by Beth Harden
“Don’t even go down that road. No one is more worthy than you. If you hadn’t called the cops and they found her as quickly as they did, we wouldn’t even be standing here having this discussion.”
Like songs drifting through walls with the faintest beat or shred of lyric, they stirred a memory. I recognized them now, the three observers keeping watch. I knew them by their voices. My mother Mel’s cheery but incessant warble as she prattled on from room to room regardless if there was an audience or not; and the timber of my father Russ’s tenor as he read the Herald out loud, his voice lowered to protect us from stories about booby traps and napalm jelly. And finally I made out the gentle earnest rhythm of young Aaron who once told me, ‘You’re not the first girl I would notice in a room full of strangers, but you’re definitely the one that would keep my attention the longest.’ A sing-song of comfort that cradled my subconscious. I struggled to connect wishes to words and bleat out a plea to my family to be patient. I was there on the cusp of climbing out of this confinement and linking arms with them in a riotous circle dance of celebration. I tried to break the inertia of my extremities and rattle the bed rails to make them look. I could hear them even if I could not see the past fully.
#
“Look at me! Lissa. Open your eyes again.”
I startled awake with heart racing. A man was leaning near my head. His breath, too close. Not enough oxygen for both. Suddenly one pupil opened its refractory lens involuntarily and recognition flooded the good eye. Daddy. The parched lips could only form a pucker around the tube and were blowing and puffing like a wounded fish. My father caught the gesture and reached for the call bell that was clipped to the bed sheet at the head of the hospital bed. Within minutes, a woman in lavender was at his elbow.
“How’s she doing?” she asked.
“She’s awake, Patti. I swear to God, she tried to say my name.”
“Let’s see what’s going on, Mr. Braum. If you can please step to the foot of the bed. Thank you,” said the middle aged nurse with frosted hair and sweet eyes. “Do you know where you are, honey?”
Nothing came to mind.
“You are at Beth Israel Hospital in the ICU. Do you understand me?” asked my father.
“She can hear us, but I’m not sure she comprehends what we’re saying. She won’t remember it in any case. It’s likely just another reflexive grimace. The kind that we’ve seen randomly cross her face since admission. It can be disconcerting when the patient’s eyes are open, but it doesn’t mean she’s with us.”
She drew closer to the bedside, leaned in and shielded my face from the fluorescent light with her hand. The right eye blinked and the pupil strayed to look at the periphery. Patti retracted her hand and pushed the call button. Within a matter of seconds, two other nurses had congregated at the bedside. One held my chin steady while the other targeted a laser beam at the iris of the violet eyeball that could be seen under a partially-closed lid. My gaze turned involuntarily away from the irritating source. I wrestled to open my mouth. Cracked lips pressed together and then parted again.
“Here, honey. Just let it melt. There you go,” she said as she lifted a small ice chip on a spoon and gently dabbed the dehydrated skin. I rolled my lips back and forth to draw the moisture deeper into my mouth.
“I’m going to straighten out this tubing. Just relax, okay. This might feel a little funny.” Something bit and clung to my bottom lip. Freezer burn.
“Are you in any pain, sweetie?” she asked. I nodded.
“Squeeze my hand, honey.” A huge smile spread across her face along with an audible exhale of released worry near the foot of the bed. “I’ll give some paper to your Dad and you can write down what you want to say, okay? Here, Mr. Braum, you hold the pad. I’m going to go call the doctors.”
On the third attempt, I was able to pinch the barrel of the pen between two fingers and began scrawling a bulleted list of questions. What happened to me? How long have I been here? How hurt am I? My father withdrew the tablet of paper and searched it intently. On it was a jagged line of erratic blips, written arrhythmia, and a heart attack of scratches that ultimately took a beeline off the page. He had no idea what I was trying to say. When Patti returned, she saw the dilemma and had the aide run and get a large laminated poster from the nurse’s station. On it were pictures of a blanket, a plate of spaghetti, a thermometer, and a house. My arm jerked from the shoulder rotating on its socket like a mechanical crane and dropped a dead hand on one of the neat little squares.
