9 April 2012
"People you bury in your heart are too impossible to forget."
I was eleven when my 'Mom' signed my papers and took me home. Her family had become a home I can run to. Now, at fifty four, and despite the healthy long years of having to care for her three adopted children, mom's lungs were beginning to fail.
It was a Tuesday when I volunteered to accompany her at St. Peter's. Being a medical student, I understood the complications and hardships she was going through, but it wasn't the case of familiarity with the hospitals that made me go with her. It was the fear my family has been so comsumed into that led me to volunteer for her admission.
Before going to the reception desk, she asked me if we could enter the Chapel. I smiled at her, let out a slight nod and helped her walk to the Chapel. If there was one thing I was proud of, it would be her unwaivering faith. That even though she knew her lungs were deteriorating and becoming more fibrotic day by day, she still held on her faith.
"God, please help my children." I hear her whisper before she got up from her knees.
"Hey ma. I think you should speak less from now on. You're breathing's becoming more labored."
"No. It's just hot in here. Not enough air to help me breathe." she said with a cough.
I motioned mom to sit by the hall just near the reception desk, when suddenly, a man dropped to the floor by her feet, head first. A team of nurses from behind the reception area came immediately and carried the man to the Emergency Room. The hall was suddenly filled with worried patients, running resident doctors in their knee length coats, and nurses running about who were trying so hard to calm patients whose nerves were going off.
I knelt before my mom, and saw the agonized look in her pale, beautiful face. Most people in their early fifties would already look twenty or so years older. But my mom looked extraordinarily young and still full of life. How can someone be so beautiful and so sick at the same time? I took her hands, which were shaking terribly.
"What...will happen...to him, Julia?" she asked with more labored breathing and deep inhalations in between.
I got up, sat beside her, and gently stroke her golden brown hair that were once thick. The nurse Larry, in his white scrubs walked to where we were sitting. He asked me to sign a couple of documents, and at last an agreement form which I signed with my eyes totally closed.
Then, a wheelchair was brought by one of the nurses who ushered mom carefully. Mom looked at me with a trusting smile and I replied with a false, forced one. I saw her being wheeled away to the glass elevators.
... It was already evening when she opened her eyes to a room full of her relatives, open windows, and rain that was beginning to fall.
She blinked her eyes several times and moved her arms that were still numbing from anesthesia. Her breathing was more relaxed, but I can tell that she was having a hard time with the endotracheal tube that was placed six or seven hours ago. I sat by her side and told her that as soon as her breathing stabled, she would be extubated immediately.
It was the kind of night I prayed to last.
Almost a week had gone by since she was discharged from St. Peter's. It was neither due to any improvement nor insufficient funds made by her long stay at the Intensive Care unit.
Her doctor's words kept reverberating in my mind, "It is only a matter of time. Every breath could already be her last."
I decided to tucked her early to bed and kissed her goodnight.
"Tomorrow will be a good day. I love you Juile." She said before I left.
Graveyard duty was what I hated most, if I were to be asked. There were too few patients to attend to, and if there were any at all, their cases would be very unpredictable. I drove some few miles North to St. Claire's where I had been assigned for about three weeks now. "Ev'ry Beath" by my favorite band was playing tonight.
As soon as I entered the facility, Andrew, my rotation partner grabbed me by the arm and did some briefing on a patient named Michael who was shot at the chest which barely missed his heart. We attended to the situation, sutured the young man when he was finally done and waited for his vitals to normalize. It was already five in the morning when we were officially done and about.
Andrew and I walked using the stairs to the hospital cafeteria. It was still too early in the morning and they haven't prepared anything heavy for breakfast except for a few decent pancakes which were easy and fast to make. Mornings like these are one to wake up to escpecially when a patient's life has a been successfully claimed. I was in my usual satisfied self, eating a well-deserved breakfast after saving a seventeen year old wounded boy, when my cellphone rang.
The call was unexpected. Or maybe I had already expected it, and just tried too hard denying. I pushed the green handset button, my pulse quickening, and my breath almost coming to a stop. It was Jenny.
"Julia, you've got to come home."
After a two hour drive and a heavy downtown traffic made by the stoplights, I decided to park my car to an open pay parking nearby and walk the whole way home instead.
It was a short fifteen minute walk that I immediately had to regret. I swallowed hard upon hearing sirens that suggested emergency nearby.
Fear was beginning to build upon me, as I continued to walk. Just as I turned right of the curb, my fear tripled, and realized it was even a mistake to go home. Soon, I was drowning in tears, my feet almost stopping, half deciding to run the other way and just never come back. But I knew that she was going to leave. It was only a matter of time. The temperatures dropped in a short while and rain began to fall again. I knew it was over. I knew she had left, and I hadn't even told her how much she meant to me.
As I reached the porch of our Victorian home, I saw the windows-- each room in the first floor were lit. Then, I saw Jenny crying in the yard. She stood up upon seeing me, and began to sprint. I embraced her, my eyes filled with tears, as she smelled of blood and fear.
Then, in that moment, the day became almost as dark as night. It took time before I was calmed, but I knew deep down, that the heavens were crying for us.
Above the wailing noise of the ambulance and emergency cars, "I love you Jenny," was all I can hear.
Every Breath • Opuss № I