Second Acts

by Teri Emory

  My cell phone rang. Saved by the bell. I explained that I was waiting to hear from my mother, letting me know she’d landed safely in Florida. She spends from November through March in Boca Raton with her sister Sylvia.

  The caller ID screen said “Florida,” with no phone number.

  “Miriam, it’s Aunt Sylvia.”

  “Where are you calling from? Is Mom there yet?”

  “She’s here. I’m at the hospital with her. She wasn’t feeling so good on the plane, and we went in the cab right from the airport to my doctor’s office. He sent us over to the emergency room at the hospital. In an ambulance!”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She sort of fainted, and then the left side of her body went numb. It may be a stroke. Miriam, can you come? I don’t know what questions to ask, and she’ll want you here.”

  “Of course. Has she been admitted?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are they keeping her in the hospital? Is she still in the emergency room?”

  “I’m not sure where she is. They won’t let me see her. They keep telling me to stay in the waiting room.”

  “Has a doctor seen her yet? Which hospital are you in?”

  “Palmetto Community. You remember, it’s the one where you came to see me when I had my bypass. A doctor is with her now. I think he’s a neurologist. He gave me his card. Wait a minute, here it is. Donald Capper, M.D.”

  “Give me his number. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Gabe walked back to my apartment with me.

  “I’ll take you to the airport whenever you need to go,” he said.

  “You keep a car in the city?”

  “The Film Institute leases it for me. I seldom drive it. I keep it in a garage right around the corner from my house. I even have the keys with me. Whenever you’re ready, I’ll drive it over and pick you up.”

  I left a message with Dr. Capper’s answering service. Couldn’t get any further information from the ER. My mother was being examined, I should try again later.

  I called my brother Neil in Phoenix. I didn’t expect him or his wife Kathy to offer to come East. I was right.

  “You have no idea how busy things are at the stores right now,” Neil said. “The California expansion is a killer. I’m breaking in a manager at a spa hotel in Long Beach, and I’ve got a prima donna foreman renovating the Westwood store. But Miriam, please give us an update when it’s convenient. Kathy and I will be at the kids’ lacrosse finals all weekend. You can catch me on my cell.”

  __________

  For a mere fortune—the airlines are ridiculous about last-minute reservations—I got a seat on a late afternoon flight from Newark to West Palm Beach. Gabe insisted on staying with me while I got ready to go.

  “I won’t get in your way,” he said. “Point me to your TV.”

  I left word on answering machines at Sarah’s and Beth’s, told them I’d call again from Florida. My principal wasn’t home either. I left her a rambling message.

  I threw some lightweight clothes, enough for a few days, into a small carry-on suitcase. I grabbed a sweater, too, remembering how frigidly air-conditioned they keep hospital rooms in Florida.

  I spent the ride to the airport in Gabe’s car on my cell phone, hoping to speak to the doctor, get some information from the ER. No luck.

  Gabe pulled up in front of the airline terminal.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to park the car and wait with you inside?”

  “I’ll be fine. I can’t thank you enough for everything.”

  “For what? Do me a favor, write down your cell phone number for me. You have my business card with you? Good. It has all my numbers.”

  “You’ve done so much already.”

  He leaned over, squeezed my hand, and lightly kissed my cheek. “I hope your mother is all right. Let me know what’s going on.”

  __________

  I picked up a rental car at the West Palm airport and drove directly to Palmetto Community Hospital. During Aunt Sylvia’s stay there years ago, the small building had looked old and dreary, with peeling paint and gloomy corridors. Since then, they’ve had a facelift and a public relations overhaul. On the drive over to Palmetto, I saw their highway billboards and heard their radio ads asking, “When it comes to your health, why go to strangers?” The implication is that Palmetto Community is the sort of neighborly place where, say, Marcus Welby would have sent his own family for medical treatment.

  One change is immediately obvious: Everyone who works at Palmetto except the doctors now wears what look like designer pajamas in shades of soft green and coral that match the new carpets and wallpaper. The result is that you can’t tell the janitor from the head nurse. I had to ask six people before I found someone who could lead me to Aunt Sylvia. I finally found her, dazed and nervous, in a lounge near the ER. She cried when she saw me.

  “Where is Mom?” I said. “Have they admitted her?”

  “They won’t tell me anything.”

  I approached the green-and-coral-pajama crew at the circular work station in the middle of the ER. No one knew anything about Mom. I asked for Dr. Capper.

  “He’ll be back down in a minute. Please take a seat in the visitors’ lounge.”

  An hour later, Dr. Capper finally appeared. He was about my age, with a tan too deep for someone who should know better than to bake in the sun.

  “Your mother has had a TIA, a transient ischemic attack. Do you know what that is?” he began, in a condescending tone that I wouldn’t take even with my slowest seventh grader.

  “A kind of mini-stroke, right?”

  “Very good. Yes, it’s affected her speech and her movement on the left side of her body. Sometimes the effects are temporary. It’s too soon to say much more.”

  “You’re admitting her, I assume.”

  “As soon as we have a bed for her.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “In one of the examining rooms here in the ER.”

