Four Eyes, page 4
Chuckling, I filled her in on the uneventful nature of my flight home. She looked pale, and had lost a significant amount of weight in the eleven days I had been gone. Suddenly, all my dad’s updates came to life in front of my eyes. I noticed her bandaged feet, swollen and covered in the cheap yellow “Totes” socks with rubber pads on the bottom they give you in hospitals. Yellow, I thought. She hasn’t had a yellow pair yet.
She seemed weak, and was fragile to the touch. She couldn’t breathe well, and coughed often. My dad’s words came back to me: There was a huge fluid buildup in her lungs, and she had a bad case of pneumonia. I couldn’t help but think about what an utter shock this must be to her—to leave work one day out of breath and then be ushered into a major health crisis lasting a month at this point. In the ICU no less. Her smile was faint as I bent down to give her a hug. She only raised one arm a few inches in return. Her usual bright blue eyes were half closed as she looked at the sunset.
“It’s beautiful,” she rallied to say before a coughing fit took over.
I looked around at the machines beeping and humming for my mom’s life. A mixture of gratitude and anger stirred inside me. I closed my eyes briefly, and took it all in. This version of my mom was just so different from the one that had walked herself into the hospital a month ago, not even knowing she had suffered a heart attack.
The nurses came in with nighttime medication and rotated her off her back, where a small, dime-size bedsore had begun to form. They encouraged my dad and me to go home and get some rest too as they gestured toward my mom, who had fallen asleep soon after taking her meds.
“That’s a great idea,” I said, and led my dad out of the room. “Let’s go home.”
CHAPTER 14
May 13, 2012, 8:47 A.M.
“LET’S GO, ALISHA!” my dad roared from the garage. “Right now!”
“Dad, what’s the deal?” I yelled back from my room-turned-office, annoyed.
“I didn’t sleep all night, and I just can’t shake the feeling that your mom isn’t okay, so let’s go!” he yelled.
“Why don’t I meet you there, then? I need a shower,” I responded, waking up slowly to the urgency. Again.
I heard the door slam and watched him pull out of the driveway and speed down the neighborhood street. I tried desperately to separate his anxiety from my own, to no avail. I quickly jumped in the shower, got dressed, and climbed into the family van to meet everyone at the hospital, grabbing the flowers on the way out. Mat was also on his way. As I put the Ford Econoline into gear, memories of family road trips across the country filled my brain. Whether it was this van or another, so much of my childhood had been lived inside those wonderful aluminum boxes.
At the start of each summer, after they were through teaching for the year, my parents would pack us all up and road-trip from Michigan all over the country. My parents had been mostly drawn west, specifically to Colorado, for as long as I could remember. Their lifelong dream of retiring there had become a reality, and though they really missed their friends back in Michigan, they had fallen deeply in love with the mountains and landscape of the West.
Memories of endless trips out west and down south filled my mind as I recalled the carefree nature of those adventures. Driving all through the night, waking up at 3:00 a.m. and piling out of the van to eat at a local Waffle House because my dad was tired and hungry. Visiting everything interesting along the way, my mom sifting through the copious packets of information she had gathered about different destinations as we approached each one. Mat and I taking turns on the couch bed in the back and laughing in hysterics after being stuck in the van for hours on end, playing the alphabet license plate game, listening to audiobooks, stopping at Cracker Barrels along the way to return and exchange new audiobooks. Making last-minute hotel reservations in the middle of the night, swimming in the hotel pool anytime there was one, and my parents’ fierce determination to see the country and experience the freedom of the road.
My parents had a vision for their retired lifestyle that was full of adventure, gratitude, and exploration, and they passed the lens through which they saw life onto Mat and me from very young ages. We all had a lot of love for the road, for discovering new things, new ways of being in the world. Ways of being that were in stark opposition to what we were currently experiencing. None of us were nearly as excited about this “adventure.”
