The Two Chambers

A university laboratory in Salt Lake City at blue winter dusk, snow on the mountains beyond a wide window, warm light from a desk lamp, on a steel tray spread with a green cotton drape two separate rounded pump chambers of smooth skin-beige polyurethane, each with two short stubs holding silvery rings with dark tilting discs, each seated on a flat aluminium base with fine concentric grooves and one short ribbed stub, from these two long clear plastic air hoses running off the tray toward a tall grey cabinet on castors at the edge of the frame, out of focus, a gloved hand fitting one hose, an empty hospital bed behind.