Two years ago today I could hear people around me—I could tell I was on the floor by the pain in my body I felt from the fall—but I couldn’t see anything. I blinked and blinked but I still couldn’t see anything. It was the most bizarre and miserable feeling I had ever experienced and it seemed to last forever. In the background I could hear nurses anxiously calling to each other to assist me, and I could hear my older sister shooing them away like the protective hen she is, saying “she just tripped! She just tripped!” My doped-up father in the hospital bed behind me called out from his swollen mouth:
“Check her teeth! Check her teeth!”
What the?I could hear myself crying.
The morning my father had his multiple (triple?quadruple?) bypass heart surgery I had driven an hour to the coast for my 8am Strategies class. I was struggling that first year of graduate school—on a variety of levels. I wasn’t going to lose points for missing further classes. The night before I’d left the same class to spend time with my dad before his big day. My professor had given me permission to leave, but I didn’t want to push it by missing the next day too. When I walked into the computer lab to get my notes together I saw my handsome, serious,
professor across the room.
“What are you doing here?” he said forcefully.
“Um. I’m going to class?” I answered.
“Why aren’t you with your father?” he asked again—I felt guilty simply by the tone in his voice.
“Well, I thought we’d get docked for missing class and I already missed one and I just don’t want to….” I answered.
“No. You go be with your father. This isn’t about you. It isn’t about your father. It’s about your mother.”
Hmmm….I thought. That’s funny, because I’m pretty certain it’s my dad whose chest is going to get broken open today….So I left my campus and began the next hour-long drive looping down the coast and across the city to USC’s medical center. I raced against the clock—hoping to see my dad before he went in for surgery—but once again, I followed my internal GPS system, underestimated LA’s ridiculous traffic, and got horribly lost.
In Compton.
Fortunately my car fit right in and no gunfire passed overhead while I winded my way through colorful, yet dangerous neighborhood. I made phone calls. No one answered. I went North. I went South. I went West and East. Twice.
Almost in tears I finally spotted a high-rise hospital building.
WOMEN AND CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL it read.
Of course. Of course I find the one hospital that completely precludes my father’s demographic. I finally reached my mother and sister on the phone. Their directions were helpful. My ability to follow them was not. One hour turned into two. Then two and a half. Then almost three. After almost four hours in my car I finally reached the hospital but I was too late. My dad was already under. He’d be there for awhile.
Hospitals are extremely strange places. They are so sterile that human beings look fundamentally filthy and misshapen, in my opinion. The only people who look right in hospitals are the sick in their paper gowns and the doctors in those lovely white coats.
The rest of the day went like this: My older sister fed us and kept us well-taken care of, because that’s what she does even though she had an almost-one-year-old who was crawling up the walls. My older brother got to know the doctors and other staff, talking to them with his arms crossed over his chest and his right leg kicked out and that serious, pastoral, therapeutic look on his face. My younger brother attracted the attention of any young females within one hundred yards of the hospital. Desiree kept falling asleep or playing with Lucas. My mom paced and played with Lucas and seemed worried and pleasant at the same time. Lindsey studied.
I watched. And met a Holocaust victim.
Sometime after that, when my dad was awake, I went into the ICU with my oldest sister. While standing there talking to my groggy father a heady scent filled my nostrils and I suddenly felt very strange. Telescope vision flooded my eyes---
was this for real? What the heck? A feeling of nausea swept over me and I walked out of the hospital room to recover. Only I didn’t recover. I just blacked out. And fell, apparently.
When my vision came back and my sister had pampered me with ice and care and my father had called out “Ohh….she’s just like me…” (he faints a lot), I returned to the waiting room.
Well dad, you just had serious heart surgery and managed to handle it, I walked into your room and couldn't handle it. Maybe we're not so alike...“What happened to you?” asked my other siblings. “You’re GREEN. We’ve never seen you this color.”
“Yeah—I’ve never felt like that before.” I said. In one way I was referring to the blind-nauseated-bruised experience. In other I was referring to the entire day.
