They're Always With You

by Mary Clare Lockman

  “It’s always a shock how quickly things can happen,” Maggie said. “Hang in there.” She squeezed my arm.

  We walked over to Gramp’s bed. My legs felt kind of heavy and, as funny as it sounds, so did my heart. I could feel it like a large presence in my chest. My mom rubbed Gramp’s good arm and said, “Dad, we’re all here.” She stopped and I looked up and saw her wipe under her eyes. My dad put his arm around her and then he put his other arm around me.

  “You can talk to Gramps if you want to,” my dad said. “They told us they don’t know what a person understands when they’re in a coma.”

  I really didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t like usual when I said something and Gramps patted my arm or laughed or his eyes twinkled. I swallowed even though I didn’t have any saliva in my mouth. “Gramps, it’s Colette,” I said. The words sounded strange since there was no response from Gramps. I wished I had the perfect words to make him open his eyes.

  Aunt Florence had stayed back to talk with Maggie, nurse to nurse. She came into the room now and stood with the rest of us. I liked her being with us since she was in her nurse uniform and she seemed to know all about everything they would do for Gramps.

  “Anything new?” my mom asked.

  “Nothing new. We just have to wait and see,” Aunt Florence said.

  Nurse Maggie came into the room, looked at the monitors, and then looked at Gramps. “Why don’t you go all to the cafeteria and get something to eat? We’ll be in here for awhile.”

  We trudged down to the cafeteria and looked at the choices of food. I usually was so hungry after basketball practice that I even had second helpings but for some reason, even though it was 7:30 pm, I didn’t feel hungry. My dad bought a huge hamburger for the two of us with a big plate of french fries. Mom and Aunt Florence just had a cup of coffee each.

  “One of us should stay tonight,” Aunt Florence said. She sat down at the table and put both her hands around the coffee cup.

  “I’ll stay,” my mom said.

  “I think I should tonight, Gemma. I’m not working tomorrow.” Aunt Florence took a sip of steaming coffee, then set her cup back on the table with her two hands around it.

  “Maybe that would be better. We’ll take turns.”

  “You can stay tomorrow night.”

  “I’ll take my turn too,” my dad said.

  “Thank you, John,” Aunt Florence said. “But you have to work during the day. Our jobs are more flexible.”

  “I don’t work Sundays so I’ll plan on staying Saturday night.”

  “Thank you,” my mom said. My parents looked at each other for what seemed to be a long time and there was something passing between them. They drew strength from each other, my mom had told me recently. It seemed like my dad was just giving my mom all the strength he had.

  “What’s family for? We’ll get through this.” My dad patted my mom’s arm again like he’d been doing and then he looked at me. “You better eat, Colette, or you won’t be able to shoot a basket tomorrow.”

  “Much less a hook shot,” Aunt Florence said. “Too bad I don’t have a crescent roll with me or we could practice.” She arced her right arm around and everybody laughed. It wasn’t the fun laughing like we had done at the dinner table the week before but I could feel my heart lightening a little bit.

  “Maybe I will have some of the hamburger, Dad.”

  “That’s my girl,” my dad said. “I knew I’d have trouble finishing this giant burger myself. Anybody else want some?”

  Aunt Florence and my mom both shook their heads no.

  I had forgotten all about my big game tomorrow. “Don’t think you have to come to my game,” I said. “I don’t want Gramps waking up and there’s nobody there to talk to.”

  “We’ll work it out, Colette. No need for you to worry,” my mom said.

  “I could take my turn too,” I said.

  “I think you probably could but I know the hospital wouldn’t let you. They’re not supposed to even let anyone under twelve in the hospital rooms,” Aunt Florence said.

  “Did they let me because of you?”

  “No, they didn’t ask so I didn’t say anything.”

  Here I had always thought Aunt Florence with her starched uniform and her perfectly placed nursing hat would follow the hospital rules no matter what. “That’s what I do at school too. If they don’t ask, it’s their problem,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Aunt Florence said as she gulped down the last of her coffee. “I’m going to go to the ICU for a minute and check if there’s anything new. Then I’d better go home to change if I’m going to stay overnight.”