“Home?” she asked gently. “Go home?” I nodded.
“In due time, that’s the goal. Let’s get you cleaned up. You seem a bit sweaty this morning. Dr. Dominic is on his way.”
She left the room but her place was quickly filled by another in scrubs who was all too eager to discuss the startling new development of the traumatic brain injury patient she had been following for the past five weeks to anyone within earshot. It appeared that Braum, Lissa in Bay 3 was going to disprove the dire prognosis of her Glasgow Coma Scale and survive.
“Oh, my sweet Lord! I knew it. I just knew it. It’s nothing but a miracle,” sobbed my mother who had stepped up out of the dark and was hovering by the bed rail. Shock blanched her face and she covered her mouth with the back of a hand wrinkled like a map of intersecting roads. She looked as though she had crawled on hands and knees down the entire three thousand miles of coastline to be here. Her chestnut bun was lop-sided, her deep brown eyes brimming. Dad stood off to the side in a humble reverent pose until his wife had seen her fill and then he stepped up and put a hand on my brow.
“My brave, brave girl,” he said softly. “I am so sorry.”
These were my people, the ones I belonged with and to. I wanted this loving barrel-chested man, who had stood next to me on the quarry ledge until my courage was high enough and then had lifted me up on his shoulders to launch me into the deep pool, to do what he had done then. When I dropped with arms splayed and mouth wide open so that the force of water drove up my nostrils, he had jumped right in alongside and ferried me to safety. There was no scolding for failing to listen to his instructions. He offered only comfort in the form of a dry towel and a fierce “oh, such a brave girl” hug.
“The anesthesiologist and attending are on their way in. If all goes well, we’ll be able to get her off the ventilator shortly. That will really help speed up the recovery and lower the risk of further infections. I need to ask you to leave while the respiratory team does what they have to do. We need to keep her sedated for the procedure,” said Patti in a perfunctory staff voice. I saw them waver for a tense second. I wanted to never lose sight of them again but Mr. and Mrs. Braum obediently headed out of the room with my mother clutching her sheepskin coat like a security blanket. My father hung back at the threshold of the sliding door.
“Be strong, baby girl,” he said with an audible sob. The suede straps that held the breathing tube from shifting in the larynx prevented any expression but a hollow slack- jawed stare. My parents were ushered out to the ICU waiting room while the respiratory team performed the uncomfortable process to extubate me off the ventilator. What greeted my clearing consciousness was an initial retching gasp and subsequent eruption of fluids that followed the vile deflated bulb that had anchored the pipe in place. I lay quietly as they took the blood gas readings. One respiratory tech stood watch on the monitors while another swabbed my mouth out with a foam brush. They explained all the hardware in place as they worked. The left nostril was still a port of entry for the feeding tube which dribbled thin porridge into the small intestine. The nasogastric tube on the right was still pumping bile up out of an angry stomach. But for the first time in twenty-six days, I was free from the suffocating hose. Five weeks I didn’t know existed. When the male aide had finished sponging me off, brushing my hair and repositioning me, the desk nurse called out to the waiting room and invited the family back for the long-awaited reunion. They came quickly, all three of them.
“How
are you feeling?” Dad asked. All eyes were on me waiting to hear that voice, the essence of the person that had departed weeks before. The Propofol had been dialed down as I was weaned off it but my veins still felt thick with that soup.
“Back,” I rasped. No one was prepared for the mechanical-sounding reverberations that rattled up from the damaged voice box. That couldn’t be me speaking.
“Your back hurts?” asked my father. I shook my head and tried to clear the rust out of my throat but the flap at the rear didn’t seem to work properly. Saliva was pooling up and there was no way to swallow. I started to drown.
“She’s choking. For God sakes, someone help her!” shouted my mother in a panic.
“She’s okay, Mrs. Braum. Trust me. Lissa, honey. I’m going to suction you.” I heard the sinister sound as the cannula of oxygen reversed its draw and a vacuum of air left my lungs. “Go ahead and cough now.” She patiently caught the mucus in a paper towel beneath my chin and then dabbed at the gobs of spit that had leaked down my neck. I mustered up strength for another try.
