Yesterday, Traci and I got a small thirty–minute sampler of the life we used to live.
Which is a weird thing to say when you’re in the middle of an ER visit, but there we were.
We were there for a very specific reason and a very specific check, and once the initial flurry was done…things got quiet as we waited alone in the room. No kids. No nurses or doctors. No delivery drivers ringing the bell with “one more piece of equipment.” Just the two of us, in a room, with nothing to do but talk.
The doc gave us what was ultimately good news, the diagnosis was a little bronchitis. Nothing a new antibiotic won’t be able to fix. So she avoided another admission, and just needed some fluids and this new drug and would be sent home after. And while they were getting it all together, we just had the room to ourselves in the middle of a joyful little celebration where we just had a good conversation and a laugh.
We put the phones down. We weren’t doom–scrolling test results or juggling pharmacy apps. We just…talked. Stupid little things. Inside jokes. Random stories. The kind of nothing-conversations that used to fill our days when a “big problem” was traffic on the 5 freeway or a bad pretzel in DisneyWorld in Orlando (and to this day I’m not sure why they were so bad).
For about half an hour, it felt almost normal. Which was weird in a way because she was in a hospital gown and bed in the ER. Not ICU-normal. Not post-surgery-normal. Actual “we’re just us” normal. It was like someone handed us a tiny slice of our old life on a paper plate and said, “You can’t keep this, but you can taste it.”
And then, of course, it ended.
Traci received her treatments and was discharged from the hospital and we happily came home, and then reconnected to the feeding pump back on the pole and the meds and the alarms all rushed back in like a tide. The little bubble popped. Traci crashed in our bed, hooked up to the usual lineup, and I sat on the bed next to her in the same apartment with the same equipment and the same four walls…and for a brief instant just kind of wishing we were still back in that ugly ER room for moment, just talking about nothing.
Because honestly, that’s always been one of my favorite parts of our marriage: the “we should really go to sleep now” talks that last way too long. The pillow talk where we’re both slap-happy tired, giggling at nothing and everything—half because exhaustion makes everything funnier, and half because my bad dad jokes are absolutely world‑class if that’s your particular flavor of comedy.
That ER sampler felt a lot like that. Not dramatic. Not fancy. Just the two of us, stealing a few extra minutes to talk about nothing in particular and everything that matters, all at once.
Tiny wins from a cramped apartment, borrowed from an ER waiting room, powered by bad jokes and a little bit of slap-happy grace.
Paul Ellis 
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