  “Should we come now too?” my mom asked.

  “No need. Don’t hurry. I’ll wait up there until you come up.” Aunt Florence pushed the chair out from the table, stood up, and slung her purse over her shoulder. She strode out of the cafeteria quickly, stopping for a minute to talk with another nurse.

  “The other nurses seem to like Aunt Florence,” I said. I dipped my french fry in the small pile of ketchup on my plate and then bit into it. It really tasted good.

  “She’s been here a long time,” my mom said.

  We talked a little bit about everything but what was really on our minds. That was how bad Gramp’s stroke really was, how long he was going to be in the hospital, if he was going to wake up, if he was going to be the same, and my question, when was he coming home?

  Gramps looked exactly the same as he had when we left him except for one thing. He had another tube added to his arsenal of tubes. It went into his bladder and drained pee from the bladder into a bag on the side of the bed.

  “At least Gramps doesn’t have many more places they can put tubes,” I said.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised,” Maggie, the nurse, said. “Wouldn’t she, Florence?” She looked over at Aunt Florence and they both chuckled real softly. I decided right then and there that although my curiosity usually made me ask all kinds of questions, this time I simply was not that curious. I didn’t want to know where the other places were that they could put tubes.

  “Any more questions?” Aunt Florence said. She smiled at me and I remembered that she had thought I was old enough to stay overnight with Gramps even though I technically wasn’t old enough to even be in the room.

  “No more questions.”

  “I’m going to go home now. I’ll be back in about an hour. Colette, you can come with me if it’s okay with your mom and dad.”

  “You don’t have to stay. Go home and try to relax,” my mom said.

  “I guess I will.” I felt so tired that all I wanted to do was lie on my bed, read a little while I listened to the Beatles, or maybe just go to sleep. Thankfully, I didn’t have any homework to do. Mrs. Bosworth said since everyone planned on going to the big game she wouldn’t give us homework for two nights.

  Aunt Florence and I rode home and she asked me all kinds of questions about my basketball team and the Bloomer especially. The Bloomer was always a great conversation piece. I told her about the Bloomer telling me to get more open so she could pass to me. Aunt Florence laughed in her contagious way.

  We pulled up in front of our dark house and I said, “Thanks for the ride.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  “Aunt Florence, Gramps is going to be okay, isn’t he?

  “I hope so, I really hope so.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Knock ‘em Dead

  It was hard to sleep because I kept thinking about Gramps in his hospital bed. I wondered if he thought about anything while he was in the coma and then I wondered if he was going to come out of it. I couldn’t stand the thought of this being Gramps forever.

  Mainly I hoped he’d still have the same personality because my Gramps was just about perfect the way he was.

  When my mom and dad came home, they both stood in my bedroom doorway since my light was off.

  “I’m awake,” I said.

  “Can I turn on the light?” my mom
asked. The light came on like a blazing sunrise. My mom sat on my bed and my dad stood next to her. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m okay. How’s Gramps?”

  “No change.”

  “I don’t have to go to my game tomorrow. I don’t really want to anyway.”

  “You’re going to your game and we’ll be cheering for you just like Gramps would be if he could,” my dad said.

  “We’ll just have to take it one day at a time,” my mom said. “Try to sleep now. You have school tomorrow. I love you, Colette.”

  “I love you too, Mom.”

  The next morning I wanted to stay in bed but my dad wouldn’t let me. My mom had left for the hospital before my dad woke me. Aunt Florence could come home to sleep after my mom relieved her in Gramp’s room.

  I thought I’d be running the last two blocks to school and then scrambling through the doorway as the bell was ringing. Not that I didn’t have plenty of experience doing that in the past but I had gotten out the habit in the last week or so. Just as I was going out the door my dad asked me if I wanted a ride. He must have known that on this morning I didn’t have the energy to run to school and arrive gasping for breath as the bell was ringing.

