My husband’s side of the wardrobe smells like the hospital now

Dear Delyara, My husband has been in hospital for nine weeks after complications from surgery. He is alive. I keep reminding myself of that before complaining. He is alive. Today, I opened his side of the wardrobe looking for a warmer sweater to take him and realized his clothes no longer smell like him. I have been bringing them back and forth from the hospital, washing them, returning clean clothes, collecting dirty ones. Everything now smells like hospital detergent and the plastic bags nurses use for belongings. Even the coat he wore for years smells faintly clinical because I took it there during the first week and left it over his chair. I pressed my face into one of his old shirts and could not find him. It frightened me more than I expected. He is still here, speaking, complaining, asking when he can come home. Yet his smell has already been removed from our house by practical care. I feel guilty writing that when wives are burying husbands. Mine is alive in ward six. Tomorrow, I will sit beside him and probably complain that he refuses to drink enough water. Tonight, I am standing inside his wardrobe grieving something his body could theoretically bring home again.