Dancing At the Hospital. by Chelsea Rutter. 906 S Warren Rd Spokane Valley, WA (509)

Transcription

1 Dancing At the Hospital by Chelsea Rutter 906 S Warren Rd Spokane Valley, WA (509) Chelsea02013@gmail.com

2 1 The glass doors slide open as I approach and I m confronted with the smell of a sterile environment: chemicals and clean bedding. I march past the Emergency Department check-in desk without a word or a glance. I know where I m going and don t need their well-intended but misplaced assistance. The fluorescent lights give the linoleum an eerie shine, like they could shatter beneath me at any second, dropping me into oblivion. My heart pounds in my ears as I round corners, trying to create the list of things that need to be done. There s paperwork to do and hospital staff to speak with. Calm my mother, soothe my sister, keep my brother anchored. Maintain the balance. Let the dance begin, I think. Passing room after room, I peek in with curious eyes to see if I ve found the right one. Not yet. All around, nurses chatter, monitors beep, some patients groan, some laugh. Some rooms are silent and dark. When I finally find the correct room, all the ambient noise is sucked away in my deep breath. My dad. My dad with his wrinkles and age spots and glasses and rasping cough. He s entangled in a web of tubes and lead lines, with monitors beeping nearby. The sound makes my chest tighten, my heart thuds along to the beat. An IV drips clear liquid and funnels it through a tube into the back of his hand. He looks so fragile. This is not my dad s first time in the hospital, but this is the first time it s hit me with such force. What if something is fatally wrong? What if there s nothing they can do? What if we re out of time? Questions rocket around in my head, but

3 2 I have a job to do, a dance to perform. My mother is the only other one here, but my brother and sister should be on the way. Hey. Do we know anything? I ask, though I know the doctor hasn t even seen him yet. The Urgent Care thought he may have had a stroke, that s why they sent him here, but nothing for sure, my mother confirms. I need to take a smoke break. Call me if anyone comes. She blusters out of the room. Hey Daddy. Hey Sweetie. He sounds doped up, his words slurring together lazily. So you found someone to drive you, I see, I force out through a tightened throat. He called me earlier this afternoon to tell me he was feeling dizzy and nauseous and asked me to take him to see the doctor. I told him I could leave work right then, but he assured me it would be fine to wait. What if something had happened before I got off work? What if nobody else was available to drive him? He never admits a need to go to the doctor. Even when he had his heart attack, we had to all but drag him to the car and activate the child lock on his door. I should ve known. Savannah appears at the door, peering in tentatively with eyes rimmed in red and smeared with makeup. She left work early to be here. I still see my sister as much younger than she is. She sits down on the spinning stool meant for the doctor and pushes it right up next to Dad s bed to hold his hand. This isn t funny anymore, Dad! You ve gotta stop doing this, she jokes with tears in her eyes. She blinks the tears back and smiles through it. One of her shoes is untied. I bite my tongue to fight back my own tears. The last thing everybody needs is for me to be weepy, too.

4 3 My mother returns a few minutes later, and my brother a few minutes after that. You ve got me in the will, right? my brother says through a smirk. My dad chuckles wheezily. Guess you ll find out. My family all sit around the room, looking at anything but each other. I can feel the tension rolling off my mother and filling the whole room like a thick fog. Perhaps that s the cause of everyone s silence; none of their words can penetrate the fog. The doctor finally makes an appearance and echoes the opinion of the Urgent Care; he suspects a stroke and wants to send Dad for a CT scan immediately. The doctor leaves and a nurse takes his place, prepping Dad to be wheeled away to Radiology. She kindly but quickly moves his IV bag to a mobile unit and detaches him from the monitors. I m thankful for the respite from the infernal beeping, but at the same time, that sound has symbolized his tether to life and its absence now makes me feel uneasy. Up come the side-rails on his bed and away he goes. The nurse says he ll be back in about an hour. An hour. Sixty minutes for us all to sit uncomfortably and wonder if there s something to say. Luckily, Savannah and my mother go in search of the cafeteria, probably more out of a need to move than actual hunger. Rocky and I stay behind to wait, mirroring each other s alert posture and crossed arms. We make small talk about work and gas prices and the arrival of spring. Anything to hold the world together, the same as it was before we walked in here. My mother and Savannah return shortly with no spoils to show. None of us realized we ve been here so long that the cafeteria closed an hour ago. Time certainly passes oddly in hospitals. We return to sitting in silence, listening for the sound of wheels in the hallway.

5 4 Eventually, they roll him back in and reattach him to everything; the exact same process as before but in reverse. The waiting begins again. We re told thirty minutes for results. Dad and Rocky return to their regular banter and my mind returns to the checklist I started on my way in. I gather Dad s watch and his glasses, his baseball cap, his pipe and tobacco, and tuck them into my purse so they re not forgotten. I talk to the lady at the registration desk about insurance and billing because somebody needs to. In general, my mother is trapped in her own head in such a way that it s hard for her to interact in the world; being confined in the hospital under these circumstances does not help matters. In an attempt to soften the creases on my mother s forehead, I speak soothing words to her, rationalizing that if it were that serious they d be in more of a hurry. I try to ask Savannah about school and work and other lighter things, hoping my nonchalance will rub off on her, and for the most part she plays along. All the while I m giving my dad and brother the look that, all at once, says, Knock off the joking, this could be serious and Mom s going to come unglued if you don t take this seriously. It s a dizzying dance, keeping the balance between my family members, keeping them safely in orbit around each other in the scope of this circumstance. Luckily, it s a dance that keeps me distracted from what is happening in front of me. Once the checklist is complete, I lean on the edge of Dad s bed, hoping to discern how he feels about all of this. I m not sneaking any food in for you this time, I warn him, remembering his last stay in the hospital. That s okay. I think we ll be out of here soon anyway. I wish his words would just separate like they re supposed to and not bleed into each other the way they do in this stupor. Almost as if he heard my Dad s words, the doctor ambles in with the results. No sign of a stroke or any other brain damage. In fact, the test shows a very healthy brain for a 70-year old.

6 5 His conclusion is that there has probably been some sort of medication reaction that his Primary Care Doctor should address. We all leave the room and wait in the hectic hallway for my dad to dress himself. Other patients wrapped in hospital gowns shuffle by or are wheeled by to other destinations in the hospital. My mother and Savannah decide to leave; it s late and we will see them when we get home. Savannah s still-untied shoelace is the last thing to disappear around the corner. A moment later, Rocky makes the same decision. He hugs me goodbye and leaves without another word. Dad emerges from his room, still unsteady on his feet but ready to go home. I remember when I was young and he was the steadiest thing I knew. I remember his kind face as he tucked me into bed at night with a soft goodnight kiss on my forehead. I remember holding his sandpaper hand as we walked through parking lots and grocery stores. Running errands with my Daddy was my favorite activity. Back then, he was invincible. But time passes and age stakes its claim. This trip to the hospital cracked something inside me, something in the way I look at the world; I must accept the certainty that my Dad is not invincible. I despise the thought that someday, we will make the last hospital trip together. Someday, I will have to leave without him, to face the world without his sandpaper hands and timeless wisdom. My car repairs will fall to a mechanic. Rocky will spin out of orbit, lost to the rest of us. My mother and Savannah will be lost, like sheep without a shepherd. The dance will become much more difficult, even futile. I will have to find a new best friend and confidante. As we walk slowly to the car in the dark, surrounded by a warm April breeze, I hold his hand like I did as a child, taking comfort in the roughness and remembering simpler days. I tell him it s to help keep his balance, but really it s because I know I m running out of time. One day, I ll have to let go.