time we'd come down that road.

The automated doors glide open and I'm greeted by a wave of hospital smell. The smell of people trying to fight death. We're told that we have to wait for a while before they'll let us visit. My dad and I take our seats in the waiting room; I can tell the chairs are supposed to be comfortable. They aren't. I focus on the television, squinting to try and make coherent images from the blurs of color. Eventually I get that the station is ABC Family. It's playing wholesome, perky movies this hour. The kind that're supposed to make you feel all happy inside. Nice try, Palos Community Hospital.

My father leaves to speak with my uncle, who had been at the hospital since the whole thing started. Eventually Dad comes back, but he doesn't walk up to me, just calls my name from outside the boundaries of the waiting room. I get up from the chair, taking quick strides towards him. I tell myself to calm down, knowing I must look slightly hysterical to the other visitors. They've already confirmed that she wasn't injured, anyway. I still worry.

I'm guided down a hallway, through a set of doors, down another hallway before we stop in front of a three-walled room. The fourth wall is a curtain, barring my view of what's going on inside. Machines beep at various speeds; the hospital smell seems stronger in this wing. My uncle greets me and I hollowly reciprocate. I can hear her voice from behind the curtain, answering questions that the nurse fires at her. I gnaw on my thumbnail.

My father and uncle start talking about her accident, about how she was lucky not to hit anyone or anything. She'd just veered off the road and onto the curb a little, but they're still concerned, like me. They say she might not be able to drive for much longer. They say she might have had a minor stroke caused by stress. Maybe it was that argument she'd had with a tenant of her condo. Maybe she was just getting old. Should she move closer to us, to the family? She might be too stubborn--they hadn't suggested that she move out by us in ten years, she was so opposed to it. She wanted her independence.

But eighty-one was old. How long could she manage it before--

The curtain is pulled back, and an old woman with permed hair dyed an unnatural shade of auburn is wheeled out. There's a tube coming out of her arm and another one coming from her nose. She smiles up at me with clear blue eyes, her skin pale and wrinkled. Blue veins stand out from her arms. She looks so frail, so mortal without her big glasses to expand her expressions to larger-than-life-proportions.

Then she's gone, wheeled away to an undisclosed location within the hospital where they can run tests on her. My father and uncle talk for a little while longer before we go back into the waiting room. ABC Family greets us with inappropriate cheer. I frown at the television set and bite at my nails again. My father grabs my hand before it's in range of my teeth and guides it back down. "Please stop. It's not good for your nails," he says gently. I want to say something bitter about how he should stop smoking, but I don't. He doesn't deserve it and I'm just on edge. Instead I ask if I can go out to the car and retrieve some gum.

When I'm out in the sun and away from the stale hospital stench, I pause to breathe in the air. It's thicker than the last time. Last time it was thin and cruel with the November cold. Last time it was a different grandparent. Last time I had been too young to comprehend the idea of something as inevitable and permanent as death. Gum in hand, I fight down a scowl as I walk back to the hospital--happy ABC Family, happy spring weather, and a little old woman whose age was snapping at her heels. Cruel irony.

They bring her out later in a wheelchair, her big glasses perched on her nose once more. The doctors say nothing showed up on the tests. She smiles and says she'd like to get something to eat. I glance at the clock and realize that we've been at the hospital for over five hours. My eyes fall on the small bandage on my grandmother's wrist from where they drew her blood or stuck another tube in her or God knows what. I've lost my appetite.

We eat at Baker's Square, one of her favorite restaurants. She goes there regularly, yet she struggles to remember the name of the breakfast combo she always orders. When it arrives, she recognizes that something is missing but puzzles over what it is. She starts to tear up, knowing that her descent has begun and realizing that it won't be over quickly. I pat her on the back and tell her that I love her. It's all I can do.