February 2014
The phone rings. The automated voice announces, “Tacoma General Hospital.” I am as wide awake as my Ambien induced sleep allows. I roll over the empty side of the bed to reach the phone, heart racing, tears starting.
“Hello?”
“I’m in the damn hospital and I don’t know what’s happening!”
At least it's Larry's voice. He has his sense of humor. I want to laugh. Or is he not joking?
“I know dear, I left you there.”
“People keep coming into my room. I don’t know what they want.”
My brain fog lifts as I realize, of course someone is in his room.
Everything from the day before floods into my consciousness. Has it only been a day? I am back at his bedside, hearing the noises in the hall throughout the night. The insistent dinging of call buttons. The hushed voices from the nurses’ station outside the door.
I watch each member of the medical team in gown and face mask as they cross the thresh hold, check his vital signs, bring some drugs. Given a pillow and blanket so that I could rest, I am not sleeping, but keeping vigil through the night. I listen to his breathing, watch his chest rise and fall. I stare at the numbers on the monitor, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels.
The sun rises over Mt Rainier. I stay in place until the doctor comes for morning rounds. I need a shower. I hurry back. A day passes. He is too weak to lift his arms or sit up or get out of bed. I help him eat. He is disoriented. Delusional. I see the phone on a shelf behind his bed. I am the one who answers it when it rings. I left when he started snoring. It had been forty eight hours since my head had been on the pillow.
Gently I say, “Honey, there must be someone there now. Can you give them the phone?”
“Hello. This is the night nurse. We need to start a transfusion. I need your permission.”
“Do you need me to come? I can be there in ten minutes.”
“No. Everything is okay. I needed to verify his identity.”
I glance at the clock. Three in the morning. I lie down, thinking I might catch more sleep, but my mind rewinds to the beginning. Thirty six hours earlier, leaving work to get him to the doctor’s office. Grabbing a wheelchair to get him from the car to Urgent Care. Temperature 92 degrees. Blood pressure 80 over 40. Watching as he is wheeled out the back entrance to a waiting ambulance. Stopping at my office to post a note on the door: “Sorry, I have to miss the meeting. Larry in the hospital.”
Parking in the snowy parking lot, entering the emergency room. Being escorted to the exam room. Everyone busy with a sense of urgency. He seems incoherent, yet introduces me to his young, redheaded nurse: “This is Meghan. She’s Irish. She’s hot.” I laugh. She and I are both embarrassed.
I’m asked to wait. I sit alone in the waiting room. Minutes seem like hours. A friend comes from the meeting to ask what is happening. I can’t say. I don’t know. She waits with me. There is nothing more she can do. “Call me, day or night,” she says when she leaves. More time drags by. I ask to see him. Now there are IV fluids entering his veins. Oxygen delivered through his nose. He is wrapped in a bubble wrap blanket of warm air. He looks up at me. He says, “I want you to know I have had a really good life.”
He thinks he is dying. I think so too.
I can’t form the question. I ask instead if they know what is wrong. The doctor tells me he’s in renal failure. There is some blood loss. He’s dehydrated. If he needs dialysis they can’t do it here. There is a room waiting for him in a larger hospital across town. I’m confused. “Why dialysis?” I ask. “His kidneys have shut down,” they tell me.
Another ambulance. Again, I follow in my car. I think I’m hungry. I stop at McDonalds. I never go to McDonalds. I order something I cannot eat. I carry my french fries into the emergency room. I drop them in the trash when they tell me they have taken him to Room 812. The elevator opens on the Critical Care Unit. I stand in the hallway, waiting. Nurses. Orderlies. Everyone busy. More lines, more bags, more fluids in. No urine out. Definitely renal failure. Why is he losing blood? No one can tell me. "We have to order some tests," they say.
Finally it’s just us. I take his hand. I lean to kiss his lips.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
That is enough for now. I curl up in the window seat, briefly close my eyes, but I need to watch the monitor, watch the door, wait for the doctor. I need to be there when she comes. I see the sunrise. The day stretches before us without answers, only questions, tests, procedures, guesses, nurses, calling family, calling friends. Telling what I know, what I don’t know.
My pillow is wet from my tears. I have lain here for two hours. It feels like days. I haven’t really slept. It’s time to get up. Get dressed. Get myself together. Make some phone calls. Leave some messages. I won’t be in to work. I need to be at the hospital.
I will need to be there fourteen identical endless days before I no longer sleep alone. It is the ending of knowing. The beginning of waiting.
