The Lobby

The Lobby For the past three nights, I have had the same dream. I am standing outside Sinai Hospital. I push open the doors and enter the lobby. Instantly, my heart begins to sink. It is the exact feeling I carried every single time I walked into that building when Sana was in the ICU. It amazes me how the body remembers. The lobby isn't just a lobby anymore. It holds countless mornings, long afternoons, sleepless nights and silent prayers. I can almost hear the sound of the elevators opening and closing, the distant conversations at the reception desk, the footsteps echoing through the corridors. Everything feels exactly as it did. In my dream, I don't stop. I walk toward the elevators. I press the button. The doors close behind me. As the elevator climbs, so does the anxiety. Every floor brings me closer to the ICU. The doors open. And there is Sana. That is where the dream ends. When I woke up after the third night, I couldn't understand why my mind kept bringing me back to that place. Why not one of our happy memories? Why not her laughter, her smile, or one of the many ordinary moments that made life beautiful? Instead, my dream returned to the lobby, the elevator and the ICU. As I reflected on it, I began to understand that trauma has its own way of remembering. When we live through prolonged trauma, we don't just remember the event itself. We remember the journey that led us there. Our minds record the sequence—the hospital entrance, the elevator ride, the corridors, the waiting. Even the anticipation becomes part of the memory. Perhaps that is why, years later, my dreams still know the way. What struck me most was not what happened in the dream, but what didn't happen. I never spoke to Sana. She never spoke to me. The dream ended the moment I saw her. I realized that perhaps my subconscious wasn't taking me back to Sana as much as it was taking me back to the feeling that lived just before I reached her. Every day I walked into that ICU carrying the same silent question: What will I find today? Will she be stronger? Will she be weaker? Will today bring hope, or another setback? That uncertainty became part of me. It lived in every elevator ride and behind every set of ICU doors. Looking back, I think it was one of the hardest parts of loving someone who was critically ill—the constant not knowing. Lately, life has quietly awakened those feelings again. Watching my ninety-two-year-old mother disappear into dementia has brought me back into another season of anticipating loss. Looking through Sana's photo book, reflecting on grief, and even longing to celebrate my son's marriage after years of emotional survival have all stirred memories I thought had settled. Perhaps grief never truly disappears. Perhaps it simply waits for another tender moment to remind us where love once lived. People often think healing means forgetting. I no longer believe that. Healing is understanding that our hearts and our nervous systems remember differently. Love remembers birthdays, laughter and embraces. Trauma remembers elevators, corridors and the moments before a door opens. Both are expressions of love. One remembers the life that was lived. The other remembers how fiercely we fought to hold onto it. Even now, years later, I can close my eyes and find my way through the lobby of Sinai Hospital. Not because I want to relive those days. But because, at the end of that journey, my daughter was waiting for me. And I would have walked those corridors a thousand times over just to be with her.