I arrived at the hospital, and navigated parking as was the usual custom in the Bashaw family: to look for a “Jeff.” Jeff was a friend of my dad’s that, by some miracle, nearly always managed to find a parking spot close to any entrance. I swung around the front row; nothing. A smug smile crept onto my face as I rounded row two. There was a space waiting, just for me. “Jeff does it again,” I muttered to myself as I made the seventeen-point turn required to park the beastly van. It was worth every crank of the steering wheel.
I walked inside, counting my steps: one, two, three, four; one, two, three, and four … getting lost in the rhythm all the way up to the second floor. The ICU was quiet today. So was I. I yawned as I rounded the corner, and the familiar beige counters greeted me with their bland yet calming mediocrity. I gathered all the internal optimism I could grasp as I walked into my mom’s room.
“Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!” I brightly sang, surveying the room and instantly choking on the fear hanging in the air. My dad was at her side, holding her left hand, and a CNA was folding a cold washcloth in half to place on her forehead. I met my mom’s glassy gaze and twitched as I felt my heart drop to my stomach. I nervously glanced up at my dad. He was fixed on her.
The CNA awkwardly stumbled around the head of the bed to shut off a beeping alarm. A nurse poked her head in, alarmed as well at the machine alerting us that my mom’s blood pressure was dropping. She looked peaked and helpless as she half-smiled in my direction and began to cough.
Suddenly, my shower seemed selfish, and I instantly regretted not hurrying with my dad to get here before now. My mind whirred. What is happening? Why is she so pale? What’s the plan? Why am I still holding these damn flowers?
A doctor I had not met before swiftly entered the room, messed with an IV bag, and began talking to my mom.
“Sherri, let’s breathe.” His voice was calm yet firm, and his strong hands began illustrating a perfect square in tandem with his words “in two three four, out two three—” He was interrupted by her cough. She sounded as though she was underwater. I began to wonder what it was like to drown, to not be able to sustain breath, terrifyingly gasping for air. A shiver up my spine drew me back into my body. I didn’t want to find out, and I didn’t want to watch my mom find out either.
“Sherri, you’re okay, you can do this; calm down and breathe with me.” The doctor kept talking to her, this time peering directly into her wide, blue, scared eyes.
He began the counting again, and I watched as she watched him, desperate to stop coughing, gasping for air. My dad was laser focused on the scene as if he were grading it, studying her response for any signs of calm that he could share with her. She began to regulate her breaths to the doctor’s counting, very slowly, never losing eye contact with him. Finally the doctor relaxed his stare and stepped back a foot. My mom blinked and turned her head to my dad, who was affirming her ability to keep breathing calmly. She continued inhaling and exhaling to the counting that was no longer audible except in my head, as if that were somehow keeping her going.
The doctor excused himself from the room momentarily and returned with an announcement.
“I think we all need to give Sherri some space for a while as we adjust a few things to make her more comfortable,” he began, nodding at my dad and me. “We’re going to adjust some medications, and I’d like to talk with her about a few things, if that’s okay.” He nodded in our direction. “Butch, you’re welcome to stay, but I think it’s best to just give us a second first.”
“Butch … stay …,” my mom croaked, and he obliged. I left the room dazed, my body tingling, and rounded the corner, bumping right into my longtime friend RJ, brother of my friend Liz, who had died at age twenty-four a few short months ago. It was the grieving for her that had shifted my half-marathon training.
“Hi,” he said with a big hug. “How are you?”
“Um, well …,” I began.
“Are you by chance Sherri’s daughter?” came another voice. “I am looking for her room.” I turned slowly on my heel to see a stranger with short blonde hair peering into the windows of different rooms, pausing to ask that question with hope in her eyes.
“I am,” I responded, “but she’s busy at the moment. Can I help you with something?” I asked as I felt my brow line furrow, trying to place her.
