They say that the loudest sound in the world isn’t an explosion or a scream. It is the sound of a door closing when you are standing on the wrong side of it.
For me, that door was painted a sterile, industrial beige, located on the fourth floor of St. Mary’s Hospital in New York City. The hallway smelled of antiseptic and floor wax, a scent that usually signaled cleanliness but tonight smelled only of rejection.
I had just traveled twelve hours on a Greyhound bus. My ankles were swollen, throbbing against the leather of my shoes. My dress, a navy blue ensemble I had bought specifically for this moment, felt heavy and wrinkled. I had spent the entire journey staring out a fogged window, watching the American landscape blur from the rolling hills of Tennessee to the gray steel of the city, imagining the weight of my grandson in my arms.
But now, standing under the flickering fluorescent lights, I realized I had traveled all those miles just to become a ghost.
Daniel, my son—the boy whose scraped knees I had bandaged, whose college tuition I had scrubbed floors to pay for—stood three feet away from me. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. He looked at the floor, at the nurses station, anywhere but at the woman who gave him life.