  “She’s been here for eight hours. Is anyone with her?”

  Dr. Capper stifled a yawn, glanced at his watch. “These are questions you’ll have to ask one of the nurses.”

  “But I’m asking you. My mother is seventy-eight years old, she’s probably scared out of her mind, and no one has thought to let her eighty-year-old sister see her. You’re lucky my aunt didn’t have a coronary in the waiting room. When is my mother likely to get a bed?”

  “Again, you’ll have to ask the nurses.”

  “And again, I’m asking you. If you don’t have a bed for her, I’d like you to find another hospital that does. And I want to see her right now.”

  “Miss Kaplan, I realize how emotional a time this must be for you, but we have to follow procedures here. I can take you to your mother. I’ll see her when I make rounds over the weekend.”

  By the time I’d finished talking with Dr. Capper—or, rather, when he was finished with me—Mom had been moved to a bed on the Intensive Care Unit. She was dozing when Aunt Sylvia and I walked into her room.

  “Mom,” I whispered. Her lashes fluttered, eyes opened, though her left eye and that side of her face were drooping. I held her limp left hand in mine. She moved her mouth slightly as if trying to speak, but no sound came out.

  “I just wanted you to know I was here,” I said. “Go back to sleep. Can I get you anything before I go?”

  She moved her head slightly. Then she dozed off again.

  The next day, neither Dr. Capper nor any doctor covering for him came to see Mom. No tests had been ordered. No one on duty could tell me anything about her condition.

  Mom was not yet permitted a phone in her room, and my cell didn’t work inside the hospital. I asked one of the nurses on the floor to call Dr. Capper’s service and leave an urgent message for him
to call me back there, at the ICU. And when he did, an hour later, I fired him over the phone while I was standing at the nurse’s station in the center of the unit. I was within earshot of a half-dozen nurses and aides. Some of them, hearing my end of the conversation, gave me a thumbs-up.

  “I don’t advise you to change physicians at this point,” he said. “Maybe you don’t realize how complicated this situation is, especially since she really doesn’t have her own doctor here. After she’s stabilized, she can go back to her internist in Brooklyn. But until then, she came in through our ER, I took her case, and I’ll be happy to see it through. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  I found a pay phone and called Sarah. She’s worked in a hospital and she understands healthcare. She usually has creative ideas on how to outsmart the system.

  “Make your case to the chief administrator of the hospital,” she advised. “If you get nowhere, threaten to make this the lead story on tomorrow’s local news. TV stations in South Florida love features about heartless bureaucrats trying to take advantage of old people. And stories about arrogant doctors are always a hit.”

  At my first hint of media involvement, Ted Jaffa, Palmetto’s CEO, expressed his burning desire to do whatever was best for Mom. He led me down the hall and introduced me to Dr. Amanda Ling, who agreed to take over Mom’s care. She immediately ordered CAT scans and blood work, called in a range of specialists, patiently answered all my questions (without making me feel like an idiot for asking them), comforted Mom, calmed Aunt Sylvia.

  “In two or three days, we should have a handle on things,” she told me.

  I called my brother.

  “I can’t stop thinking about Mom,” he said. “Kathy is concerned, too. We haven’t told the kids, no need to upset them until we know more, right? Kathy thinks they’re a little young to understand.” Neil and Kathy’s boys are teenagers.

  “I think their grandmother would like to hear from them. From you, too.”

  “You know, I meant to call over the weekend, but with the time difference and all it was too late when we got home from lacrosse. By the way, both your nephews won trophies. I hope you sent our love to Mom.”

  “I’m thrilled beyond words that lacrosse is going so well for you, Neil. Shall I tell you what I was doing while you were enjoying yourselves? I was firing an incompetent doctor, monitoring overworked nurses to make sure they didn’t make any critical mistakes with Mom’s medication, keeping Mom’s spirits up, trying to figure out how we will manage if she needs ongoing care, and preventing Aunt Sylvia from having panic attacks in the hospital corridors.”

  “Everyone handles stress differently, Miriam. For me, it helps to be with my children to get my mind off Mom. You know you can call me any time.”

  “I may not be able to do this alone, Neil. You’ve been away for twenty-five years. I’ve never asked you for help with Mom before.”

  “I’m not in the mood for lectures, if you don’t mind. I have a family to take care of and ten stores to run. Just tell me what you need.”

  He has a family and important work to do. A life that matters, unlike mine. “Do you suppose that you and your family can manage to call her today? Your sons are old enough to comprehend that their grandmother is sick. She would feel better if she heard from them.”

  __________

  Mom was able to stay awake only for short intervals. She wasn’t in pain, but she was scared by what had happened to her and frustrated by her inability to move without help or to speak clearly. What she was able to articulate sounded like gibberish. During her long naps, when it wasn’t too hot outside, Aunt Sylvia and I took walks in the park behind the hospital. Over and again, Aunt Sylvia told me how hard it was to lose the people you loved as you got older. “You don’t get used to it. I’ve already buried a sister and brother, a husband, and these days, I go to funerals all the time. So many friends—gone! It never gets easier.”

