Feeding the Oscars

by Joel Hans

Mulyadi/Unsplash

I expect pandemonium in the pediatric wing when the anesthesiologists stop showing up, but the doctors and nurses soon realize they don’t need anesthesiologists.

After delivering lunch to the children, my cart empty but a bowlful of fish food, I stop by the tank where the oscar fish, Oscar, lives.

No children need anesthesia anymore, I say to Oscar. Not here. Not anywhere.

Oscar keeps bubbles as baubles beneath a thimble of stones.

It’s so quiet, I say, dropping in a handful of fish food. I hope they have something in mind for supper.

Oscar nibbles at theirs.

Weeks go by. Cardiologists disappear. Rheumatologists hang up their white coats, saying there’s no more work to be done, and I can’t remember the last time the doctors checked in a new child. The mass of dark inpatient rooms grows.

Something has happened out there, I say to Oscar, unsure whether something or out there is the stranger part of our story.

Oscar slips beneath the synthetic kelp, floats on the air pump’s eddy, and ducks through the door of its prefabricated home.

I ask, Is this what it feels like to be obsolete?

Oscar does their rounds again. Together, apart, we’ve circled thousands and thousands and thousands of times.

I say, I feed them. We all feed you. You feed them in a way, too, just by being here.

Oscar nibbles at the kelp because they haven’t yet figured out it’s not food.

I ask, But what if there’s no one to be fed?

Oscar closes their eyes, which I didn’t know they could do.

Months pass, and the last nurse in the pediatric wing discharges the last child with a quiet affair. I bring a handful of fish food to pour into her small, waiting palms. She disperses the food and giggles at the way Oscar squirms at the water’s surface, claps once and then stops herself as the sound echoes too many times.

I ask, Do you want a bite for the road?

She reaches out for my hand but collects only my pinky. Squeezes, shakes her head, and says, My parents are taking me out to breakfast.

The long hallway terminates in two waving silhouettes, waiting to mosey their girl into the rest of her life.

I track time by how often I shove my cart through the darkened wing. How deep my cart’s wheels gouge the hospital’s spotless floors, how many passes — one hundred, two hundred, seven hundred — beneath the blurry exit signs.

Far later, I slide down until I shoulder the spotless floor beneath Oscar’s tank.

I say to Oscar, I haven’t heard a child’s voice in forever.

Oscar wings a somersault.

I say, Or their belly laughs.

Oscar curtsies against the glass.

I say, Hell, I even miss their cries.

Oscar looks me in the eye, not asking to be fed, but to acknowledge how well we understand one another.

I remove the lid from Oscar’s tank, feed them once more anyway, like they’ll need it on the journey to come. Sinking flock through the fake kelp. I flatten my hand against the surface of the water. Oscar loosens the pebbles from their bubble hoard just as the last of the lights turn off.

I hold my breath, start to climb. The tank’s water rustling, something rising to kiss me.

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Joel Hans’ fiction has appeared in West Branch, No Tokens, Puerto del Sol, Booth, and others. He holds an MFA from the University of Arizona and continues to live in Tucson, Arizona with his family. He can be found at joelhans.com or on Twitter @joelhans.