Confessions of a Mediocre Widow

by Catherine Tidd

  Don’t judge me…it’s not that I’m really into looks. I’m just incredibly squeamish. I’m more of a PG girl, and most motorcycle accidents are on the R-rated side.

  “Now, he’s got a pretty bad dislocated knee and some broken ribs,” the nurse said. “He’s going to be taking it easy for a while.”

  “Brad. Brad!” The officer’s voice suddenly came out in a staccato, as he tried to peer around the nurse who was untangling an IV. “Do you remember what happened?”

  Dazed and immobile, Brad tried to look up at him. “No.”

  “You hit another car. You passed a whole group of cars going at a high rate of speed and hit a guy and knocked him out. You don’t remember that?”

  “No?”

  Dissatisfied with Brad’s inadequate answers, Captain Inappropriate marched out. And my husband’s first words to me in the trauma room were, “Shit. We’re going to get sued.”

  I will say that one of my proudest moments as a wife was that I didn’t just let him have it while he was lying there, voicing my concern over matters that, in the grand scheme of things, really didn’t matter. I could have immediately gone into how our insurance rates will go up, and we’ll have to buy someone a new car. How I know I didn’t leave enough milk in the refrigerator for the kids, and my parents will have to go to the store now. But like an angel, I stuck to nice, soothing words, telling him the accident was no big deal.

  I figured I’d have plenty of time to lay into him later while he was at home and recovering.

  However, I did have the presence of mind to say to him, “Remember how you made me watch the Steelers game the entire time I was in labor with Sarah?”

  His eyes slanted and he tried to look at me from his immobile position.

  “Yeah?”

  “I have Pride and Prejudice in my bag. Maybe we can watch that tonight.”

  He rolled his eyes and gave a small, painful sigh of defeat.

  About an hour later, the hospital staff decided that Brad was ready to be checked in to a regular room. With his leg injury, they thought he would probably be there for a couple of days while they monitored him and taught him how to walk on crutches. And knowing that we would be there for a while, I told my dad to go home.

  “Are you sure?” he said. I could see he was having an internal battle between wanting to be there for me and wanting to get the hell out of that hospital.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “After he gets settled, I’m going to go grab a sandwich downstairs and read my People magazine. We’ll be okay. I’ll call you and Mom later when I know what’s going to happen next.”

  I gave my dad a hug and gathered up my purse and Brad’s belongings, which had been put into one of those white and surprisingly durable plastic bags they have at every hospital. I followed the orderlies and made polite conversation as they wheeled Brad into the elevator and then up to the second floor.

  “Brad?” I said, after he’d been settled into his new bed.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m starving. I think I’m going to go down and grab something to eat. Do you want me to get you anything?”

  “No…I’m so tired I don’t think I could eat anything. But…do you think they have Jell-O? I have the weirdest taste in my mouth.”

  I laughed. “This is a hospital. Their specialty is Jell-O.”

  I walked down the hall to find the room that hospitals have on every floor that contains the coffee, crackers, juice, and Jell-O for its patients and the people who have the unhappy task of sitting around and waiting for people to heal. I found some cherry Jell-O and a spoon, and made my way back to Brad. I awkwardly tried to spoon a few bites into his mouth, carefully trying not to spill it all over the neck brace he was still wearing, until he sighed a little and said, “That’s fine. That’s all I need. I just want to go to sleep now.”

  “Are you going to be okay for a minute?” I asked. “I’m going to run down and get something to eat, and I need to go to the car and grab my overnight bag. It has my book and everything in it. I’ll call your parents while I’m down there because I’m not getting any reception in here.”

  “Okay.”

  And that was the last conversation I had with my husband. Believe me, had I known, I would have talked about something more important than a sandwich and inadequate cell service.

  I went down the elevator and wound my way through the maze of the hospital until I found the parking lot. The sunlight made my eyes water a bit as I scanned around, trying to find my car because in the mayhem that was that morning, I had no idea where I’d parked it. Round and round the parking lot I walked, hitting my panic button, trying to set off the alarm so that I could find it. I imagined some bored patient looking down at me from their window above, laughing at this crazy woman in mismatched clothing looking for a beat-up minivan.

  I hope I at least provided someone with a little entertainment.

  Once I’d found the car and gotten my bag, I dialed the number to Brad’s parents’ house in Pennsylvania.

  “Bonnie?”

  “Hey! What’s going on with you guys?”

  “Now…I don’t want you to panic. But Brad was in an accident on his way to work.”

  “What?”

  At that point, I did my best to calm her down, explaining that while Brad was injured, he wasn’t in any real danger. I promised to keep her updated and that I’d have him call her as soon as he felt up to it.

  “Well, I just hope this means he’s off of riding motorcycles for good,” she said before we hung up. “Tell him that we love him and that we’ll talk to him soon.”

  “I will.”

  I started making my way back up to the room, and by the time I got there, Brad had fallen into a deep but restless sleep. He wouldn’t wake up, even with all of the noise I was making, setting my bag up on the heater next to the window and getting my stuff out. His body kept twitching, something I dismissed, thinking that he had to be so medicated for pain and everything else he had been through. And so I sat there, reading my celebrity gossip and munching on a bag of Doritos, having no idea that that would be the last meal I would eat for the next three days.