“Oh, hello!” Her tone instantly became warm and her eyes brightened. “I am a friend of your parents from church. We all went to Israel together. I just couldn’t believe this news when I heard it, and I wanted to bring her this card and visit with her,” she said, rifling through her purse and pulling out a cream envelope.
I smiled to myself, thinking of the multitudes of cards that had poured in over the past month, each one expressing a message of hope, recovery, well wishes for a speedy healing, and detailing a story or memory of their interactions with my mom. It was truly humbling to see how many people reached out to her, to us all, and to see how many people with whom she had connected over the years.
I had always admired my parents for their outgoing attitude toward others. My dad, loaded with questions, would fire them rapidly at folks to get to know them in record time; my mom would connect people to any resource she knew of based on interests mentioned. They were both fans of giving helpful, yet unsolicited, advice. They welcomed people into their home and lives with warm, kind spirits, and wanted to make others feel comfortable, loved. Often, holidays were spent with friends who didn’t have a place to go, or lived too far from home, and they were welcomed into the Bashaw family tradition as if they had always been there.
My mom built community with ease, and found ways to interact with everyone she could, which made for some eclectically wonderful holidays. My dad saw others’ stories of their experiences as puzzle pieces of their lives, and relished in hearing all about them as the picture of who they were came together in his mind. This “all are welcome attitude” was something I was so proud of my parents for creating, though it was much less embarrassing as an adult than as an angsty teenager. Something about their warmth was infectious; this woman in front of me was further evidence.
“It’s nice to meet you.” I smiled back, mostly meaning it. It was exhausting to retell the story of “what happened” so many times to strangers, often feeling the need to comfort them after I was done. “She’s not doing too well at the moment, but you are welcome to wait and see if she’s awake in a bit and say hel—” My sentence was cut short by a loud alarm sounding behind me.
I turned quickly to see nurses running from both sides of the hall, one pushing a crash cart with him and stopping at my mom’s door. The other had a machine I didn’t recognize.
“We need every nonessential person out,” came the elevated voice of the doctor I didn’t know. “Now!” My dad and two CNAs came out of the room, looking as if they were extras on a TV medical drama. I watched in slow motion as the nurses quickly pushed the carts through the doors and shut them both. They never shut both doors. I kept staring, hoping it would compute, but momentarily, both curtains were drawn to conceal whatever was happening inside. I had seen enough of Grey’s Anatomy to know that this had just gotten very serious.
I turned back to RJ and the mystery friend, my eyes wide and panicked. RJ nodded.
“Why don’t we go to the lobby waiting area,” RJ said to my mom’s visitor as he put his arm around her and led her down the hall, away from the scene.
RJ was a longtime friend and had been by several times to check on my family and me. He was a strong comfort for me in Colorado, a grounding force, and he knew this hospital well due to Liz’s multiple admissions. RJ and his family had been through so much. He was the kind of friend who “got it” and understood the pain most didn’t. The kind of friend who understood what wide, panicked eyes meant without having to say a word.
My dad was standing outside the closed glass doors, starring at the drawn curtains. I went over to him, my body completely numb.
“Why did they make you leave, Dad? What happened?”
“She was choking on all that fluid,” he replied, emotionless. “She couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t breathe. They had to operate.” Operate. The word hung heavily in the air between us. We stood there in silence, staring.
When the doors finally opened, I caught a quick glimpse of my mom, unconscious and intubated, breathing on a ventilator before the outline of the doctor made its way slowly toward my dad and me.
“Sherri’s left lung collapsed,” his tone was low and serious, “and we had to do a bronchoscopy to extract the fluid buildup so she could breathe. Her blood pressure dropped again in this process, and we adjusted some medication to stabilize that too.” He continued: “She is minute-to-minute right now, though; I need you to know that. We won’t know how stable she is for another little while, but we’ve got her on the ventilator right now, breathing for her.”
“What’s a bronchoscopy?” came my delayed question, my brain struggling to process his words.
