The Widow

Its 10pm and I'm on a bus that's cutting through thick black night to get to my town. We left new york city hours ago, and with a dead ipod and no book, I stare blankly out the window. Gradually, the bus empties. My stop is the last stop. It's me and two other women.

The woman many seats behind me is on the phone and she begins to cry. Long, hysterical cries in spanglish. "Ayer me dijeron que ella only has 72 hours to live" She weeps, and I can feel her body shaking, though she is far away. She cries in a mixture of english and spanish and her words hit me like bullets. She cries poetry. "Mi hermana... Mi hermana. Siempre. Siempre. Siempre se van." She speaks with gasps to a woman next to her. "If my sister dies, I will not ever speak again. Como viuda. Viuda, muda, viuda. I will die too." She cuts in and out of spanish and english, as if she doesn't know which language will carry her words to god faster.
She begins to walk up the aisle to the bus driver, eyes puffy red, radiating suffering, and my heart breaks a little. I wish there was somthing I could do. She asks the bus driver how long it will be, he explains that there is traffic, it is dark, and it will be half an hour longer. She walks back to her seat in gulps and gasps, and cries and cries and cries.

I want to sit with her and tell her it's going to be OK. I want to offer to drive her to the hospital, but I don't have a car. I want to show her how to breathe slowly and open her palms to the ceiling and feel her sister living still. I want to comfort her in broken spanish, to let her know that I know suffering too, and that even though she feels like she wants to die too, she won't. She'll live. I want to hug her and make her heart start beating again, but I don't. I can't move. I sit in the darkness like a porcelain statue, hating myself for my inaction more and more every minute.