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Kethry
Member Rara Avis
since 2000-07-29
Posts 9082
Victoria Australia

0 posted 2006-05-01 06:21 PM


Today I drove a mother to the hospital to see her daughter who was in Intensive Care. The mother old, frail, nearly hysterical, desperate for comfort I could not give clung to me, nearly knocking me off balance as I struggled to get her and her walker into the car safely. She smelled of urine and I opened the window, not caring if she was cold. At the hospital I sat with her while she reached for her daughter’s hand, crooning softly, a lullaby half forgotten and humming the tune interspersed with occasional words and endearments. Tears fell silently as she ignored me, the outsider who has helped, but is not her helper, not her friend, not even a name she will remember in the morning. She sits in the hospital provided wheelchair with it’s tan vinyl back sagging and footplates clanging as they’re raised and lowered again when she makes no move to stand. She is oblivious to her surroundings. She strokes her daughter’s hand, listens to the wheeze and puff of the ventilator, begs forgiveness for some unremembered sin and watches her daughter die by degrees.
“How long will she be here?” she asks querulously and the doctor with infinite patience explains once more that he doesn’t know; that she’s very sick, that she might not live.

Tears form in my eyes, I turn away, grateful that it is not me and I leave hurriedly to hide my shame at the thought. However the smell of intensive care clings and I find myself shaking as I drive home. There is an atmosphere of pathos in the emergency room that I walk through; the smell of blood and fear fills the air, the soft sighs and moans of people waiting patiently are too much to bear. It throws me back into a memory I though was long dead, a memory I had willingly buried, a memory that even now is painful to recall because it signaled loss that was first hand, deeply confronting and that started a chain of events that changed my life.
~~~~~~~
It was six a.m. when the pounding woke me on another July day, typical, rain drizzling, with a rising mist. “Who the bloody hell is that?” I yelled aloud.
My Australian terrier Mick yapped hysterically as the pounding continued.
“Police! Are you Mrs. Smith? We need to speak to you about your son.
“What has he done now?” I muttered. Sam and I had a difficult relationship, he was a typical nearly nineteen-year-old growing up without a father and we argued often. It was not my choice that he lived with me, not my choice that he disobeyed me so often there were footprints all up and down the place where my spine used to be, not my choice that he was more like his father than I could stand and certainly not my choice that the police should be banging on my door at this ungodly hour.  Since his ‘the kid’s legal now’ celebration when he came home at three a.m. reeking of alcohol, with a black eye and dripping blood but oblivious to how he got the injuries, I had been fighting a losing battle.
I opened the door a crack still bleary eyed and saw the familiar blue of uniform shirts facing me, the blue and white check hatband along with a hat was held at hip height in the officer’s hands and that should have told me something.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this but your son’s been in an accident and we need you to come to the hospital to sign a consent for surgery.” The burly male officer looked uncomfortable as he said this. A half a step behind him stood a female officer with compassion written all over her face. Her name badge said Jan. She stepped forward. “We tried to ring,” she says softly leaning forward.
“No phone!” I grunt.

A thousand million questions form but none reach my lips. I move like an automaton left standing in the rain for too long. My joints are stiff and begin to ache and it’s as if I’ve forgotten how to co-ordinate hands and feet.  Rain drips sullenly down the back of my neck as Jan helps me into the car and makes sure the seat belt is done up.  I hear from a distance the sounds of sirens and wonder who is in trouble, until I realize they are coming from this car. The rain glistens from waning streetlights and seems to be putting them out one by one as if they are candles without protection. The roads are stripped bare of commuters and I glimpse road signs as they flash by, down Westmoreland Road, onto Ballarat Road, past the police station, past the shops, through Braybrook and onto Footscray. I concentrate on the signs while a litany of questions hide behind half closed eyes. Somewhere nearby I hear a fragment of  ‘Love is Blindness’ but it’s gone again before I can name it. It’s later I realize what the song is; I still can’t listen to that tune without crying.

At the hospital they usher me into a waiting room and offer me coffee, tea, anything, in hushed tones that signify disaster. My throat closes up and I shake my head wordlessly, blinking back tears. Someone in scrub greens stands in front of me…he has appeared like magic, one minute not there the next…he clears his throat and sits beside me…this is not good…not good at all…he has been speaking and I haven’t heard.
“Sorry…” I whisper. He sighs and starts again. “Your son”  “Sam…” “Sam,” he says, “is in surgery, we couldn’t wait for permission. He’s had a blood clot in his brain that we’ve removed. The next twenty-four hours are critical but we don’t know what damage has been done.” His voice fades in and out and I have to lean forward to hear him. The glare of the overhead light is too bright and my stomach is turning over so hard I think I’m going to be sick. Bile catches at the back of my throat. “What… how?” I hear myself asking.
