Hospital

When the phone rang at ten o’clock last night, at first I thought it was a prank call or a wrong number dialed by someone who didn’t speak English. But it was my Dad.

Dad’s in the hospital right now; he was checked in two weeks ago to treat the fluid accumulation that is one of the terrible symptoms of chronic congestive heart failure.

I’ve been spending every spare moment at the hospital, because it is obvious to me that patients whose family and friends are frequently present at bedside receive better care. At least, this is the case at Stanford University Hospital.

So the past two weeks have been quite a challenge. I started a new job at Apple Computer six days ago, and my husband is on a 10-day fishing trip so I’m on my own. I’ve been following this schedule:

6 AM: wake up, take care of domestic chores, feed the cats & dog
8:30 AM: arrive at the hospital, talk to the nurse, talk to the doctor, help Dad eat breakfast
10:30 AM: go to work; work straight through, no lunch break or business lunch break only
5:30 PM: back to hospital, help dad eat dinner
8:30 PM: home; walk dog, check in with daughter
10 PM: fall into bed, exhausted.

Next day: repeat

When the phone rang at 10 PM, I was half asleep, curled up on the sofa with my dachshund who was frantically licking my foot (he understands that a ringing phone needs to be answered, and a licked foot often wakes up its owner).

I learned later that a nursing aid had dialed my number, placed the phone in Dad’s hands, and left the room. Dad was crying.

“I can’t get to sleep! I don’t know what to do; I’m so thirsty…”

It took me about ten minutes to calm Dad — his hearing is so bad, it was hard for him to understand. I told him I was going to call the nurses’ station, and that I’d call him back.

The night nurse told me, in a rather truculent tone, “I’ve given him at least three cups of waters already!” She said she didn’t know who had helped Dad call me, or why that person didn’t just give Dad some juice.

And I asked her if she didn’t think that a patient who was still thirsty after three cups of water might respond to a little juice or maybe even some Pedialyte.

Well, maybe that would help.

I called Dad back and stayed on the phone with him until I was sure that someone had brought him some juice. And while we waited, I remembered an event from forty years back.

I was twelve years old, and I’d been hospitalized because for reasons never understood, I’d become unable to keep down any food or drink. I had to receive IV fluids. After three days, the doctors said it was time for me to try eating and drinking again, and the IV was removed. However, the hospital’s kitchen never got the message, and no meals were sent up. No one — except for me, of course — noticed. After about 24 hours, I called my dad.

“I’m so hungry! The doctor said I could have food but they haven’t brought me any!”

About fifteen minutes later I heard Dad coming — literally. He was at the nurses’ station, giving them a piece of his mind. Shortly after that I was given the best broth and jello I’d ever eaten; then a full meal. The next morning I was discharged.

I’m writing this from the atrium at Stanford Hospital. I’m going to go inside now, and make an appointment with the nursing supervisor.

Dad’s not a good patient. He complains. He is very demanding. But fair is fair. He had my back, and now I’ve got his.

My Brother’s House

Sometimes I believe that if I concentrate hard, stare into the middle distance and let my mind go cross-eyed, I can experience what I know to be true: that all times are one time, all events are happening simultaneously in an immense eternal instant, and the passage of time — the way we rush in the direction of increased entropy — is just an illusion.

So when I stand in the hallway outside the master bedroom in my brother’s house, it’s not a little crazy that I hear my sister-in-law and me laughing that it’s Christmas Eve and we’re still up, at 2:00 a.m., hiding in the bedroom and wrapping presents for our families. It’s not silly of me to think that if I turned and walked back to the kitchen I’d find my sister, brother, and husband sitting around the butcher block island drinking wine and hot chocolate, my brother-in-law telling a funny story, and all of us looking young and slim, not middle aged and a little tired.

My sanity is intact if I imagine that my little daughters are asleep upstairs, and their slightly older cousins are watching movies on the big screen TV, not getting married and having their own babies. Tomorrow we’ll eat sour cream apple coffee cake and open presents, my brother will receive a CD recording of “Hair,” and my daughters will dance a weird, neo-hippy-ish dance when he plays it on the stereo. They’ll be little, sweet, and charming, not grown and flying off to Switzerland and forgetting to email me for weeks on end.

It’s June. We’re at my brother’s house for our nephew’s wedding. The youngest of our kids is eighteen now. But I can’t take a step in my brother’s house without breathing in some sweet Christmas memory.