I reached for the counter, but it was too late. My body was crashing. I tried to call for Katie, but no words came. It was as if everything in my world had turned to slow motion. My fingers failed me as I attempted to grasp at the handles, towels, and cupboards to stop my fall. I watched the cabinets slowly pass by as my body fell to the floor.
The platter shattered into a thousand little pieces while my body sank onto the unforgiving tile. Pain shot through my body like a rogue electrical current, but it was nothing compared to not being able to breathe. I stilled my mind, hoping this was all some misunderstanding between my mind and my body. How could a person forget how to breathe? As my chest heaved with impatience, I tried to climb back up, but I was going nowhere. I was plastered to the floor, unable to move. I closed my eyes and tried to focus.
Deep. Long. Breaths.
That wasn’t too much to ask. I commanded my lungs to listen to my mind, but nothing happened. It was as if my body gave up, but my mind was still fully functioning. Not allowing myself to panic, I focused on trying to take in a breath, calmly. Studying the darkness of my lids, I begged my body to listen, but it had stopped long ago.
The air would not come.
Please, dear Jesus, let Jason get home before Katie finds me. I don’t want her to see me like this. The tightness in my chest turned to a tickle that tricked me into thinking I could breathe. Attempting to inhale did nothing but remind me that my lungs already felt too full. My pulse pounded in my ears as I attempted to move, but all that did was make my desire for air more urgent. A burning sensation at the center of my chest slowly spread in all directions, while I prayed for one more sip of air, no matter how small.
Ominous feelings spread through me, but I tried to fight them off. I needed to stay positive. My body needed air. My mind needed air to survive. This wasn’t how I wanted to go. I didn’t understand how this could be happening. I wasn’t ready for the darkness. Not yet.
The pounding in my ears gave way to a peaceful sensation as my body began to relax, and I opened my eyes. I thought about my mother and how close we were to seeing one another, but instead of happiness I felt the pain of leaving everyone behind. Things were too good to leave. I didn’t want to miss this life. I wasn’t done here.
My world became more muffled with each passing second. I thought I heard a voice. I thought I heard footsteps.
Tears slipped out of my eyes as I stared at the ceiling and at the little girl who was now rubbing my face. I wanted to tell her that everything was fine, but I knew it wasn’t as my world slipped away.
I found myself in that middling space between consciousness where I could take my own breaths and move my lips in the shape of a smile, but that feeling was where it ended. None of those things happened. Only my imagination believed they did. The world I was stuck in left me stranded, isolated, between existing and merely being. I wanted to sigh, but I couldn’t. Sometimes in life a good sigh would put everything in perspective, but I didn’t have that luxury. My mind wasn’t allowed a break.
I’ve heard that I was in a lot of pain, but I didn’t notice it in my woozy state. It was an agreeable place to be, floating between realities. Every so often, I’d feel like I was falling, but I never hit the ground. I dared to let myself enjoy the sensation of merely hovering before I went splat.
Several sets of footsteps surrounded my bed, and I listened intently. Often, I would hear these sounds and nothing would happen. Those very same feet would walk away without a word.
“When will she be awake?” Carla asked, her voice quivery.
I’m not?
“We’re keeping her in a medically induced coma. Her lungs aren’t responding to the antibiotics. We’re waiting for some final test results, but it appears to be a fungal infection.”
“I thought it was pneumonia,” Carla responded.
“It’s pneumonia. They needed to identify if it was bacterial or fungal so this is good news. They’re getting closer,” Jason replied, his voice weary.
A cool hand clasped mine. It was Jason’s. I tried to squeeze back, but I doubt I managed.
I heard Carla blow her nose and excuse herself from the room.
“So you’re keeping her in a coma because of the pneumonia, not the brain contusion?” Jason asked the doctor.
“Correct.”
Someone moved my hand over my head or at least I think that was what happened. I honestly wasn’t that great with directions ever since they hooked me up. Next my legs became chilled as someone drew on my ankles, but they were quickly covered up.
“Is this common?” Jason asked.
“Her immune system isn’t as strong as other people’s. She was likely walking around with pneumonia for some time. Couple that with the recent onset of diabetes, and she was in no condition to fight any longer. She’s just lucky the medics got to her in time.”
There was a few minutes of silence.
“Diabetes Mellitus is a rather common side effect in transplant patients,” the doctor continued. “We should be able to get it controlled if…”
“If you can get everything else controlled.” I heard the scowl in Jason’s voice.
“Precisely,” the doctor responded.
I thought back to my last solid memory and my head began to pound. Katie. Where was Katie? Was she okay? I remembered the platter slipping from my hand, but how did I get here? I didn’t remember any of it.
Jason was tapping his fingers nervously against the bed, and I wanted to cover his hands with mine—quiet his mind, but I couldn’t move. It felt as if I’d been fastened to this bed. I doubt I had.
“I love you so much, Gabby Sullivan. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and when you come out of this, I want to be the first one you see,” he whispered. “Promise me, you’ll keep fighting no matter what, baby. I’ll be here for you every step of the way.”
Slow down your thinking.