The police will talk to you about that, if there’s anything you need press the buzzer and someone will come.” I stare blankly at the remote that he placed in my hand.

The next thing I know is I’m alone. The intercom buzzes in the distance and the permanent hospital smell of disinfectant, ether and formaldehyde wafts in and out as doors are opened.

Two men walk in, they could be police but they have no uniforms.  They introduce themselves and offer names I half hear and don’t remember. They tell me they’re from homicide and all I can think is “please don’t say he’s dead, please don’t say…”
They say they need to ask questions now in case and then leave the sentence hanging. They say Sam had been drinking – heavily and that he got into a fight and was punched in the head. They say he hit concrete but they don’t know if he lost consciousness before or after he hit the pavement.  I can hear the crack of Sam’s head splitting open, see the blood pouring out as they say that part.
They say his blood alcohol level is so high that the clot could have been caused by alcohol abuse and they say the surgeon said there was old blood in the wound and do I know when he last drank, how much, how often?
I try to answer but the words won’t come, instead tears leak, I start shaking and then sobbing. They leave me and someone brings me tea; warm, milky, sweet and totally disgusting. Some time later, times passes at different speeds in here, the nameless, green clad man is back saying Sam’s come through recovery and will go to Intensive Care. He is being ventilated, and that will continue until he can breathe on his own, and there are a number of tubes that are helping him control his heartbeat, blood pressure etc and that I’m not to be afraid because underneath it all it’s still him, still Sam.

I want to see him, I want to see him so desperately but I’m scared. “What if he’s like my sister who was three months in a coma and never fully recovered after her car accident. What if he doesn’t know me? What if he does know me but doesn’t want to see me?”  My tongue feels too big for my mouth and I swallow convulsively to create enough spit to wet my lips.

I remember vividly that our last words together, before he went out, were bitter ones. I wanted him to be more responsible. I wanted him to stop drinking or at least to cut down. I wanted him to behave like an adult but for God’s sake he was only a kid…really only a kid and he may never have the chance to grow up!

I entered the room.  It was a big room with five patients lying silent, ruddy and swollen like engorged maggots only still. While the sounds of the machines beeping, snorting and wheezing as they pumped blood, pushed air and fed nutrients through transparent tubes, as if to say see nothing to harm, all to help, filled the room. Someone squeaked by on rubber soles and a cough sounded too loud in the distance. I stood by the bed looking, waiting, not doing very much at all, then I sat and held his hand and whispered an apology. The words of a lullaby and the memory of him as a child went through my head. I didn’t realize I was singing until a nurse smiled at me and said it’s good to talk and sing to him, he can hear you, you know. I sang ‘Dream a Little Dream’ more times that day and night than I ever did during his childhood or since, and he seemed to respond because by next morning he was breathing on his own and two days later he woke up for a few minutes.

The road to recovery was long – for both of us. He had to learn to walk again and his balance, never good became a problem. He had lost some skills; he forgot things and his moods became erratic. But he was alive, that was the important thing. At least that’s what I told myself when I questioned my parenting, when I struggled with his behaviour, when I grieved over all the things he couldn’t do, when I pushed him out the door to live independently. He was alive and now he had to learn to live.

I got on with my life, coped with the loss that hit me everyday in the first year of his rehabilitation, adjusted my life to meet his needs and pushed him more gently to be the adult I knew he had the potential to be.
As he moved towards independence I told myself, life was different now but it was still life. It was tragic that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it was not a reflection of his unhappiness that he was drinking. It was a normal teenage process to discover himself, not a reflection of poor parenting, of nagging and complaining, not a reflection of our deteriorating relationship, not a reflection of expecting too much too soon and yelling when frustration boiled over. And as I told myself these things I buried the memory of the guilt, the frustration, the anger of being a sole parent, unwillingly raising a child and failing miserably at meeting his needs. I had been given a second chance and would do better from here on in.

I had done a good job burying the memories and accompanying emotions deep down, but tonight the scab of healing was ripped away with the sight and smell of Intensive Care and I ask myself. “Why didn’t I see it coming?  Why couldn’t I prevent it? Maybe love really is blindness so that we can be comfortable not knowing.”

I also ask, “How do I say goodbye to someone who isn’t dead but may as well be? How do I let go of the dreams and hopes I had for my child when I see him struggle daily? How do I build a new life with him and still find satisfaction in knowing he’s alive? I don’t have the answers perhaps I never did. He’s alive, that’s enough…it has to be enough…doesn’t it?” And the pain of struggling through love unresolved and life unfulfilled must be borne and lived though, although on days like today I wonder how and why.

