by L. M. Reed
~ * * ~
Jerked awake by lights and sirens that sounded like they were coming from right outside, I jumped out of bed and made it to the window just in time to see a gurney being unloaded from an ambulance and wheeled into the front door of our house.
By the time I had thrown on some clothes, Dad was already strapped onto the gurney, and Mom was dressed and walking alongside him. Dad laid there, eyes closed, while one of the EMT’s helped steer and bag him at the same time.
Mom noticed me standing there at the foot of the stairs frozen in place.
“Stay here, don’t call Mark yet, I’ll phone you from the hospital,” she practically barked out the instructions as she disappeared into the back of the ambulance.
After the lights and sirens faded in the distance, I tried to pull myself together. Glancing at my watch, I noticed that it was just after five o’clock in the morning.
To say I was disoriented, would be putting it mildly. I knew who I was, but that was about all I could claim. My disjointed and confused thoughts—probably as much from lack of sleep as from the shock of what had just happened—made focusing difficult.
We only had two phones in the house so, with an unnatural outward calm, I searched for and found one of them to take upstairs in order to hear the ring when Mom called.
Two hours later, sitting at my desk dazedly staring at the cordless phone in my hand willing it to ring, the numbness in my mind was finally wearing off and I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
In my mind, I screamed and screamed and screamed.
Why can’t everything just stop! Stop moving, stop changing, just…STOP!
I was so tired of life throwing things at me. I wanted peace, quiet, rest…
When the phone finally rang, I nearly fell out of my chair even though I was expecting it…waiting for it.
“Mom…?” I ventured anxiously, “How is he?”
“He’s unconscious,” she replied tiredly. “They finally got him into the ICU and are running tests.”
“What happened?”
“His breathing became raspy around 4:30 and it woke me up. I took his temperature and it was 105. I gave him medicine and tried to give him a sponge bath to bring down his temp, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t get him to wake up so I called the ambulance. They’re going to let me know when the tests are done. Right now, I’m in the waiting room.”
“How did this happen?” I asked in anguish.
“He may have picked up a virus or something at the doctor appointment a few days ago,” Mom answered tiredly, “The timing would be right, but honestly they don’t know. Some of the medicines he’s been on over the years have basically destroyed his immune system, so it could be anything.”
“Do you want me to come?”
“No…call Mark, and let him know what’s happened—his new number is by the phone in the kitchen—but tell him not to come until we know more,” Mom ordered. “Oh, and we aren’t at the main Baylor hospital. This one was closer. It’s between I75 and the Tollway, just off the Turnpike.”
“Okay, let me know…” I began but Mom had already hung up.
I dialed Mark’s apartment, wondering if I would be too late to catch him before he left for class since it was already after seven. The phone rang quite a few times, and I was about to hang up and try again later when someone finally picked up and an unfamiliar deep voice said, “Hello.”
“I’m…uh…looking for Mark Wilson,” I began tentatively.
I hadn’t paid attention, big surprise, to Mark’s living arrangements, so I had no idea who was on the other end of the call.
“He’s already left for class,” the voice said briskly. “Can I take a message?”
The voice sounded in a hurry.
“Could you have him call home?” I didn’t know how much to say, but I wanted the voice to know it was important. “Dad’s in the hospital.”
“CeeCee?” the voice asked, suddenly concerned.
“Y…yes,” I answered with some trepidation.
The voice chuckled and identified itself, “I’m Nick Barrett, Mark’s new roommate. How’s your dad doing? Is it serious?”
“He’s unconscious,” I replied with a catch in my voice, “Mom said his temperature was 105. They don’t really know anything yet.”
“I’ll let Mark know as soon as I can get a hold of him,” Nick reassured me.
“Thank you,” I whispered and hung up.
I couldn’t stay on the phone any longer. Nick’s unexpected kindness and concern had tears welling in my eyes.
Once again, I found myself sitting at my desk, dazed, waiting for the phone, anxious for Mark’s call. I wanted to ring the hospital to check on Dad, but Mom hadn’t left me a phone number, and I didn’t know the name of the hospital, just the location.
I picked up the phone on the first ring.
“Mark?”
I didn’t even bother saying “hello”. It had to be Mark.
“CeeCee, Nick said you called here looking for me. What’s going on?”
I could hear the underlying stress in his voice.
“Dad spiked a 105 fever around 5 AM, so Mom had to call 911. The ambulance came and took him to a hospital.”
I probably wasn’t doing any of it very well, but I was too upset to stop and think about what I was saying, or how I was saying it.
“Mom rode in the ambulance with Dad, but wouldn’t let me go. She couldn’t get him to open his eyes….”
My voice broke, and I had to stop to catch my breath.
“CeeCee, it’s okay. Take your time. Is Dad more stable now?”
“No,” I whispered, still unable to control my voice.
“So what are they saying? How is he?”
After taking a few deep breaths, I was able to continue.
