I am at loose ends this morning. Life’s usual, comfortable routine has been altered, and I am not sure yet how to settle into this newness. I know the settling will come with time. Right now I am adrift.

Husband had knee surgery yesterday. We awakened at 5AM, an ungodly hour, to prepare for the journey to St. Francis Hospital. Within 20 minutes, I’d made and eaten breakfast, heated coffee, packed a lunch (as well as supplies for what promised to be a long day), and fed the very confused, meowing cat that circled our legs, anxiously sniffing everything. By the time our friend’s car pulled into the driveway. we were ready to go.

We left the house at 5:45. The still-dark roads unspooled before us, hazy shadows lit by too-bright splashes of light. The car slowly warmed, filled with smells of coffee and homemade blueberry muffins. Our friends chatted casually, trying to ease our nervousness. And it worked. By the time we pulled into the garishly lit parking garage, we were all laughing.

Goodbyes were quickly said, hugs exchanged. The “mini-cab”, a green golf cart with a flashing yellow light, pulled up to take us the half-mile ride to the elevators. (Did I say the place was huge?) The uniformed driver, a thin, balding man with glasses and a mustache, loaded us and our bags onto the cart and set off at a fast clip. Within minutes we were at the elevators, where he unloaded us, told us where to go, and whizzed away again. We rode up to the fourth floor in silence, listening to the elevator’s mechanical voice.

At the desk, Husband was quickly signed in, and we settled down to wait. I unwrapped a soggy waffle sandwich (note to self: don’t wrap hot sandwiches in aluminum foil!) and devoured half of it. After Husband was called into pre-op half an hour later, I ate the other half and exchanged small talk with some of the other nervously waiting spouses and families.

Husband’s surgery was scheduled for 9:00. He was number three on the list. Unfortunately, the first patient, a small, frail, white-haired woman who could barely walk, even with a walker, had a heart attack while she was on the table, which slowed things up considerably. Her husband, a short, stooped man wearing a tweed hat, was chatting with me when he got the news. His face crumpled, his eyes welled up; and though he asked the doctor questions in a steady voice, he clutched my hand so tight my fingers went numb. He left soon after, following his wife not to the orthopedic floor, but the heart unit. It was the last time I saw either of them.

Husband finally went in some time after 11, and I settled in for a long wait. Time slowed, dragged, and seemed to stop altogether. I kept checking the clock, certain that hours had passed, only to see it had been five minutes since I’d last checked. I snacked, drank, used the bathroom, and chatted with the other caught-in-limbo sitters. We all looked up every time someone came out of the operating room and rejoiced when a lucky family was sent “upstairs”.

I crocheted. And crocheted and crocheted. Over the course of nine hours, I made eleven hats and gave them all away. The delighted recipients, (overworked operating room nurses and fellow sitters) designated the day “Hat Day” and proudly showed their hats off to anyone they came across. The elderly receptionist, who kept forgetting my name, finally shrugged and wrote me down as the “Knitting Lady”. After that, whenever there was news of Husband, she knew exactly who to talk to.

Husband went into Recovery at 1:00. Four and a half hours later, he was finally awake enough to go upstairs. The last two waiting families cheered when they saw me gathering my things to leave. I waved goodbye and followed Husband to his new temporary “home” on the 10th floor.

In our ten years together, Husband has only been seriously sick twice. He has never been in a hospital (he wasn’t even born in one) and has never had surgery. It felt strange seeing him lying there, drugged and wired up to a million machines. I couldn’t make this image fit the husband I knew, and I felt disoriented, like I was in someone else’s world.

But I talked to him (I doubt he will remember). I made sure he was comfortable, fed him small sips of ginger ale, sat him up to eat some dinner, moved the cushion beneath his leg when it slipped. I watched the nurses come and go, repeated their instructions to him a dozen times, reminded him to do his breathing exercises, asked him if he had to pee. I did everything that a wife would do to make sure he was comfortable. When I ran out of things to do, I sat and watched him sleep.

The exhaustion hit hard. I’d eaten little besides snacks that day and I could barely keep my eyes open. I was worn out from sitting, from interacting with strangers, from waiting for news. By the time Husband’s daughter showed up at 7:45, I was asleep with my eyes open, staring at nothing. I rallied myself enough to drag my tired body out to her car and settle in for the hour-long ride home.

This morning I am lost. The house is strangely quiet. The cat keeps running into the bedroom to look for Husband, coming out, giving me accusing looks, and meowing plaintively. I am sitting here typing, unsure of how to settle into the day.

I can’t explain Husband’s absence to a cat, try as I might. At the moment I am still trying to explain it to myself, trying to make this new reality adjust to the familiar one I know so well. Husband will be gone for at least ten days; then he will return and life will resume as usual. But it won’t be “as usual”. A new routine of slow recovery, home visits, and trips to the doctor will overlay the familiar one of meals together, conversations, and daily life. Eventually they will blend, seamlessly.