by Janna Hill
The patient appeared frightened by the response of her right leg, or the lack of.
“It’s too soon to tell anything.” Clara supposed trying to put her professional mind at ease before telling her, “Your mother is waiting to see you. May I send her in?”
Linda smiled and nodded as she reached for Maggie’s hand and squeezed it till the fingertips turned blue.
“Easy there Hercules. I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your strength.”
Linda lightened her hold and smiled again at Maggie as the ally reminded her,
“I’m right here. I’ve got your back girl friend.”
Clara reached to knock on the door of room #3 as Ms. Latrull yanked it open.
“I can go now?” she asked.
“Yes ma’am, you can go now. Your daughter is anxious to see you. But please don’t let her talk too much.”
“I do not need words. Sometimes words get in da way.”
“That they do.” Clara agreed as the lady hurried to room #6.
“Wait.” Clara called out, “Take this.” She said handing her a large cup of ice.
“Let her have just a few at a time every ten minutes or so.”
Ms. Latrull grabbed the cup and started to her daughter’s room. When she got to the door she turned to Clara and chuckled, “If any one comes an see me in here we will tell dem I am your aid. I can be dat, a nurses aid.”
“Umm, sure.” Clara laughed back, “You could surely pass for a nurse’s aid – they all wear robes like that.”
Ms. Latrull took a deep breath and flung open the door.
The women were at a halt for only seconds. When Linda’s eye locked on her mother’s her arms spontaneously flew outward and without any hesitation Mary Magdalene ran to embrace her baby.
Behind the closed door Clara could hear the muffled I love you’s and the many I’m sorry’s mingled with heavy sobs as she imagined Maggie was holding her place at her sister’s side and probably still holding her hand.
The atmosphere became charged and stirred her soul as Clara inhaled deeply this thing that could not be seen… the spirit of love as it wafted through the air conquering grief and tears leaving its evidence as goose bumps on her arms and the feeling of absolute tranquility.
Chapter 24
Not Yet
The ladies in room #6 had quieted down except for the occasional giggle.
Linda had managed to consume the pitcher of ice chips without any problem and was sipping on diluted apple juice which she had already mastered as well.
“I am so ready to go home. Line `em up and let me knock `em down so I can get out of here and go home.” She pressed.
“Whoa Nellie.” Clara told her
“I can take care of her at home.” Maggie spoke up in her friend’s defense.
“You are both nurses.” Clara scolded, “I can’t believe you think she can just get up and walk out of ICU, there is a step down protocol and for good reason.”
“You know she only stayed in the unit because she’s one of us. Anyone else would have gone to med/surg or to that little nursing home section- what is it SNU?” Maggie argued.
“I’ll have the doctor convinced to let me go home by this time tomorrow.”
Linda decreed.
“Can you believe them?” Clara asked looking at Linda’s mother.
Ms. Latrull shook her head and grinned, “Like small children day are. Little girls dat don’t know wat is best for dem. Day only want to run an play.”
Clara didn’t want to seem harsh but she believed the women needed a reality check,
“Can you walk Linda?” she asked.
“Not yet” Linda answered, “but it won’t be long I promise you. I’m not near as weak as you might think. If I walk right now could I get you on my side?”
“I’m already on your side.” Clara told her. The adolescent banter ceased as the patient replied, “I know you are and I am so grateful. I can never thank you enough.”
“Sure you can.” Clara quipped, “Quit arguing and talking about going home till you’ve had your first meal and taken your first steps.”
“I’m on Clara’s side now. I wasn’t thinking about all those firsts.” Maggie chimed in,
“I’m tired of handling your poop and pee. I’ll get back to you about going home when you’re wiping your own butt.”
“It’s a deal.” Linda laughed.
“I will wipe her butt.” Ms. Latrull said somberly.
The three nurse in unison responded with a simple Aww.
“I’m taking a break Maggie, will you listen for the phones?” Clara asked.
“Sure. I forgot I was on duty. Want me to document something on the patient as well?”
“That would be nice.” Clara sneered, “Can I get y’all anything from the vending machine?”
They each politely declined except Linda who said, “I’ll take a candy bar and cola.”
“Not yet.” Clara told her.
Clara had not been gone more than ten minutes when the phone rang. “Get up and get the phone Mucalinda.” Maggie joked.
“But I don’t have any clothes on.”
“It’s the phone not the door dummy.” Maggie said then sprinted toward the desk.
“I was going to say hand me my robe…” Linda said looking at her mother curled inside the scarlet covering.
Ms. Latrull stood to take the housecoat off but Linda stopped her, “I was joking. Keep it on.”
Ms Latrull obliged the command and hugged it tighter to her. “I needed to feel you close to me.”
Linda’s eyes began to water and she reached for her mother’s hand, “Do you know where I got that gawd awful thing?”
“I tawt you loved it is why I give it to you.”
“No Mama, I loved you…”
The women were in another tearful embrace when Maggie returned geared to frenzy.
“Oh my gosh Linda. That was ER on the phone, they are hopping and someone just came in with cardiac arrest.”