  “I’m going to stop at the hospital and then go to work,” my dad said. “You don’t have practice after school, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Someone will pick you up at school. What time do you have to be back?”

  “I have to be at the gym at 6:00 pm.”

  “Someone will bring you back then.”

  We arrived at school just in the nick of time. Everyone had lined up by the doors waiting for the bell to ring. Sally waved to me and I ran over.

  “Back to your old...”

  I didn’t wait for Sally to finish. “Gramps had a stroke yesterday.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Is he okay?”

  “We don’t know. He’s not even opening his eyes.”

  The bell rang and we filed into the school. Sally and I parted ways with the promise of meeting at lunch.

  Mrs. Bosworth told me she was sorry about my grandfather as soon as I walked into my homeroom.

  I thanked Mrs. Bosworth and went to my desk. The morning passed quickly since I worked hard at paying attention. When I kept looking at the clock five minutes seemed like an hour so I even raised my hand a few times and pretended I was really into the subject. All I was really thinking about was whether Gramps had woken up. I kept hoping and hoping that he had.

  I was first in line when the bell rang for lunch. Sally had a place for me at the lunch table right across from her. I told her all about Gramps with his oxygen mask, special drips, tubes going into his good arm, wires connected to his chest and the monitor, the tube draining his pee into a bag, and the worst of all; Gramps just lying there not talking or moving.

  Sally listened but every so often made noises like, “ohh.” She put her hand to her mouth a couple of times.

  We went out to the playground and soon we were in the before school group of girls. We had discussed the movie “Becoming a Woman” for the whole previous week. The subject came up again. Everyone but me loved all the gross details. I told the group that there was a reason why I had looked at the corner of the screen during the whole movie. I didn’t want any nasty pictures in my mind. Sally made me hum Battle Hymn of the Republic so we could all laugh. Sally marched. We finally decided that the giant pimple said it all so there wasn’t much else to say.

  We were still debating who the cutest boy in our grade was so the conversation became loud and lively within a few minutes. It wasn’t that there were so many to choose from but they each had their good and bad points. After we were done with our sixth grade class we would decide who the cutest boy in the whole school was. At the rate we were going, we wouldn’t even start debating that until September or October.

  “See ya at the game,” Sally said. She waved as we went to our separate classrooms. “The whole family’s going.”

  My dad picked me up after school and we drove to the hospital. I learned there hadn’t been much change in Gramps other than my mom thinking he tried to squeeze her hand when she talked to him. My mom would be sleeping there tonight and then we’d work out who would sleep there tomorrow night.

  “You know all of us would be at the game if Gramps wasn’t in the hospital,” my dad said. We were stopped at the stoplight. His eyebrows were kind of pushed together.

  “I know, Dad. It’s okay, it really is.” I didn’t want him to think that I would be upset in any way if none of them came. After all, they hadn’t missed a game all season. After I got home from each one of my games, Gramps, Dad, and I would go through a play-by-play rerun of the whole game. Each of us gave our own commentary on how this or that play could have been different, how often someone was open under the basket, how often someone took a bad shot, how to steal the ball from the other team, what my team did well, and, of course, what I did well. The commentary took well over an hour and it usually ended up with Gramps guffawing and slapping my back over some crazy play.

  My dad parked the car in the parking lot across from the hospital and shut off the engine.

  Gramps lay in the same bed in the ICU. My mom and Aunt Florence were talking seriously to each other.

  “How’s Gramps?” I asked. They both shook their heads. “How long does it usually take with a stroke for the person to open their eyes and talk?”

  “Everyone is so different but, of course the sooner the person responds, the better,” Aunt Florence said.

  I learned that Gramp’s stroke had been caused by his blood pressure getting too high. The high pressure caused one of the blood vessels in his brain to burst. They had done something called a spinal tap to see if there was bleeding in the brain. The doctor sticks a needle in your back and somehow he can tell what’s going on in the brain. They also did another EEG to see if there was activity in the brain. Gramp’s brain had activity. If there’s no activity, that’s really a bad sign.