  “Excuse me?” A male nurse poked his head into the room.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Rodney. The doctors sent me down to get Brad. They just want to do a quick ultrasound of his neck and make sure there aren’t any clots or anything else they should be worried about.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Rodney moved the gurney into the room and positioned it next to the bed. And as he started talking…Brad didn’t even stir.

  “Brad? BRAD? BRAD?”

  “YEAH!” Brad’s response sounded like a three-year-old who was talking way too loud.

  “WE’RE GOING TO TAKE YOU IN FOR AN ULTRASOUND. OKAY?”

  “K!”

  Another male nurse walked into the room to help Rodney move Brad over to the gurney. He stayed asleep as we made our way into the elevator and to what seemed like the basement of the hospital, where he would have his ultrasound.

  “This is as far as you can go,” Rodney said as we stood outside a set of automatic double doors. “There’s a waiting room down the hall to the right. As soon as he’s done, someone will come down and get you.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  I made my way down the blinding white hall to the waiting room and sat on an overstuffed couch that looked like it was a cast-off from 1984. The only sound in the room was the bubbling aquarium that seemed to take up an entire wall and the quiet typing of a woman working behind a glass window. After what seemed like hours, I began to worry because as the time passed, what sounded like a routine ultrasound began turning into something more sinister in my head. Eventually, the receptionist went home and I was left alone, too scared to do anything but stare at the fish swimming in circles. I kept thinking to myse
lf, “If he’s okay, a nurse will come and get me. If he’s not, a doctor will.”

  When I looked up, three doctors were walking toward me, quietly talking to each other.

  It was hard to distinguish who was who in their matching white coats. They all seemed to move in unison, like three marshmallows who had somehow managed to graduate from medical school. I watched them walk down the long hall that was too brightly lit with fluorescent lights, and as they made their way closer to me, I knew without a doubt that they were about to tell me news that I didn’t want to hear.

  They arranged themselves in chairs around where I was sitting on the outdated couch. Perched and looking like they were ready to flee, they all stared at me and didn’t say anything for a moment, as if hoping that one of their colleagues would take over.

  “Mrs. Tidd?” one of them started, looking serious and like he would rather be anywhere else than in this waiting room with the unnecessary fish.

  “Yes?”

  “It seems that…” The younger of the three tried to take over.

  “Your husband’s had a stroke,” said the third, the one with graying hair, in a businesslike way. “We don’t know why and we don’t know how it happened. There is a good chance that the impact to Brad’s head and neck has caused this, but we really don’t know for sure.”

  “My husband…Brad’s had a…a what?”

  “A stroke,” he said. “He’s had a stroke.”

  “But…no, you don’t understand,” I said, my mouth feeling like sandpaper. “My husband is thirty-four. Thirty-four-year-old people don’t have strokes.”

  I felt sure that this rationale would cause them to all stand up simultaneously and slap their heads with the palms of their hands and say, “Shoot! You’re right! We thought you were married to that eighty-year-old we just brought in. Our bad! Your husband’s fine! He’s waiting for you in the cafeteria!”

  Nope.

  “Brad will be paralyzed on his left side,” said the youngest, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up farther onto the bridge of his nose. “There’s a good chance that he will be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”

  I couldn’t do anything but stare at the Doctors of Doom in stunned silence. Which apparently made them feel uncomfortable, because they started to shift and get to their feet, relieved to have this moment over so that they could go home and eat dinner like normal, unparalyzed people.

  “He’s being moved to the ICU right now,” said the gray-haired doctor. “Just go on up to the fifth floor. You’ll be able to see him there in a few minutes.”

  My stomach started to churn. I grabbed my purse and desperately rummaged around its disorganized contents to try and find my cell phone.

  No reception.

  “I need to use a phone,” I said. “I need to call my parents. Do you have a phone I can use?”

  “Of course,” said the younger doctor, relieved, as if giving me a usable phone was good enough news to buffer the blow he had just delivered. “Use the one on the receptionist’s desk.”

  I tried calling my parents at their home. No answer. I tried calling my dad’s cell phone. Nothing. Finally, in desperation, I called my older sister’s cell phone, and on the fourth ring, as I was about to give up, she answered.

  “Kristi? Are Mom and Dad there? I need them.”

  I could hear the joyful noise of her children playing at the park in the background, and she had to yell to be heard over the noise.

  “Cath? What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not sure if I heard this right. But I think the doctors just told me that Brad had a stroke. Is that right? Could they have told me that?”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Mom and Dad aren’t answering, and I don’t know where they are. Can you find someone for me? I need someone else here to listen to what the doctors are saying. I’m scared they’ll say something that I won’t understand,” I said, suddenly feeling more alone than I’d ever felt in my life.

  “I’ll find Mom and Dad,” I heard Kristi say breathlessly as she tried to round up her kids and take them home. “Brian! Get over here! Cath? I’ll find them. Okay? Someone’s coming. Can you hear me? Someone will be there.”