  Neil called the unit once, from his car phone, when Mom was asleep. I took the call at the nurse’s station, but it sounded as if he were talking from inside a tunnel and I could only understand about every other word he said. He and Kathy sent Mom a showy floral arrangement studded with birds-of-paradise and gold Mylar bows. Flowers aren’t allowed in patient rooms on the ICU. I instructed the nurses to find a home for my brother’s gift on another wing of the hospital.

  The prognosis for a speedy recovery was not good. Dr. Ling was concerned about the care Mom would need when we got back to New York. Physical therapy, speech therapy, monitored medication, around-the-clock nursing care.

  “I’ll get someone here to look into skilled nursing facilities and assisted living centers near your home in New York,” Dr. Ling said.

  “That would be just a short-term thing, right? Her speech seems improved, even if she’s still mixing up some words. And the paralysis is almost gone. She does pretty well with a walker.”

  “Too early to say how much more we can expect her to improve. She was in good health before the TIA, and that will help her. But her age is a significant factor. A one-hundred-percent recovery is unlikely. She will probably regain most of her mobility. The speech may take more time. However, for a while—and I can’t tell you exactly how long—she can’t realistically expect to go back to her home, or even to yours. You should also know that your mother is a candidate for another TIA—even with the blood thinners and everything else we’re doing for her.”

  “When will she be discharged?”

  “We need to make sure she has somewhere to go, a facility that can give her the treatment she needs. I assume you want her back in the New York area, but I’d like to watch her here for a few more days.”

  Dr. Ling put her hand on my arm. “Do you have anyone to help you through this?”

  I wondered if she meant, “This would be easier if you were married? Or is that my own voice I think I hear? Or my mother’s?

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  Back at Aunt Sylvia’s I checked messages on my cell phone for the first time in days. Sarah and Beth sent love, wanted me to call when I could. Violet, who had heard about Mom from Sarah, offered to drive down from Acedia Bay—three hundred miles away—if she could be of any help to us. My principal left word that she had found a substitute to take over my classes. Film on Fridays, though, would most likely be a study hall until I returned. No one else was prepared to teach it.

  Gabe had called. Twice. He left his first message on the day after he’d driven me to the airport: “I hope all is going as well as could be expected down there. Call me when you can.”

  The second message was just an hour old: “I called the Gillians tonight, and Beth says no one has heard from you since you spoke to Sarah a few days ago. We’re all hoping that your mother, and you, are doing all right. I had an idea that maybe I could send a speaker to your film class this week. Let me know and I’ll call your school.”

  __________

  “Gabe, it’s Miriam.”

  “So glad to hear your voice. How are you? How is she?”

  I told him, as succinctly as I could manage, what was happening.

  “You may feel overwhelmed, but it really does sound as if you have things under control,” he said.

  “If only . . .”

  “What?”

  “I was going to say that I’m exhausted, and the hardest part may still be ahead of me. Making arrangements for getting her back to New York and in the right environment. Not to mention facing the fact that my mother will never be the same again. And I hate doing this by myself. My brother is no help.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “You already did. Do you really think you can find a speaker for my film class?”

  “I’m not promising Spike Lee, but I think I can get someone to entertain the kids.”

  “They’ll never forget it, I’m sure. Thanks.”

 
“And Miriam, let Beth or Sarah know how you’re doing. Why don’t you keep your cell phone turned on?”

  “Doesn’t work in the hospital. You can leave messages, but you’ll have to wait for me to call you back.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t play too hard to get, will you?”

  The next day my principal called again to let me know that a young film director who had won an award for his documentary about Kurt Cobain was coming to address my Film on Fridays class. The kids were ecstatic. That nice man from the Film Institute had set it all up.

  Leaning on a walker and with help from a nurse, Mom was finally able to totter down the full length of the hallway. There was talk of moving her out of the ICU and to a regular bed over the weekend. Her speech remained slurred and she sometimes had trouble finding the right words for what she wanted to say. She requested make-up, instead of milk, for her coffee, and she asked for an extra blanket because the room was too “short.” She occasionally called me Gladys, the name of her sister who’s been dead for twenty years.

  Still, we reminisced about my childhood in Brooklyn and I told her funny stories about some of my students. I brought her some of her own clothing to wear. I found a manicurist from a nearby beauty shop who was willing to come to the hospital to do her nails. The less Mom looked like a patient, the more her spirit seemed to emerge.

  A social worker was assigned to help arrange for Mom’s care back in New York. She gave me lists of toll-free numbers for advice and information, and stacks of brochures with glossy photos of smiling, silver-haired people in wheelchairs, being fed and read to by empathetic caregivers in “modern, home-like” facilities. I stashed the materials in a pile on Aunt Sylvia’s dining room table, vowing to give them some attention over the weekend.

  The idea that Mom might never be able to go home, never live in her own apartment again, terrified me, but in her presence I treated the prospect of her stay at a facility as good news, just a temporary, necessary step on her road back to herself. A hundred times, Aunt Sylvia asked when Mom would be able to get “back to normal.” A hundred times, I evaded the question. Keeping Mom’s spirits high and Aunt Sylvia’s anxiety low took all of my energy.