Detox
I
think I smoked three cigarettes during my ten minute drive to the
hospital. And I was just pissed the
entire way. How did we end up back here, nine months later, in the same
situation? Why was I only one of two
people he contacted? Could I even hold my
anger together? I was in as much rage as
a child in a mosh pit. FUCKING RAGE!
I
gripped the steering wheel tight with my right hand as my left discarded my
cigarette directly onto the “no smoking beyond this point” sign. I wasn’t even half way finished. Don’t these
people know that when I am in distress I tend to smoke like a chimney? What are they thinking!
At
the front desk stood an older white woman and a young adolescent
hindu/Indian/mexican boy. His eyes were
dark and questioning.
“And
how can I help you today, Miss?” she asked.
“I
am here to see Mat Booker.” She has me spell it because apparently it was far
past her vocabulary.
She
wrote my name on the visitor pass. “It’s
room 332 dearie.”
“Sounds
great,” I retorted, “but how do I get there?”
“Just
down that hallway to the main elevators and up to the third floor.”
The
two floor ride seemed like an oceanic flight.
Nine hours of terror. What will
happen? What will he look like? Will it be as bad as last summer? Will he be paper thin and shaking through
every sentence?
I
exited the elevator to a deafening silence on the floor. I could feel the death in the air and it
exhausted me.
Alone
I walked through the left corridor. My
heart pounded in my chest.
301…302…305. Damnit – wrong side
of the hallway – who marked this shit and why are they prolonging the
inevitable ahead of me.
329…330…331…here. I took a deep breath as I entered the
room. I had envisioned him to be the
same as last year in his frail state; skinny and frail. But a repeat of last year was not what I
saw. Not even my worst night terror
could have prepared me for what I saw.
He
lay there on the bed, shaking, yet barely moving. His hair mimicked that of someone who had
just put their finger in a light socket.
His lips appeared glued shut and his eyes were rolled into the back of
his skull. The thin sheet that covered
him failed to disguise the exposed knee, foot, hip, shoulder, and chest bones
that have popped out over time. His face
was dark and eyes sunken in…almost bulging out of his prehistoric skull.
With
vomit in my throat, I tried to turn around.
But I couldn’t. Everyone else had
already turned their back and I just couldn’t leave him on his own. He had to know that somebody cared. If he came back once before…he can come back
again.
“Hey
Buddy!” I gasped. “It’s me, Michele.”
He
briefly opened his eyes, but as quick as they met my gaze, they rolled back
inside his head. It appeared for a
moment as if he was trying to say something to me, then all I heard was
confused moans attempting to gasp through dried tight lips.
Something
was wrong. I ran to the nurse’s station.
“Hi!,”
I gasped. “Hello! I…I think my uncle needs some help. 332.”
The
nurse followed me into the room.
“Mat. Mat!” She gently touched his shoulder to
alert that she was there. “Do you need
some help?”
He
looked at me. And then back to her. I couldn’t understand a word he said, but she
knew he needed to go to the bathroom. He
was unable to get up for himself so she brought a bed pan out.
“I’m
not sure what you will want to do, hun,” she stated as she glanced at me, “but
he has to go number two and I am not sure if you will want to stay.”
“nope,
sure don’t.” I grabbed my purse and
headed for the open seating area.
Dial
number one…Mom…No answer.
Dial
number two…Dawn…No answer…this time I left a message. Dawn already knew he was in the hospital, mom
didn’t.
As
I dialed my uncle, Dawn beeped in.
“Hey
Michele, grandpa’s here, you are on speaker phone. Are you at the hospital”
SHIT!
“Hey
Dawn,” my voice shook. “Yeah, I’m here.”
“So,
how is he?”
“I’m
not sure I want grandpa to hear what I have to say,” I retorted. “I can’t really filter how I feel.
I
can hear her ask him in the background if he wants to hear what I have to say. Then I heard his “mmmhmmm.”
“He
said yes Michele. Give it to us straight.”
I
couldn’t believe she was doing this.
Give it to her straight. She
fucking hates him. Way to put on a show
for grandpa you dumb bitch.
”Okay. He is worst than last summer. He looks like a hospitalized freak anorexic
who doesn’t eat anything. He is
hallucinating and doesn’t know who I am.
His eyes are rolled backward and he can’t even lift his torso with his
arms to move in his bed. He fucking
looks like a God Damn Holocaust victim suffering in the depths of a German
winter. I honestly don’t know how to
feel right now. I know I feel sick but I
am pissed he has done this to us again an no one cares. And the only person that can get info from
the doctors, your ‘oh so special sober’ brother, doesn’t even want to talk to
him. He is so sick that even without the
C-Diff he had last year, he is still in a diaper and shitting himself.”
I
heard my grandpa mumble in the background.
“We
will be there later today,” my aunt informed. “Will you tell him we are coming.”
“Yeah. But like I said, he doesn’t even know who I
am right now and I have actually talked to him since his last stint.”
I
just had to get that little jab in there.
Enough for my grandpa to hear.
(and that my friends, is becoming a different story.”
I
saw the nurse come out of the room and seized the opportunity to talk to her. There
is no point in dialogue here because I couldn’t get anything. He needed to be alert and coherent enough to
give the nurses permission to talk to me.
I
walked back in the room and said goodbye.
For a second I thought he was puckering his lips to kiss me goodbye, but
I was fooling myself. He is
HALLUCINATING! So I just said goodbye without the normal kiss on the cheek and left.
