In between

How do you measure pain?

The hospice nurse offers a range, one to ten. A place on her form wants to know how much my husband hurts.

He thinks, looks at me to answer, his mind muzzy. One of the gifts of his disease is the ability to forget pain, his body a dark well of lost sensations and bird names, river rapids he rafted, the difference between dream and daylight.

I want him to voice whatever is true for him in this moment, so I only smile.

“One is low,” she explains, “ten is high.”

He thinks again, a long pause.

“Most days it’s feather, sometimes teeth. Right now, just waiting, so in between.”