by Mindy Klasky
CHAPTER 20
BY THE TIME we reached the George Washington Hospital emergency room, I had a greater appreciation for Indy 500 drivers. I’d never thought about how much they accomplished as they were enveloped by teeth-shattering sound, taking tight corners with G forces that would make an ordinary human’s face stretch like a cartoon character’s. Or maybe it only seemed that way, in the back of the ambulance.
The EMTs handled the gurney professionally when we arrived at the hospital. They hopped down from the back of the ambulance as if they were performing some well-rehearsed ballet. I scrambled after with minimal regard for how ridiculous I looked. I followed the EMTs through the rubberized doors into the confusion of the emergency room.
One advantage of traveling by ambulance—we got priority treatment upon arrival. Gran was wheeled into an examining room, and a doctor called out the count as she was transferred to a bed. The EMTs folded the straps back onto their conveyance, snapped out some medical information to the treating physician, and then they were gone.
Before I could get their names. Before I could even thank them.
Clara joined us quickly; her cabdriver had made excellent time getting across town. We both worked to stay out of the doctor’s way as we craned our necks for a better view.
The doctor slipped off the oxygen apparatus and listened to Gran’s chest. She was already protesting that we were making a big deal out of nothing; she insisted that she was just a little tired, that she hadn’t slept well the night before. She said that she always had a cough, that she had allergies, that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her, and that she was ready to go home right now.
The doctor agreed with everything she said, but he did not stop in his exam. He shone a light onto the back of her throat, and he peered into her nose and ears. He spent a lot of time applying the bell of his stethoscope to her back, and he repeatedly urged her to take deep breaths. Only the slightest of frowns told us that he was not pleased with what he heard.
He took Gran’s temperature, tested her reflexes, checked her blood pressure, and asked her any number of personal questions about her diet, elimination, and daily life in general.
Gran got increasingly snippy with the doctor, insisting that she was well. When he started to feel the glands under her neck, she announced that that was the last straw, and she started to jump down from the examining table. The half-breath that she took prior to jumping triggered something inside her lungs, though, and she was off and running on another coughing jag.
This one was every bit as bad as the last she’d suffered at the museum; however, the doctor did not seem surprised. He passed Gran a Kleenex and only nodded when it came away from her lips splotched with red. He made some cryptic scribbles on his clipboard and waited for the coughing spasm to pass before he told Gran that she would get to stay at the hospital for a few days.
Double pneumonia. Likely viral in origin. Given the tenderness on her left side, she had probably cracked a rib with her coughing. She needed Tylenol for her fever and an IV to combat her severe dehydration. X-rays would tell us more and confirm that she had nothing more dire—like the terrible word, cancer, that my mind kept spinning away from.
Actually, dehydration was causing the medical staff their greatest concern. A phlebotomist fussed over Gran’s bird-like arms, telling her that he could scarcely find a place to stick his needle. He hovered as he started administering fluids, chiding her as she explained that she just hadn’t been thirsty.
A nurse watched as Gran swallowed her Tylenol. Personally, I felt like crying with relief when I heard the drug of choice. Tylenol. Just like I could buy at the CVS. There was something tremendously comforting about that, about the fact that I could pronounce the name of the treatment Gran was given. It wasn’t mysterious or terrible or threatening.
The doctor convinced Gran to lean back and relax, and Clara and I stepped out to complete the admissions paperwork. That’s when things got a little, um, interesting.
The admissions nurse was a large African-American woman. She wore brightly colored hospital “greens”, those shapeless clothes that were designed for maximum comfort and easy cleaning. Around her neck hung an amber pendant; I could just make out flecks of Jurassic life suspended in the orange stone.
Clara gasped when she saw the jewelry. “When was the last time that you had that thing cleansed?”