“Back to base….”
“What are you saying, honey? Back to the basement?” Mom turned to her husband for guidance. “She isn’t making any sense.”
“Back home, you mean? Yes, that’s the plan. But you have some healing to do first,” my father said gently.
“Back to basic,” I insisted.
“Don’t let this alarm you. It is very normal for someone who has been intubated as long as your daughter has to have speech difficulties. And there is such a thing known as ICU delirium. That’s when someone has been in a sleeping state for so long they lose track of the time cycle. The body has no idea whether it’s night or day. Their natural clock is totally off. And we have the effects of some potent medications involved. She’s on a constant drip of Dilaudid.”
“The morphine, you mean?” asked my father. They were talking around me, speaking loudly, slowing down the syllables as if I was hard-of-hearing.
“Yes, it has a very strong narcotic effect,” replied Nurse Hunt. She turned back to her patient. “Try again, darling.”
I trained my working pupil on my father's face. Can you get me back to baseline? I asked clear as a bell, but he looked just as perplexed and cast a hopeful look to find someone to help in the translation. Then he leaned in and kissed the side of my cheek.
“Why is one apple red and one dead?” I repeated. What was so hard about that? I was looking straight at the pulsometer with its tiny blinking beam clipped to the finger on my right hand. The other hand had no light. The beacon was off.
“Don’t worry. We’ll get this right,” he said, smiling. He patted the faded blue hospital gown with tiny barking dogs that shrouded the top of my left thigh. It was one of the few places he could locate that was free of needles, tape, tubes or restraints.
“Pack up!” I commanded. The voice was louder than it needed to be. An order barked out of the brain of a madwoman.
“As soon as you are ready, dear. But you’ve got some work to do yet,” he said gently. Goddamn it, had I missed the class? That paper was on the desk right beside the computer. All anyone had to do was just hand it in. If you want something done, best to do it yourself. I just needed to get my bearings and the layout of this prison. Get to my route of escape, the elevator.
“Give me directions,” I insisted. Nurse Hunt turned an apologetic glance towards my parents.
“Why don’t you bring Aaron in? He may strike a familiar chord with her,” she suggested. My father nodded his agreement and quickly left the room. An intercom blazed to life. Nurse Hunt was needed in Bay 4. She took off in a hurry leaving nothing but the space between us. My mother stood for a few moments awkwardly clasping and unclasping her knotted hands, uncertain how to begin to build a bridge to reach me from where she stood. She looked like she wanted to tell me something.
“No one knows how to take care of someone better than her own mother,” Mom said out loud. Feeling useful seemed to energize her movements with some purpose. She got busy pulling through the drawers of supplies near the sink. Things were sliding around in there and the noise created echoes. She located some paper towels and antiseptic spray and began sanitizing any hard surface within reach. Then she folded the extra knit blanket, tucked in the sheet corner and straightened the scatter of reading materials on the chair. Next she took wash cloths from the clean linen supply cart, wet them thoroughly in lukewarm running water at the sink and pressed them sporadically on my chin, my cheek and the side of my neck. She worked efficiently with precise movements that were a product of caring for so many for so long.
“Talk to your daughter. Familiar voices may help orient her,” urged the aide who had stepped in to check the monitors. My mother nodded and cleared her throat.
“Lissa, did you know this is a thirty-thousand dollar bed you’re lying on? It is filled with water and fluctuates so that your weight is constantly repositioned. It’s good for your circulation and will keep pressure sores from starting up.”
She kept dabbing and chattering nonsense. Suddenly a flash of memory blinked into live action on my mind’s monitor. Some methodical whore’s bath, a patronizing preliminary to lull me into a false sense of security. Trust me, he had said.
“Fuck off!” I shouted in a shredded snarl. My foot flailed to life breaking the grip of the Velcro cuff and loosening the felt boot that dropped onto the floor. An emaciated leg had taken the place of the healthy muscular limb that had once been mine. My mother was clearly hurt when another kick caught her in the upper abdomen and she pulled back, bewildered. The bed alarm went off. Several people stepped into the room just out of my line of sight.