His fingers stopped tapping, as if he’d heard me. I felt a breeze like he’d moved away from the bed. My heart fell in disappointment. I didn’t want him to leave. Not yet. But then panic set in. Who was watching Katie?
I felt a moist hand touch my cheek from the other side of the bed. The thick fingers stroked my cheek, and I knew it was Jason. He hadn’t left. He switched sides. Every so often, his fingers would leave my cheek, and they’d come back moist. Was he wiping away tears? Were they mine or his? Oh, how I wished I could comfort him.
“She’s going to be fine, Jason,” my father replied. “It’s the Sullivan way.”
Where did he come from?
Carla began to explain to my father what the doctor had relayed, so he must have just gotten here.
“How’s Katie holding up?” my father asked.
“She’s doing better. She wants to come visit Gabby, but I don’t think—”
“Agreed. I think we should wait,” my father bristled at the notion.
Wait until what? Was there something you two thought might happen between now and then? Although, I did tend to agree with them, I’d probably already scarred her for life.
“Have you eaten anything today?” my father asked.
I waited for the answer. Was he talking to Carla or Jason?
“No. Not hungry,” Jason replied.
“Gabby’s going to need you to be strong when she wakes up. Go home. Get some rest. It sounds like she’s sleeping until they take her out of this induced coma.”
“I’m not leaving her side,” Jason replied. The strength in his voice created an unexpected ache. Very few men ever challenged my father. It was nice to know I was with one who would.
Their voices began to blend into one muddled tone no matter how hard I tried to fight it. I wasn’t done. A pinch and a tug on my hand told me why things had become unclear once more—medicine time. I rolled my eyeballs back and forth under my lids, hoping I’d get someone’s attention. Every so often I tried opening my lids, but nothing happened. It was infuriating. It was like tape was sealing them shut.
Being suspended between two realities was quite difficult, quite exhausting, but no matter how much I slept I still woke tired. My lungs no longer ached. Nothing ached, but everything was dull. I tried to imagine feeling and what that might entail, but the grogginess tended to wipe out any clues.
I spent the next several hours in the dark, but I wasn’t asleep, and I was almost certain I wasn’t alone, but I couldn’t hear anything besides the click and hiss of the ventilator. I guess I should be grateful for the reminder that I was alive, but if I were to take that one step further, I was alive only because I was hooked up to machines. So you know, I could go either way with that. It was a definite positive to be here, but it felt like a very tedious existence. One trip over the extension cord, and lights out.
I pretended to sigh. I wanted to wake up—like really wake up. I wanted to blink my lids and yawn. I wanted to stretch my body as my spine clicked into place. I wanted these thoughts to STOP. I wanted quiet.
This much mindless chatter made me think I was on the verge of losing my mind, and that made me want to lose my mind.
“We have a surprise visitor for you,” Carla said. “Come on in, Jason.”
Wait a second. Wasn’t he already here? How long had I been out this time?
“It’s okay. You can go over and talk to her,” Jason whispered.
Last I heard, we all decided to wait to have Katie visit me. I didn’t like being kept in the dark like this.
A tiny hand smacked my arm. “Hi, Gabby. I made cookies.”
“You can put those on the counter,” my father replied, his voice softening by the second. “She’ll eat them a little later.
“Miss you at home,” Katie said.
Home. She thought of it as home.
“I took Katie for a spin on the scooter,” Jason said.
Oh, hell to the no.
“Did you see Gabby’s lip twitch?” my father laughed.
Was that what it had come to? A lip twitch? For some reason out of everything, this irked me slightly.
“Nuh-uh,” Katie said, giggling.
I heard the rails jiggle and a few footsteps. Were they leaving? It felt like they just got here.
Jason trailed his finger along my arm, the way he used to, and I tried to turn my head toward him.
“Lucky penny?” Katie asked. Her voice trailed away.
“She still has it. I put it by her bed,” Jason assured her and that was all I remembered.
I heard the phone ring, wrenching me from my nonexistent rest. I flopped my hand over to the phone and picked it up, only it still rang…
Damn!
The medicine pumping through my veins was wreaking havoc with my psyche. The shrill ring continued while I patiently waited for someone—anyone—to answer it. No one did. This lack of attention made me concerned. What if some other alarm went off and no one paid attention? As many as I was hooked up to, I assumed that would have a poor outcome.
The ringing eventually stopped but was quickly replaced by a small beeping sound that was very persistent. A rush of people besieged the space, cutting off any possibility to quiet my mind. Things sounded frantic on the outside so I retreated deep into myself, bitterness ripping at my soul.
A harmonica began echoing through the room and I wanted to chuckle. Who in their right mind would play a harmonica in a place like this? I listened carefully, attempting to catch a tune, but the strangled melody only seemed to match the click and hiss next to me. For every two hisses, the harmonica honked. It was quite unsettling.
“She’s fighting the ventilator. Trying to breath on her own,” a woman said.
Was that a bad thing?
“Page the doctor. See what he wants to do,” another woman answered.
Let’s roll with it…
“What’s going on?” Jason asked.
My heart skipped a beat when I heard his voice. It was the most comforting thing I could’ve asked for, only I didn’t have to.