The nurse blinked at her. “We’re allowed to wear jewelry, ma’am. Studies have shown that necklaces pose no threat to patient health. Now, if you could just complete these forms, indicating the patient’s name—”
“No!” Clara said. She was loud enough that several people in the waiting room looked up from their zombie states. “I don’t mean germs. Any idiot can take care of germs.” I winced. Surely under the circumstances, it wasn’t a good idea to call health-care providers idiots. Clara bulled forward: “I mean the negative energies that you’ve collected.”
Negative energies. I could see the nurse parsing the words. Her eyes narrowed, and I knew that she must wonder if Clara was some sort of raving loon. The nurse—R. N. Lampet, I saw from her nametag—started to vocalize three different retorts to Clara, but then she seemed to decide that she was better off addressing her comments to me. “If your grandmother has insurance other than Medicare, we’ll need that information here—”
Clara was not willing to be put off that easily. “Your amber is exposed to some major negative energy here. All of the pain in this hospital. All of the fear. Listen to me—I am a trained vibrational consultant, and I’m telling you that you need to cleanse that thing, before it affects your entire body.”
“Trained vibrational consultant?” The disbelief in Nurse Lampet’s voice echoed across the waiting room. I heard two different people snicker. So wonderful that we were able to brighten the morning for other people here in the emergency room. How nice that we were able to ease their own fears and concerns, give them a moment of amusement.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the nurse, mortally embarrassed. “If you just give me the clipboard, I’ll see what I can do.”
R.N. Lampet nodded. “Just make sure you take her with you.”
Miserably, I dragged Clara to a pair of plastic chairs. “I’m not making this up, Jeanette. Jane!” She corrected herself as I uncapped the ball-point pen. “That woman needs to place her amber in the open air. Keep it free from human contact for at least a fortnight. Burying it in the earth would actually be best, especially if she can find some undyed, virgin wool to wrap it in. I’ve got some at home. I should bring it when we come back.”
“You do that, Clara.”
Something about my tone silenced her. I’m not quite sure what it was—the way I had to force my words through my clenched teeth? The way I barely restrained rolling my eyes?
Clara sat silently while I filled out sheet after sheet of information. Any known allergies. Any prior hospitalizations. Any prior surgeries. Any current medications. I knew all of the answers.
When I had reached the fourth page of the admission forms, Clara said, “You do know that I love her, don’t you?” Reflexively, I looked toward Nurse Lampet. “Not her! Your grandmother.”
I took my time signing my name at the bottom of the form, taking care to print my relationship to the patient in large, accusing letters. Granddaughter. There, in black and white. A concise declaration of Clara’s failure. Only then did I look up at my biological mother. “I know that you think that you do.”
Clara’s lips narrowed. “I fully admit that I made mistakes, Jeanette.”
“Jane.”
She ignored me. “I lost years, which I’ll never be able to get back again. I didn’t expect you to come running into my arms. I knew that you were an adult, that you’ve found your own way in the world. You make your own decisions. But I’d always believed that your grandmother would have taught you her greatest lesson: to keep an open mind.”
Low blow.
I pictured Gran in the examining room, surrounded by
ominous medical paraphernalia. What would she think if she heard us squabbling out here? She certainly had not intended any of this to be the result of our morning visit to the Smithsonian.
Gran had forgiven Clara. Couldn’t I?
I sniffed and ran a hand down my face, as if I could scrape away the confusing mixture of emotions sparked by Clara’s words. “I need to give these forms back. And I have to make a phone call.”
“Tell that nurse that I’ll bring her my black tourmaline solution when I come back tomorrow. That won’t be a perfect fix, but it will extend the life of her amber by at least a few months.”
I shuffled across the room and dropped off the forms. Nurse Lampet looked at me with pity, shaking her head as she reviewed the paperwork. When everything was pronounced to be in order, I dug into my purse and found my cell phone.
I stepped outside the hospital doors to make my call, forcing myself to take a trio of calming breaths. I punched in Melissa’s number from speed dial. I could only hope that she had baked a batch of Triple Chocolate Madness that morning. Nothing else was going to get me through the rest of the day.