“Calm down. Page Clara to go, she is probably in the vicinity already.” Linda replied as if she still held a position of authority.
“That’s the problem. Clara’s mother is the someone with cardiac arrest. Do you think I should run down there?”
“You can’t leave the unit unattended, you know that. Page Clara to get here stat and then you go to ER.”
Maggie rushed back to the phone and paged Clara Havel return to ICU stat. Clara Havel ICU stat.
Clara tossed her soda into the trash can and took off in a full run. As she rounded the corner beside the lab she crashed into the massive back of a man standing by the ER lobby. “Pardon me,” she said as she bounced off and cut around him.
“Clara?” the man called out. “Sorry sweetie, I can’t stop to talk.” She had run another twenty feet before it dawned on her that it was Jim. She paused briefly to yell, “Wait for me in the ICU lobby.”
“Is that where they’re taking your mom?” he asked with a tone of desperation.
The sprinter stopped as if a brick wall had been thrown up in front of her.
“What did you just say?” she asked feeling her knees buckling with the weight of the news.
“Oh dear God you don’t know.” Jim cried as he bolted to catch her.
The page came overhead again Clara Havel to ICU stat, Clara Havel return to ICU stat.
Dammit Clara. Maggie hadn’t hung up the phone before the frustrated words were announced over the hospital’s PA system.
Jim eased his wife down on a mauve colored bench in the corridor. Next to the small seating he noticed a table with a telephone and a placard that read COURTESY PHONE.
Jim picked up the phone and asked Clara, “What is the extension to ICU?”
“I’m on my way.” She said jumping to her feet only to be met with Jim’s large hand laid gently against her chest. “Sit down baby.” He calmly told her, “Now what is the extension to ICU? What numbers do I need to push to call Maggie?” he
asked holding the receiver in front of her.
Clara blinked repeatedly struggling to recall the three digits that she should have been able to spout off without a thought. “7 1, no.. 1 1…no 7-1-1” she finally told him.
Jim’s oversized fingers crowded the keypad as he punched the numbers into the touchtone phone. Maggie picked up before the first ring had completed.
“Maggie Turner ICU.” She said abruptly.
“Maggie this is Jim.”
“Oh Jim is Clara with you?”
“Yes she is. She is in no shape to respond to an emergency.” He explained.
“I don’t have an emergency…I just didn’t want her find out like she apparently did.”
Linda was standing at the doorway of room #6 telling Maggie,
“Call ER, tell `em we can’t help `em right now they’ll have to pull someone from another department. Then get on the phone to the temp agency – tell them we need two qualified nurses ASAP, no tell `em stat and tell `em not to send us any new graduates or baby sitters. I need some real nurses. Tell Clara it’s covered and to go be with her mama.”
“Did you hear all of that?’ Maggie asked Jim who was still hanging on the other end of the line.
“I heard it.” He answered.
“Then hang up and go take care of our little Clara Bell.”
Jim done as Maggie had told him.
“Honey?” Jim called to Clara who sat dumbfounded where he had last placed her.
“Would you like to go back to the emergency room and wait?”
Watching her stare at the empty wall in front of her made Jim uneasy. He needed for her to say something, do something that he could respond to.
“Do you have any questions?” he asked, “Do you want to know what happened?”
She barely shook her head; she didn’t have the strength to mutter a no to accompany it.
“Your dad is in the waiting room down there, would you like to see him? I know he could use the company.”
Clara nodded slowly.
“Come on then.” he told her lifting her gently by the arm, “One step at a time.”
“I have to get back to the unit.” She told him as she stood still staring at nothing.
“No you don’t. Linda sent instructions for you to go be with your mother. Maggie is calling in extra help. It’s all been taken care of.” He assured her.
“Linda is a patient, not a boss.” She replied after the stare had vanished.
“Apparently she is back to bossing because I heard it myself.”
Clara couldn’t suppress the grin that snuck across her face as she looked up at Jim and announced, “She’s going to be okay.”
“Who is? Are you talking about Linda or your mom?”
“Both of them.” She replied as they began the slow trek to where Clara’s mother lay.
Mr. O’Bromley was sitting nervously outside the emergency room waiting for someone to come and inform him of his wife’s condition.
Clara didn’t announce herself as she approached but instead stood back clinging to Jim’s arm and watched as her father rolled the rosary beads between his fingers and thumb.
She hadn’t seen the ornaments of optimism in quiet some time.
When she felt strong enough Clara made the few steps necessary to be within reach of him and quietly called to him “Daddy?”
“Clara!” he bellowed as he leapt to his feet and hung on her light shoulders, his head resting atop of hers, “Weren’t a thing I could do Clara Bell”, he cried. “She didn’t act like she was sick… how could I know… just dropped dead like somebody had shot her… it was that quick.”
“No one is blaming you Daddy. Now pull yourself together. Mama isn’t dead.” She told him as she pushed him away tenderly and held his face in front of hers, “The doctors and nurses are with her, it’s going to be okay.”
