The art at Swedish Covenant Hospital is chosen more carefully than at Resurrection. Artist statements accompany each painting - eliminating the subjective nature of the art itself. It reminds me how selfish art actually is.
The receptionist here speaks a loud, battered, and incomplete English - her voice carries for floors and echoes through the hospital. She's wearing yellow stripes like a bumblebee. She butchers our last name when she calls Brendan to get prepped, hollering across the room that I need to stay here, that I need to let Brendan out of my sight, until they call for family. Now I hate her. The chairs aren't very giving. The hospital is unreasonably loud. There is a lot of natural light. The artist wants me to remember we are all elements in nature.

It's Monday. Two weeks since Brendan was diagnosed with Hodgkin's. The PET scan was 5 days ago and a 3 hour tour (a 3 hour tour). Today, Dr. Agos is cutting in to Brendan's neck to remove as much tissue as he can grab without performing major surgery on the arteries, veins, and nerve bundles surrounding the cancer. One fourth of me wants to ask if I can watch. The rest is logical about how impossible that actually is - and on top of it, scared to actually see the devil. This cancer is an invisible threat - just a bump we can feel, an itch Brendan can't ever satisfy. Sometimes I forget that his blood is littered with invaders. Sometimes I forget to be afraid of it. The new silence of the waiting area makes me aware of where I am, and I have no idea how long it has been since Brendan walked off. It feels like an hour. Patience is not a quality I boast.
Finally, I hear "family of Klein!" screech through the 2nd floor waiting area and I follow instructions and a nurse toward outpatient curtain number 20.
Brendan is there, with a poofy blue hair net and footies. There is an IV stuck in his arm and an air of nervous anticipation. I don't know how he does this - he is rapidly evolving in to a hero. We talk and joke, a nurse comes over, the anesthesiologist stops by to make sure Brendan's lungs are good, and finally Dr. Agos appears. He is a big, friendly, fellow who firmly shakes both of our hands, and writes the word OKAY on Brendan's chest to make sure he cuts the correct side. I tell Brendan to be cooperative, and the anesthesiologist jokes that he always wins anyway, as he injects Brendan with his magical drug. They wheel him off. It's hard to watch him go. Hard. Hard to walk back to the waiting room.
There is a large fish tank in the waiting area - I am surprised to see a puffer fish and a tiger fish in an hospital aquarium. Watching them is hypnotic, and when I slowly press my hand to the glass near the tiger fish's striped face, he is mostly apathetic. We, the nervous families, the anxious loved ones - we wait.
A little over an hour later, Dr. Agos appears. He tells me everything went well, and that he "removed all of it". The IT is already en route to the lab, and we will know the type of Hodgkin's we are facing within a week.
It's being sent to a lab.
A significant piece of this curse is out of Brendan's neck.
It is out.
I thank him and he walks off.
The puffer fish is doing hasty laps, the tiger fish lazily floats, long fins spread wide. There is a tiny red fish with a worried face swimming frantically. The anxious boyfriend across from me starts dialing his phone, a heavy man is snoring in a chair close to mine, a man gets an undate half-way through an open heart surgery, and those asshole lymph nodes are out of my brother's neck.
They're out.