“I don’t know, they were still running tests on him when Mom called. They got him into the ICU and were having to do the tests in there, so she was in the waiting room. She didn’t want me to worry you until we had more information, that’s why I didn’t call earlier this morning, she wanted me to wait until she called,” I continued in a rush, “Oh Mark, I’ve been so awful, and I was finally doing better, and Dad and I were talking… communicating again…and I even started trying to help Mom more, and…”
“CeeCee,” Mark interrupted, “it’s okay; you were doing your best. I know it’s been hard on you,” he acknowledged, and then added more to himself than to me, “I should have come home to help, no matter what Mom and Dad thought.”
“No, I haven’t been doing my best, that’s just it, I’ve been really rotten, and you know it. I…”
Mark broke in again, “Listen, we’ll have to beat ourselves up later, right now I need to get a few things taken care of and then I’ll head that way. I should be there in about…four hours, okay?”
“Thanks, Mark,” I said gratefully, “Oh, they didn’t take him to the main Baylor hospital, it was too far. He’s at the one between I75 and the Tollway, just off the Turnpike, not too far from here. And, um, just so you know, Mom told me that when I did talk to you I was to tell you not to come, so I’m telling you not to come, got it?”
“Understood” Mark replied and I could hear the grin in his voice. “Love you, Sis.”
“Love you, too. Be careful, and NO TICKETS!”
“I’ll try my best,” again with the grin in his voice.
Just knowing that Mark was coming calmed me down enough to think at least semi-rationally. As much as I wanted to go straight to the hospital, I knew there were a few things I needed to do at the house; otherwise, Mom would think she needed to do them.
First things first, Mark would need a place to sleep.
Our new house was a lot smaller than our last one. Being limited by price and handicap requirements, we didn’t have many choices. We managed to find one with the master bedroom and bath downstairs, but we ha
d to have the bathroom modified, some doorways widened, and all of the carpet downstairs removed to accommodate the wheelchair.
The rest of the house consisted of a very small half-bath downstairs for company, a living/dining room combo, eat-in kitchen, and a detached one-car garage where we kept our compact car. When we moved, since Mom was the only driver in the house, we sold Dad’s SUV so we only had the one car.
When we got the handicapped van it had to stay parked in the driveway; it wouldn’t have fit in the garage anyway. Thankfully, my parents hadn’t owed anything on our other house, having moved there before I was born, so there was enough money leftover for modifications after buying the new house.
The problem was that even though the house had two bedrooms upstairs, one for me and one for Mark whenever he came home to visit, Mark’s room was also the “storage room” for anything that didn’t fit anywhere else in the house.
Mark seldom came home, and he never stayed more than a night or two, so each visit required some “rearranging” of stuff. Going through the bathroom that connected the two bedrooms, and opening the door to the spare room—I doubted I could have opened the hall door to the bedroom since we thought of that area as “free floor space” and used it as such—I temporarily allowed myself to be depressed by the sight that met my eyes.
There was no way he was going to be able to get to the bed or sleep in the bed without major removal.
What is all this stuff anyway? I asked myself in disgust. We’re a bunch of pack rats.
It wasn’t packed to the ceiling in every part of the room, but a rather large percentage of it was.
The bed, I groaned quietly, where’s the bed? Okay, get a grip, you can do this, I scolded myself severely. Mark is coming home, there’s motivation for you.
He hadn’t been home since Christmas, and that was only for one night, so he had slept on the couch downstairs. Had he ever slept in that room? I think he had the first year or so after we moved in, but the room just kept filling up with junk.
I had a sudden flash of memory, something about a girl who wouldn’t take the garbage out, and all of the trash ended up taking over everything. That seemed appropriate to our situation, only it wasn’t garbage; at least it wasn’t supposed to be.
For a moment, my nerve failed me. What was so bad about sleeping on the couch anyway? I sighed, maybe the fact that the couch was less than 6 foot in length while my brother was over 6 foot in height. I could give him my room, and I could sleep on the couch.
EW!
That was all the motivation I needed. Squaring my shoulders, I got to work. The main things were to:
1. Clear a path to the bed from the bathroom as well as the hallway door; I didn’t want him to have to come through my room just to get out of his room.
2. Make sure the bed was junk free.
That would give Mark a place to sleep for the night, and maybe he and I could work on the rest together if we had a little time. He would have to use my closet if he wanted to hang anything up. His closet…I shuddered, it didn’t bear thinking about.
After deciding on a plan of action—basically moving everything I could into my room to stack into the one corner of my room that was, I hesitated to say empty, but more empty than any other part of the room—it took me about forty minutes to execute said plan. I was definitely sweating by the time I finished.
After making sure there were clean sheets and pillowcases on the bed, I jumped into the shower for a few minutes to cool off, got dressed, ran down the stairs, and grabbed some bottled water out of the fridge.
Glancing at the clock on the stove, I decided to head to the hospital to see if there was any news. Part of me wanted to wait until Mark could be there, too, for moral support, but I had to know what was going on.
Locking the door behind me, I headed for the car.