  I’m betting there’s not a person in the world who hasn’t felt a weird, inexplicable moment of calm when the news or diagnosis they have feared is actually given to them. It’s almost like adrenaline working in reverse. We somehow find temporary inner strength that we didn’t know we possessed and later, when we’re dealing with the aftermath of whatever fate has handed us, we wish it had stuck around. Because in that moment, I didn’t panic. I didn’t fall to my knees. I didn’t even cry.

  My mind immediately rushed through future scenarios, changing what I’d imagined earlier—rearranging the furniture on the main floor of my house for a man on crutches—to wondering if the ranch-style house around the corner was still for sale for the man in the wheelchair who needed a home without stairs. I reminded myself that Brad was larger than life, and I felt sure that he would bounce back…or at least bounce back enough to maybe work from home somehow. Ever the planner, I started worrying about things that would happen six months from that moment, so that when one of them happened, it would be something that I would expect.

  For someone who doesn’t like surprises, this was a biggie.

  After grabbing my bag from the room that I thought we would be staying in, I moved into my fourth area of the hospital that day and waited for Brad to get settled in his ICU room. When I saw the phone sitting on one of the end tables next to a vacant chair, I knew that I needed to make one more call. And as I slowly dialed the Tidds’ Pennsylvania number for the second time that day, I started feeling like I had lied to them. I had told them that he would be okay. This was all my fault.

  “Bonnie? It’s Catherine.”

  Suddenly, all of my attempts to “be strong” dissolved into a hiccup-cry into the palm of my hand. I started to fear that if I said the words out loud again, they might actually be true.

  “Brad’s…he’s had a stroke, Bonnie. I don’t know how this happened, but he’s had a stroke. Oh God. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. He’s in the ICU now. I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh no,” I heard her breathe on the other end of the line. “Jim! Jim!” I heard her say away from the phone to my father-in-law. “Brad’s had a stroke.”

  “We’re coming,” she said to me into the phone. “Hang in there, sweetie. We’re coming. We’d already bought tickets after you called this morning. We thought we’d come up and give him a hard time and just give him a hug. We’re leaving first thing tomorrow morning.”

  After hanging up the phone, I sat there staring blankly at the white walls of the waiting area, ignoring the sounds of CNN from the television mounted on the ceiling. I was vaguely aware of other people sitting around me, some doing their best to make conversation with each other and some looking too despondent to even try. Through the window, the sun started to set on that perfect summer day, and I felt my earlier hope and resolve begin to fade with the light.

  “Mrs. Tidd?” said a nurse. “You can come on back now.”

  I followed her through the doors into the ICU with my eyes focused straight ahead. Because the nurses needed to see anything and everything that was going on, there was no privacy. Each individual space had a glass wall looking into the hall so that you could see the entire room and anyone in it. If I made the mistake of glancing to the side, I would see all of the horrific situations of the other patients surrounding my husband.

  As it was, my peripheral vision was picking up enough. Another motorcyclist who hadn’t been wearing a helmet and was bandaged from the top of his head down to his toes. The old man with his wife by his side, silently weeping and holding his hand, preparing for a life alone. The beeps. The hissing of ventilators. The hum of machines that were keeping these strangers alive.r />
  I couldn’t believe that Brad was now one of them.

  When I walked into his room, I stopped for a moment, looking at the man who had always been in perpetual motion, now lying still and quiet and seemingly smaller than he had been when he left for work that morning. Tubes seemed to sprout from every limb, pumping in fluid to keep him going and then draining out what wasn’t necessary. There was a small cut on his nose that I had been too distracted to notice before. I swallowed hard, taking in the oxygen tubes coming from his nose and the lump of his right leg under the blanket that had been bandaged to twice its size because of the dislocation.

  I desperately wanted to climb into that bed with him, under the blankets that had been washed and sanitized so many times they had softened to the perfect weight. I craved curling up next to him and putting my head in the crook of his shoulder until I felt his arms around me in a silent assurance that everything would be okay.

  Instead, too scared that if I started crying I might never stop, I pulled a plastic chair over to his side and quietly took his hand. I ran my fingers over his wedding band and thought about what we had promised each other almost exactly eleven years earlier on our July 20 wedding day.

  In sickness and in health. Till death do us part.

  • • •

  About an hour later, my dad finally arrived in the work clothes he had been wearing when he met me earlier that day in the trauma room. He wrapped me in his arms for a second and just said, “It’s okay. I’m here. Mom’s coming. She’s just trying to find someone to watch the kids.”

  We sat in Brad’s ICU room, making the most idiotic conversation as if our normal behavior might make this all go away. The nurses came in and out, changing tubes, checking monitors, and trying to be as upbeat with us as they possibly could. Occasionally, they would ask us to step out while they changed tubes or updated other medical personnel on my husband’s condition. We sat in the ICU waiting room, which has to be one of the most miserable places on Earth because you’re surrounded by the horrific stories of illnesses, accidents, and life in general gone wrong.