The Doctor is not quite ready to leave my hospital room. She is able to recover a little, but keeps her head down, and still she has trouble thinking of the words to say. She won’t use her eyes, and now she has even lost her words. It’s troubling how often we cannot express the simplest things.

Of course I realize there are words in life that you cannot say. There are words that linger in your head wanting to escape. Words try to seep through the cracks, and explode honestly in our mouths, but sometimes we don’t let them. Some words are never allowed to leave the heart, especially the ones that might say how we feel.

vii. words screaming Around your heart, they whisper. Inside your head, they scream.

People have forgotten how to use words to express feelings. They keep feelings locked away in their heads or their hearts, and the words remain unsaid. People act as though the words are guilty, as if our thoughts shape themselves. Like falsely accused criminals, these words grow inside the head as a cancerous lump of regret. And they ache; they ache so that you won’t forget them. Then, after seconds or years, almost benignly, the words seem to disappear. Where they go, I have no idea.

It’s not just difficult to say words. There are words in this life that you cannot hear, either. Around your heart, they whisper. Inside your head, they scream. These are the shouts leftover from childhood. These are the sounds of dreams you sold at the pawnshop. There, too, is the sound of your damp heart, the mute consolations of sympathy. These are the voices of people you’d thought you couldn’t remember – or could forget.

What I have realized too lately, though, is that there are words in this life you cannot write. No matter your will or intention, no matter how awful the purpose. You will never be able to describe what you cannot say or hear. The smile sometimes in her eyes, that hole in your head still leaking – the whole of your heart. There are no words left on faces. There are too many in heartbeats.

My memory of the Doctor’s goodbye still lingers in my head. She removes the ring from her finger, places it in the palm of my hand, and closes my hand tightly. She looks always at the ground. She is frowning. Although I continue smiling, she does not notice. The Doctor is not concerned with such things.

"It’s no matter," I say. For a brief moment she looks up at me, and I put my hand to her cheek. She raises her own hand to mine and holds it there. "Don’t be sorry," I tell her. "Your thoughts are more beautiful than the words you are trying to speak."