  Gramps had prided himself on never going to the doctor for anything. Aunt Florence was always after him to have a regular yearly checkup, to which he would reply, “Why? I’m fit as a fiddle.” Another source of his pride was the fact that he took no medications. Gramps was not a bragging sort of person but he sure loved to brag about that. “I don’t even take an aspirin,” he would say. Aunt Florence tried to tell him that didn’t mean he didn’t need a yearly physical but he seemed to think that’s exactly what taking no medications meant.

  Anyway, Gramps always won the arguments since Aunt Florence would give up and say something like, “I can’t make you go to the doctor.” Gramps would heartily agree with her and thank her for seeing things his way. As it turns out if Gramps had gone to the doctor even once a year, they would have caught the high blood pressure, put him on medication, and maybe even prevented the stroke. The nurses said he had probably had high blood pressure for years.

  I stared at Gramp’s face as hard as I could while the rest of them talked. His right eyelid fluttered and opened a tiny bit. I grabbed my dad’s arm and pointed to Gramp’s eyes. My dad motioned to my mom and Aunt Florence. They stopped talking. “Hi, Gramps,” I said as I squeezed his right hand. I felt a little movement of his fingers. But the best thing of all happened next because he opened his right eye all the way. The two of us locked our black, where-are-the-pupil eyes to each other.

  “Dad, you had a stroke,” Aunt Florence said. “You’re in Intensive Care at the hospital.”

  Gramps didn’t say anything; he just looked at all of us. Sometimes after a stroke the person couldn’t talk, my dad told me. I hoped and hoped that Gramps would be able to talk.

  My mom had gone to get the nurse and nurse Maggie came right in. “Mr. Rossini, blink if you hear me.”

  Gramps moved his eyelid a little.

  “Okay, good, squeeze your granddaughter’s hand.”

  Gramps squeezed a little harder this time. It was a definite squee
ze.

  “Ouch, Gramps,” I said. “You’d beat me arm wrestling, that’s for sure.”

  Because of his stroke, when Gramps tried to smile it was a little crooked. I moved out of the way so someone else could squeeze his hand. My dad was on the same side of the bed as me and he stepped right into the space I had moved out of. He put his hand over Gramp’s hand and said, “We’re here with you, Antonio.”

  The nurse asked Gramps a few other questions and his eyelid closed again. “He needs to sleep now,” Nurse Maggie said.

  We walked out of the room and stood there for a while, none of us knowing quite what to do. Finally my dad said that I better eat or I wouldn’t be able to play basketball.

  This time I ate the whole cheeseburger and french fries myself. My mom and Aunt Florence each had a sandwich with some soup. We sat with our spirits lifted because Gramps had opened his eyes, looked at us, and squeezed my hand.

  Aunt Florence told us that Gramps wasn’t out of the woods yet. A lot of things could happen including swelling in the brain or even another stroke. The nurses had already given him some blood from a total stranger who just donated it to be nice. They had to check all kinds of things in Gramp’s blood including making sure the medications were the right amount. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered how anybody’s body could keep track of all the things it had to do in a day, an hour, or a minute for that matter.

  We went back upstairs to the ICU so I could say goodbye before the big game. After I got off the elevator, I automatically turned to the right without even giving it a thought and there was the ICU.

  They had changed Gramps’ position and had him sitting straighter in the bed. He looked more like himself that way even though his eyes were closed again. I wanted to tell him that even when I was at the game I’d be thinking about him but it was hard to talk to someone with their eyes closed so I didn’t say anything. All of a sudden I felt this need to tell him all kinds of things like how much I liked going to Sunday breakfast with him even though we went to church first and how much I liked watching Ed with him on Sunday nights and how I could never ever remember him getting mad at me and how I loved hearing about Ellis Island and Grandma Rose and how I really did like being called Bella even though I turned up my nose at it. I stood there like I didn’t have anything to say because what I wanted to say was so much that I didn’t have the words for it.