“It’s a process where we insert a very large and long needle into her lung to pull fluid into a syringe to alleviate pressure,” he answered, not missing a beat. “Between the pneumonia and her feet, she’s not been able to get up as much as we need her to in order to drain the fluid, which means it’s just all building up in her lungs with no place to go. She will likely need assistance breathing for the immediate future.”
I blinked. I was replaying the nurses running into her room with both machines, like a scratched record. I couldn’t get past that image, much less process this news. I could feel my brain stall out.
“I know this is sensitive, but I advise you to start thinking about funeral plans at this point,” the doctor stated matter-of-factly. “In a few minutes, if she continues to stabilize, you can go in and say goodbye,” he said, immediately looking downward. “I am so sorry.”
I looked at my dad, tears streaming down my face. No, no, no. This was all wrong. My mom was fine just a month ago. A month. This was insane. As I began wrestling with reality, my optimism sprang into action.
“She’s going to be fine, Dad,” I said. “She will fight and be FINE.” I said it for us both. He was silent, just staring at her through the door.
“Three ICU patients are terminal,” I overheard a nurse say behind me into the phone. “Send your rep over, and I will let the families know,” came her voice, like monotone b-roll footage playing in the background of my consciousness. It was sinking in that my mom was now one of these patients. I briefly noted my curiosity about what any of that meant, and then refocused on my mom through the door.
Five minutes later, she had stabilized enough for us to reenter the room. I was thinking about saying goodbye, but had come up blank. My brain felt hollow. We stood there, staring at all the tubes and machines holding my mom together. Mat ran into the room, breathless.
“I got here as soon as I could,” Mat said, tears overflowing his eyes as he spoke. My dad somberly gave him the update. After a while, we took turns saying our goodbyes, though I felt disconnected and robotic as I recited mine. And one by one, we exited the room, completely drained of the familiar, of all feeling, and mostly of hope.
I jumped awake to Mat’s voice. We were all anxiously camping out in the waiting room, and had taken turns falling asleep in the furniture that was harder than you’d expect based on its appearance, waiting for news. Waiting to feel less anxious. Waiting to feel anything but fear.
“Lish, the doctor,” Mat said again. I sat up, instantly at attention.
“We think she will be alright with more time on the ventilator,” he explained. “But because of that, we are going to need to do a tracheotomy so she can be conscious at times and have the ventilator as a support mostly at night and for a few hours during the day.”
I felt my shoulders sink in response, and only then realized how close to my ears they had been. This doctor had spoken so gently to us all day.
“We’ll do that now, and she’ll be all set for tonight,” he said, lingering. “Also, someone from the local organ donation organization stopped by earlier to talk with you all about last wishes when she was still in critical condition, but since she has turned a corner, we sent them on. It may not be a bad idea to talk about her final wishes regarding that as this continues to unfold, though it’s not an easy topic,” he said as he raised his eyebrows at each of us individually. “It’s just a good conversation to have in general, but …,” he exhaled, “… she has bounced back much stronger than we thought she would.” And with that, a small smile crept onto his face as he turned to leave the room.
I closed my eyes and exhaled. Life, death, breathing machines, another procedure, more tubes, and … organ donation? That last one was going to take far more energy to sort through than I had left for today, so I purposefully shoved it all to the side, earmarking it for possible later conversations. For now, I was grateful to sit in the good news. Maybe this had turned into a happy Mother’s Day after all.
CHAPTER 15
May 14, 2012, 10:43 A.M.
MY BLEARY EYES opened to Sniff wagging her curlicue tail at me and sneezing with excitement. With a low growl, she requested that my attention please remain on her for the time being. I smiled. Gosh, how I missed her back at school. Thoughts of my life back in Pittsburgh seemed ages old and very distant, though I had been there just two days ago. What a weird time-warpy existence, I thought as I rubbed the soft silver and black hairs on Sniff’s head against their grain and let my hand continue down her snout. She playfully yelped and stuck her wet nose under my hand in revenge.
