The thought of seeing her mom in a hospital bed frightened her. She’d never seen her in a vulnerable state before and she didn’t know how she felt about it. To her, her mom was a strong, fearless woman, but now she was sick, laying in a bed with nurses and doctors around her. It was night and day to how she’d remembered her mom.
She hoped that her mom would be able to speak to her and she hoped she’d be able and willing to talk to her about her grandmother’s letter. Her anxiety about seeing her mom was rising as she neared the hospital. She stopped as she approached the parking lot of the hospital and then turned around, and started walking away. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bear the thought of her mom in the hospital. She figured if she never saw her mom there, than it wouldn’t be real. Then, she stopped again and turned back around and headed towards the front doors of the hospital. She had to see her. She couldn’t live in a fantasyland anymore. She had to get to the bottom of things and she had to see her mom, for her own peace of mind.
As she walking in through the large automatic sliding doors, the smell of hand sanitizer filled the air. She looked around at the stark white walls and fluorescent lighting, and the hustle and bustle of the nurses and doctors and they ran from one room to the next and then back out to their stations. She stood there and watched for a moment and then, a nurse came over to her and said, “Can I help you?”
“Oh, right!” Rachel snapped out of it. “Yes, I’m looking for my mom.”
“Your mother, Dear?” the nurse asked sympathetically.
“Yes, I think she’s at this hospital,” Rachel answered.
“Well, what’s her name, Dear. I will look her up. Follow me,” the nurse said, ushering her over to her computer station.
“Betsy Wood is her name,” Rachel said.
“Let me see here,” the nurse said as she clicked away at her computer.
Rachel watched as she scrolled up and down on the computer screen searching for information on her mother. Then, she saw the nurses eyes open wide and then make a frightened face.
“Yes, she is here,” the nurse answered. “I’m so sorry.”
Rachel didn’t know what to make of that statement, but she figured it was going to be a bad situation when she saw her mom by the looks on this nurses face.
“She’s in room 501,” the nurse said. “It’s right down the hall and make a left.”
“Thanks,” Rachel said, as she started in that direction.
Nobody told her what to expect when she saw her mother for the first time and nobody could have prepared her for what she saw as she entered room 501. Her mom lay there, under the white hospital sheets with her head wrapped in bandages and air tubes coming out of her nose and mouth. There were wires hooked up to her body that poked out of the sheets and hooked up to loud beeping monitors that sat at the side of her bed.
Rachel walked in slowly and quietly towards her mom’s bedside. She peeked at her over the railing of the bed and noticed that her eyes were taped shut, too. It looked to her as if her mom were dying. A tear fell from her eyes and rolled down her cheek, and landed on the white sheet that covered her mom. She reached under the covers and grabbed her mom’s hand, which had an IV coming out of her wrist. She clutched onto it, happily feeling the warmth of her body.
BEEP BEEP BEEP
Her eyes quickly focused on the monitor next to her bed as it started to beep louder and more frequently. The line that ran across the screen was jumping up and down in an erratic rhythm. The noises and the whole situation made her heart race and she began to feel panicked. Was her mom dying? Was her heart stopping?
She watched as two nurses came running into her room to examine her. They opened her eyes and shined a flashlight in both of them watching her pupils expand and contract and then checked each of her heart monitors to make sure they were tightly secured to the round patches stuck to her skin.
“Is she OK?” Rachel asked, in fear.
“Shh,” one nurse said. “We’re checking that out now.”
“She’s never done this before,” the other nurse said. “It’s almost as if she’s waking up?”
“Is she OK? Please say she’s OK and that’s she not dying!” Rachel begged.
“Doctor! Doctor!” the nurse yelled out of the room. “Hurry!”
Within seconds a doctor came running in, wearing a white lab coat and scrubs.
“What’s going on here?” he said, looking at the nurses.
“Look! Her heart rate is plummeting, quick, get the AED,” the nurse yelled.
Rachel watched in horror as the nurse ran out and ran back in with the machine to jump-start her mom’s heart. The noise coming from the monitor was now a continuous loud tone and the beeping had stopped. It reminded her of when people would flat line in the movies, except this wasn’t a movie, this was real life and it was her mother on the other end. It was all too much for her to watch so she ran out of the room sobbing as she slunk down to the floor put her head in her lap.
She could still her the commotion from inside the room as the nurses and doctor tried to revive her. She couldn’t believe what was happening and she hoped it wasn’t her fault. She hoped that she didn’t cause this. Perhaps her mom sensed that she was there to see her and went into shock. She felt awful.
One of the nurses came walking slowly out of the room and over towards her computer station.
“What happened? Is she OK? Please tell me she’s alive!” Rachel asked in fear.
The nurse looked over at her, smiled and then said, “She is OK. The doctor will tell you more.”
“Will she make it?” Rachel asked.
“Why don’t you wait to talk to the doctor? He will be out in a few minutes. They’re just patching her up in there,” the nurse said.
“Please just tell me. I can’t wait. Please!” Rachel yelled. “That’s my mother you’re talking about!”
“The doctor will be right with you,” the nurse said, as she turned and walked away.
Rachel couldn’t believe how cold this nurse was to her. She’d never experienced a situation like this before and she never expected the nurse of all people to shrug her off like that. Sometimes she wondered about people. She couldn’t understand why they acted the way they did sometimes. Especially in hard situations like this one. She would have assumed the nurse of all people would have more sympathy for her.
“Young lady?” the doctor said from inside the room.