“I don’t know what I did. I was just cleaning her up. I don’t believe I hurt her,” said my mother, thinking she was out of earshot.
“I’m sure it’s just a reaction related to the trauma,” whispered Nurse Hunt who had come to turn off the alarm. They each noticed my glare of agitation and took it to mean that all the crowding and hovering was making me claustrophobic. In deference to my comfort level, they stepped back a few paces.
“Did they find any money?” I asked. Ultimately I’d be the one to answer for any losses.
“Shhhh. Rest your mind now, Lissa,” said someone on my left. Instant recognition came over me without Even having to look. Patti encouraged Aaron to come around to my “good” side and there he stood, at least what I could see of him with his peeks of coarse curly hair, blue eyes and faint reddish goatee. He seemed unsure whether or not to try to and engage the hollow disinterest in the sutured eye socket on the right or keep fully focused on the one good eye that blinked back.
“Bad?” I croaked.
“No babe, this hospital is one of the finest in the country. These people know what’s best for you. Trust me. I would never mislead you.”
I wanted him to reach around the battery of equipment to hold and hug me with a million compliments. He remained distant though, scanning the monitors for signs of encouragement when he thought I had looked away. My vision was clear enough to register grave concern in the creases on his brow and there was something else there. Was it guilt or regret? I almost felt sorry for the guy; what, with his girlfriend broken to the point of disfigurement and swaddled in gauze dressings, stitched to keep tissue intact and plasma in circulation and addled as shit in the brain. He could do better.
“Pretty…?”I croaked. Why wouldn’t those goddamn words do as they were told?
“Who loves you more than anyone on earth? I will be here for you,” he said reassuringly. I rotated my neck a few degrees in his direction and regarded him cautiously out of the corner of one eye.
“Don’t know that,” I said, growing more powerful in my pronunciation. He was shaken and didn’t know how to respond.
“Why would you think any differently? How can you say that?” he asked, stricken.
“Gonna bag me up,” I stated clearly and cohesively. A full sentence. Five words strung on a clothes
line.
“Who, honey?” asked my mother. They were all trying to dodge any direct mention of ‘he incident.’, that thing no one wanted to talk about. I dipped my head in the direction of the nurse who was now charting in the file.
“Oh no, Lissa. All these wonderful people have been working for weeks to save your life. It wouldn’t make any sense that they’d want to hurt you now. It’s the drugs talking, that’s all,” she said dramatically. I shook my head as forcefully as I could although my skull was surrounded with pillowed support that kept movement to a minimum. I needed to tell them they were all wrong. When night came, they’d start bricking up the wall again with me on the far side; and whichever third-shift bitch it was that had snuck up fast enough to club me in the head once, then twice more before anyone was looking; she’d be back, too. The maintenance man who emptied the trash, he knew, but he spoke Polish and couldn’t tell anyone. Anyway, no one could be trusted with secrets this deep and dark.
I started to fight the restraints. What they saw in my eyes was not a visceral response to a tactile trigger but the frightening realization that though they were standing right in front of me, the most familiar faces on the planet, I could not connect them with any live emotions. Guilt, shame, embarrassment and rage were all floating around in my system like free radicals attaching their poison to each and any cell that opened the door and let them in. Open the door. Let them in. The thought came to me like a confession. I had done it to myself; left the door unlocked and allowed evil in. It was all my fault.
“Get the fuck out!” I started shouting. Nurse Hunt was instantly up near the arterial line in my neck reaching for the series of plastic tubes that brushed my collarbone like frozen braids. She snapped a cap off one, inserted a needle and pushed. Paradise came rolling in on an unabated red tide.
They say there are three things that no one can take away from a person: education, experience and memories but it simply isn’t true. Three men had charged into my life and looted it of normalcy. My world was now divided, twice. There was the before and after; and the sooner or later of immutable destiny. Suddenly I knew the answer to my own question. There was no getting back to baseline; no going back to where I had come from. If I was to find my way out, it had to be forward towards a frightening new future.