Clara looked to Jim expecting him to collaborate her story but instead he looked painfully at her and said, “They’re saying it don’t look good baby. They had to resuscitate her at the house and shocked her in the ambulance. I looked in there and there blowing oxygen into her lungs with one of those bags that you squeeze.”
“An ambu bag?”
“You know better than me what those things are called but I’m trying to tell you they are using one of those to make her breathe and pushing on her chest to make her heart beat.”
Clara felt like she was trapped in someone else’s story, struggling to change the ending that had already been written…. Going through the motions of a scripted play she really wanted no part of but she couldn’t find the stage exit.
“I’m confused.” Clara told them.
“Sit down here.” Mr. O’Bromley said motioning to where she had found him sitting.
“No, it’s better for me to stand. I can’t sit here and do nothing.”
“Then sit and talk to me.” Jim told her, “It’s a little better than nothing.
Clara patted his quilled face and began pacing.
The doors to the ER opened with a clunk from the faulty electronic door control.
“I wish to hell they would fix that.” The young intern grumbled. Clara watched as he moved in the direction of the family waiting area and intercepted him.
“Hey I know you.” he smiled, “We worked together on that wicked suicide attempt. How is she doing by the way?”
“Great.” Clara told him, “She’s awake and ready to go home.”
“You’re kidding, right?” he asked in disbelief.
“No, really.” Clara told him adding, “That’s not why I stopped you. My mother is Mary O’Bromley. She is in the ER-”
“I’m sorry.” He said in that tone, a tone Clara was all too familiar with. The sympathetic tone one takes when they’re about to disappoint you or deliver devastating news.
She had used that same manner of tone on a lot of families just before she watched their hopes disintegrate under the blast of two little words.
“Are you going to tell them she’s dead?” Clara demanded.
The doctor had not expected such forwardness from the same nurse who a short time ago had seemed so reserved and docile.
“I was going to tell them that it doesn’t look good. One more round of epi… if she doesn’t respond in the next fifteen minutes I’m calling it.” The man informed Clara.
I am sorry, do you want me to talk to the men over there?” he asked indicating her father and Jim.
Clara shook her head, “No. I’ll do it.”
The intern slapped the plate sized button and waited as the door made a grumbling noise but refused to budge. “Dammit!” he fumed and smacked it again to no avail.
“Let me. “ Clara said as she rocked the stainless steel plate under her spread hand and gently pressed. The door flew open and Clara followed him in.
“I don’t think this is a good idea.” He warned her.
“It probably isn’t.” Clara told him “Don’t worry. I’ll stay out of the way.”
Clara didn’t ask the doctor where her mother was, it was easy enough to follow the commotion. There were only two other patients in the ER and each had their own curtained cubicle.
The man with a laceration to his forehead from falling on his ice skates sat at the edge of the table waiting on the liquid stitch to dry and the woman on the other side of the drape who had fallen on a baseball bat was waiting on an x-ray.
Clara knew that her mother would be in the Plexiglas sound proof room just beyond the next curtain. Steeling herself she marched forward as if it were any other patient, let her self into the transparent cage that held her mother and announced, “I’m only here to observe.” then pulled a chair to the head of the bed.
A chubby nurse in purple scrubs moved forward as if to stop Clara and send her packing back out into the waiting room but the doctor raised his hand to deter her, “Let her stay.”
Plump little people eater. Clara giggled slightly as the thought jumped inside her frontal lobe. Maggie woul
d consider it funny, heck Maggie would have said it not just thought it.
Clara gazed at the elderly woman that lay before her. She hadn’t realized how old her mother looked. Her mother… The dire reality of it was creeping in on Clara and she was running out of places to mentally hide. If she had to admit that all she could do was sit on her duff and watch it happen then she would truly shatter into a million pieces. Duffy?
“Oh my God!” Clara exclaimed only to be sneered by the purple people eater and told,
“Keep it together or get out.” Clara nodded in agreement and asked, “Can I just touch her?” The intern quickly responded, “Yeah but if somebody yells CLEAR then you better damn well do it.”
“I understand.” Clara said as she leaned forward and laid her hands on either side of her mother’s face, the only place she could make contact without obstructing the trained professionals. Laying her forehead on the hard cold chrome of the gurney Clara emptied her thoughts, sighed and closed her eyes.
Mama? There was no response but Clara wasn’t surprised nor was she discouraged as she continued to inhale deeply and call with every ounce of energy she had Mama… it’s me Clara. Can you hear me?
She continued to call over and over until she could see a flame, a small flame like that of a single candle from a distance. Answer me mother, please. Clara begged as she moved toward the faint orange flicker.
The compressions to her mother’s chest shook Clara with each repetition one- one thousand, two-one thousand, three- one thousand… the counting and then swoosh, that damned sound coming from the ambu bag distracted her. Ignore them. She commanded herself straining to regain her focus on the light. Once she found it again she began calling.
Hello…I’m here….I can’t see anything Mama….
Clara could hear what sounded like music playing in the distance… a harp… a flute?
She had never heard that in her visions before; she had never heard any music before.