Here in the midst of my lonely abyss, a single joy I find...your presence in my mind.  Unknown



© Copyright 2006 Lynne Dale - All Rights Reserved
Pilgrimage
Member Elite
since 2001-12-04
Posts 3945
Texas, USA
1 posted 2006-05-02 10:01 AM


Excellent!  All the physical reactions are exactly right, and this one made me cry the first time I read it.  

Nan (Pilgrim variety)

Marsha
Deputy Moderator 1 Tour
Member Rara Avis
since 2000-07-10
Posts 7423
Maidstone Kent England
2 posted 2006-05-02 07:20 PM


Beloved one, there is in this story so much truth, the actions and the reactions are spot on, the speech is perfect and the atmosphere just cannot be bettered. I doubt if there is another writer who can describe the inside of intensive care on such a personal level, and make the reader acutely aware of the smells, the taste and the noise that abide in that place. Particularly as most think of intensive care as being a place of deathly hush. But as you know it isn’t silent at all. The noise of the machines that breathe for the patient, the sound of monitors that measure all bodily functions, it isn’t a quiet place at all. You have without doubt captured the essence of the place. You’ve of a certainty captured the feelings of the characters, it is an absolutely amazing piece of writing and oh how IWIWT.
And Yes I too wept when I read it, well done darling one, truly exceptional writing.

Love you always
Like you forever
Mushy

Tomorrow is another day I don't know what it holds
but I can face the future with courage brave and bold

Footprints In My Heart
Kethry

Larry C
Deputy Moderator 1 Tour
Member Patricius
since 2001-09-10
Posts 10286
United States
3 posted 2006-05-02 09:16 PM


Well now Keth,
I'm not sure it's legal to post this without a "hanky warning". But let me say it is well written and reminds my why there are things worse than dying.

If tears could build a stairway and memories a lane,
I'd walk right up to heaven and bring you home again.

Sunshine
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-25
Posts 63354
Listening to every heart
4 posted 2006-05-03 12:22 PM


Kethry,

You brought back many vivid hospitalized moments of loved ones...on many levels.  For many reasons.  You gave the reader clarity, vision, virtual sense of smell, touch, gastric abnomalies that hit us as we grit our chattering teeth in fear and pray when we aren't religious...

I remember listening to an author once, who wrote so well that her mother called her up after her novel was published, and told her, "my dear girl, if you can't tell me about your sex life, that's one thing.  But did you want the whole world to know of it?"

The author countered, and told her mother, "but mom, it's fiction!"

If this is fiction, Kethry, you made it very, very real.  The way a good writer does.

I've missed you very much.  I'm so glad to see your name among the blue halls again.

Love,

K

" It matters not this distance now  " Excerpt, Yesterday's Love
~*~
KRJ

Mysteria
Deputy Moderator 10 ToursDeputy Moderator 10 ToursDeputy Moderator 10 ToursDeputy Moderator 10 ToursDeputy Moderator 1 TourDeputy Moderator 1 TourDeputy Moderator 1 Tour
Member Laureate
since 2001-03-07
Posts 18328
British Columbia, Canada
5 posted 2006-05-03 12:29 PM


Maybe love really is blindness so that we can be comfortable not knowing.”

Kethry, this was an excellent story.  The emotions, the setting, the sequencing in your story, and the directness of reality was simply great writing.  I loved the entire thing from beginning to end, and it held me.

latearrival
Member Ascendant
since 2003-03-21
Posts 5499
Florida
6 posted 2006-05-03 05:13 AM


Excellent writing. So descriptive. Been there,  so understand, fiction or not. martyjo
suthern
Deputy Moderator 1 TourDeputy Moderator 1 Tour
Member Seraphic
since 1999-07-29
Posts 20723
Louisiana
7 posted 2006-05-03 01:32 PM


During the prologue, I was in a world of memory all my own... so soon past and yet forever ago...

But then your story gripped me, pulled me out of myself and into it... until the questions that give me ones of my own... To read this and not be touched is to be a machine... it doesn't just touch the heart, it wrings.

Superb write, my friend! *S*

Clang
Member
since 2005-12-15
Posts 222

8 posted 2006-05-06 11:00 PM


I think you captured the essence of being a single parent to a troubled child magnificently.  I like the way you expressed the woman's sense of guilt and respnosibility and how she wrestled with it.  I also like that you gave her so much strength and showed how she was willing to implement tough love but never really gave up on her child.  It's a really tough decision a parent has to face at some point and the story really potrayed that.

Great job.

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