“She’s attempting to breathe against the ventilator,” the nurse explained. “But we don’t know if her lungs are strong enough to maintain it.”
I felt Jason’s hands run along my forehead and then heard him whisper, “I knew you were a fighter.”
I was a fighter.
I repeated this phrase many times until I heard the honking of the ventilator quiet. Had I stopped fighting or had they done something to me? My thoughts became groggy, and I learned the answer soon enough.
I spent hours, maybe days, in a fuzzy dream state that finally allowed my mind some rest. In this newly manufactured world, time didn’t matter and neither did much of anything, but it was what I needed, a quiet mind.
My eyes flashed open with a start as pain shot down my chest. I looked out into the dimly lit corridor and wondered if this, too, was an illusion, a fragment of my imagination. Were my eyes actually open or was I dreaming this as well?
I reached up to my neck and rubbed my throat. The dull ache was getting worse the longer I was awake. I was awake, right? I brought my hand in front of my face and fisted it a few times. I listened for the ventilator and heard nothing but silence.
It was over. The worst was over. I massaged my chest as I allowed the sensations of life and pain to settle around me. Both were welcomed. I took a deep breath in and let the air out slowly. I waited for an alarm to sound letting the nurses know I was awake, but that never came. I tried to slide up in the bed, but I wasn’t strong enough.
I looked outside to see nothing but the night sky. Relief collided with misery as I looked around the empty room. I was by myself, and then I saw him. Jason was asleep in the chair. His shirt was completely wrinkled and several days’ growth bordered his jaw.
I went to speak, but my throat closed in on itself; the pain becoming much worse. I tried a whisper, but nothing happened. I looked around the bed and saw an empty orange juice container sitting on the rolling table. I debated about throwing it at him, but thought it might be a rude awakening, considering everything he’d been through. Instead, I swiped my hand against it and it tumbled to the floor.
Jason shot up from his slumber and looked toward the racket before his eyes landed on mine. He sprang up from the chair and dashed to the side of the hospital bed.
“I won’t ask how you’re feeling,” he grinned, his hands finding mine.
My mouth cracked instead of smiled, and I knew if I looked anything like I felt, Jason was a definite keeper. My legs tented the thin sheet as I attempted to get comfortable while Jason pushed the nurse button.
“They told me to page them if you woke up.” Jason stooped over me, his wry grin lighting up my world. “Took you long enough,” he murmured.
“You’re telling me,” I whispered. “Katie?”
“She’s at home with Brandy. Katie’s come almost every day.”
Almost every day? How long had I been here?
“If it wasn’t for…” Jason’s voice trailed off.
“What do you mean?” I whispered, pushing through the violent burn in my throat.
“Katie was the one who dialed 9-1-1. She saved your life.”
It was a lovely Saturday, but the sunshine snuck into the bedroom way before I was ready. I crawled back under the covers and tugged the comforter over my head. Katie had been pretty attached since everything had happened, and she’d been nestled between Jason and me all night. Katie had crawled into our bed to watch the Addams Family, and she never left. Jason had gotten up earlier and brought me coffee.
I’d been home for a week, but most of that time had been filled with doctor appointments on top of doctor appointments. This was the first day that I didn’t have to do a thing, and I was looking forward to it. The only thing we had planned wasn’t until later this evening, the party we’d never had to introduce Katie to everyone.
Granted most people had already met her during visiting hours at the hospital, but that wasn’t quite like I imagined. She also got her fifteen minutes of fame because 9-1-1 had release
d the tape of her calling in, and after all, she was only four. It made the local news.
Thankfully, Carla was a committed party planner. The only stipulation was that Jason wanted to grill for everyone, but everything else was up to Carla so I could only imagine what she was up to.
I heard Jason coming up the stairs and peered into the hallway to see him carrying a tray toward us.
“Rise and shine,” Jason said, smiling.
Katie began to stir when I lifted the covers off, and Jason knelt down to put the tray on my lap.
“Thought you two could share some tasty Mickey pancakes and berries,” he said, almost sheepish.
“I think you were born for this,” I whispered. My entire body filled with love for this man.
Jason leaned over and kissed me on my cheek while Katie slithered up to see what was on the tray.
“I’ve got a few things to take care of,” Jason said, standing back up. “Enjoy.”
“We will,” I assured him. He walked out of the bedroom and back down the stairs, and I wanted to follow him to thank him properly.
Katie and I plowed through the pancakes. I learned that she liked syrup more than most things and her pancakes were completely sopping with the amber liquid. When she finished, she crawled out of the bed and walked out of our bedroom and right into hers. I smiled and shook my head, amazed by this little girl.
I got ready pretty quickly and found Katie already dressed and her hair half-combed. We walked down the stairs to find Jason in his study, his expression contemplative.
“Everything okay?” I asked, popping my head in, while Katie walked into the great room.
“Yeah. All’s good. Just some logistical issues I have to iron out,” Jason said, rubbing his hands across his face in frustration.
I walked over to him and spun his chair around, taking a seat on his lap. With just one look he had my body begging for more.
“What you did for us this morning was quite sweet,” I whispered, close to his ear. “I think it deserves a proper thank you.”
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