The first time I heard Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, I was down at Saint Mary’s Hospital. All of the seats along the hall, save for two occupied by a sleeping child, were empty. We were standing. Leonard’s raspy crooning rattled the plastic ceiling speakers, yet the words were barely audible. Camille, my sister in law, paced the dim hallway, eyes bloodshot with her dark bangs matted over the left side of her face. She had been muttering various prayers and incantations under her breath, clutching a sterling silver rosary in one hand and Shamanic prayer beads in the other. We first met in Brooklyn. She lived in a one bedroom apartment littered with religious paraphernalia of no particular denomination. “I’d like to think that we’re all connected, in a way,” she explained to my wife, Scarlet, and me, though I didn’t recall asking a question. That was nearly nine years ago.

Camille’s pacing echoed, bouncing off of the linoleum tile floor and down the never-ending corridor. Leonard was still singing. She had arrived a few hours ago and apart from exchanging a few condolences, we maintained an air of silence. What more was there to say? I had seen my barely born child die before me. I watched her heave her final audible breath, a bulbous mass of bloodied tissue beneath a plastic encased box. I wanted to ask Camille where she was now. Where her death fit in the grand scheme of things. But most of all, I wanted to tell her that in the incubator, my daughter looked like bloodied bubblegum. Hallelujah, Hallelujah.By the incubator room again, I stared at the mass of bubblegum and let time kill itself unmercifully. On the other side of the glass, a nurse, donning all white, entered the room and smiled at me. I didn’t reciprocate, but followed her movements. She waltzed towards the incubator and reached her right hand inside, massaging the wad and then taking a pinch. Chewing, with the blood now coating her lower lip, the nurse blew a bubble with it, the red balloon inflating and until the stress was too much for the premature flesh to endure. It popped, the blood shooting out and spraying the window separating me and the Nurse, who had now become a deep shade of crimson. She smiled and this time I did too.The door to Scarlet’s room was closed. Earlier, when the Doctor left, I went in and saw her, asleep and as faint as the waning moon. I wondered when she would wake up and what I would say to her. She’ll ask, “Does she have my eyes?” and I’ll tell her no, she has mine. And she had the curly hair that you had dreamed of. You’ve been asleep for a long, long time, honey. Ada is all grown up now! Hallelujah! There was music and laughter reverberating throughout the halls like a symphony submerged and confetti rained down from the ceiling. Even the janitors, wide-eyed like flying saucers, chanted our names in unison, chewing bubblegum.

I sighed as Leonard sang the fourth or fifth verse. “This song is painfully long,” I thought, still leaned up against the wall by room 231. Camille continued pacing, and the boy further down the hall continued sleeping, a footpath of blood extending out of visibility, like a trail of rose petals, into the darkness. And I followed. Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

-Julian Cires, 2009