(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
Gogol took a cab from the airport to the hospital, shocked by how much colder it was in Ohio than in New York, by t he thick layer of snow that caked the ground. The hospital was a compound of beige stone buildings situated on the crest of a softly sloping hill. He entered the same emergency room his father had entered the day before. After giving his name, he was told to wait in an empty room in the sixth floor. There were no magazines in the room, no television, only a collection of wing chairs lined up against the walls. There was little commotion, no doctors or nurses scurrying down the halls. When the elevator doors opened, he saw a cart stacked with breakfast trays, he felt hungry all of a sudden as his last meal had been at the restaurant the night before, and he hadn't taken the bagel that the stewardess had offered on the plane.
The doors opened and a short, pleasant looking, middle-aged man with a beard, stepped into the room. He wore a white knee-length coat over his clothing and carried a clipboard. "Hello," he said, smiling kindly at Gogol.
"Are you - - were you my father's doctor ?"
"No, I'm Mr. Davenport. I'll be taking you downstairs."
Mr. Davenport escorted Gogol in an elevator reserved for patients and doctors, to the subbasement of the hospital. He stood with Gogol in the morgue as a sheet was pulled back to show his father's face. The face was yellow and waxy, a thickened oddly bloated image. The lips nearly colorless, were set in an expression of uncharacteristic haughtiness, Below the sheet, Gogol realized, his father was unclothed. The fact shamed him, caused him to turn briefly away. When he looked again he studied the face more closely, still thinking that perhaps it was a mistake, that a tap on his father's shoulder would wake him. The only thing that felt familiar was the mustache, the excess hair on his cheeks and chin shaved less than twenty-four hours ago.
"His glasses are missing," Gogol said, looking up at Mr.Davenport.
Mr. Davenport didn't reply. After a few minutes he said, "Mr. Ganguli, are you able to positively identify the body ? Is this your father ?"
"Yes, that's him," Gogol heard himself saying. After a few moments he realized that a chair had been brought for him to sit in, that Mr. Davenport had stepped aside. Gogol sat down. He wondered if he should touch his father's face, laid a hand on his forehead as his father used to do to Gogol when he was unwell, to see if he had a fever. He was terrified to graze, with his index finger, his father's mustache, an eyebrow, a bit of the hair on his head, those parts of him, he knew, that were still quietly living.
A resident arrived , explaining exactly how and when the heart attack happened, why there was nothing doctors could do. Gogol was given the clothes that his father had been wearing, an envelope containing wallet and his father's car keys. He told the hospital that no religious services were necessary. He was told that the body would be cremated at the funeral home that they suggested, the ashes would be ready in a few days and he could pick them up personally, or had them sent along with the death certificate directly to Pemberton Road. Before leaving he asked to see the exact emergency room is father was last alive. Gogol glimpsed the bed around which the curtains partly girded his father when life left him.
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