Is it just me, or are hospitals incredibly good at reminding you of your own mortality?
[Note: This article was written in April, and when my mother went in for surgery again recently, I realized that I really needed to put this online. If nothing else, I owe that honesty to the people who helped me through this.]
Before I really get started, I should make you aware of a few things in my life. As most of you either know or can guess from reading this column, I work third shift in a convenience store. (Never mind that I'd greatly prefer to be doing web design; that's a whole other rant.) My best friends are a couple of fellow c-store workers, people who write for this site, and an old man who's a regular at my store - which is to say that I don't get out much, and when I do there isn't a whole lot to do.
It seems sometimes that my life is an example of balance in action; if something good happens, something correspondingly bad must also happen. This wouldn't suck so hard if my life was mediocre, but it tends instead to be a series of incredible ups and catastrophic downs. Take the last couple of months, for example. Ever since I filed my income taxes in February, I've been saving up to get a new computer, and it finally came in on Friday afternoon.
The next morning, a police detective who was a regular at my store died in the intensive care unit.
This morning - that following Thursday, for those of you keeping track - I am in the hospital waiting for my mother to come out of surgery. We got here at about quarter to seven this morning, and it's about five hours later right now...and I have this horrible feeling that my balanced life is about to exact further payment for the pride I felt upon getting the new computer system set up,
Of course, the rational part of me keeps saying that this is nonsense. The nurse has been calling every hour with progress reports, and everything is going well, aside from the length of the procedure - but my heart is having none of that. The silence of the empty room takes all my reason and swallows it like Nietzsche's abyss, and all that is left is a scared child, knowing that his mother is sick and there is absolutely nothing he can do about it. I would like nothing more than to natter on mindlessly about buying a couple of case fans for the new PC, or setting money aside for the 19-inch monitor I want to buy, or the particulars of reinstalling NetBEUI on the home network under Windows XP...but I can't. I just sit here in this empty room, with nurses who are far too cheerful roaming the halls and dealing with a couple of other patients, and that little voice inside that tells me that my mother is never going to be wheeled in here gets just a little louder with each minute that passes. I keep looking forward to Ten Past The Hour with this kind of hopeful dread, knowing that's when the update will come.
Keeping up with the latest on the detective was a similar agony, but at least there I knew that someone would fill me in as soon as they knew anything, that it would be my responsibility to pass that information on to the other regulars as they came in. (Of course, in one of those sadistic twists of fate, he died about ten minutes after I left work to get a couple of days off. Go figure. I wound up getting the news by reading the card on a small bouquet of flowers in the store when I came back. His funeral was yesterday, and I couldn't go because I had to adjust my sleep schedule so I could be here now. Somehow, I feel robbed.)
The phone just rang. The hourly call was a few minutes early; she's in the recovery room now, Everything seems to be fine, and it should be about another hour before they bring her up here. I'm relieved, or at least as relieved as you can be when this happens; I guess I won't really believe it until I see her.
Oddly enough, I find myself thinking about the people who work here - the doctors, the nurses, and the orderlies. Frankly, I'm surprised anyone goes into the medical field, and I'm astonished that they last very long. It must be extremely painful to be a first-hand witness to people in my frame of mind all day, every day - and then there are the patients, for whom they have to appear happy and cheerful and optimistic, no matter how grim the prognosis. I can't imagine any of them watching ER or any of those other medical shows; I think it would offend them on a very deep level to see their lives dramatized as entertainment.
And yet, they go on. I can hear their idle chatter from here, and it's the same kind of chat you hear at every workplace. One nurse brought yogurt for lunch; another brought a Healthy Choice of some kind. Sometimes they order pizza and get it delivered here. One woman's having trouble with the CD that came with her current textbook. (One orderly was nice enough to head downstairs and grab a Coke for me out of the machine, so I could be here in case the phone rang. He understood immediately, and volunteered without hesitation. Sometimes, it's the little things that really count.) But at the same time, you can hear the forced cheer in their voices as they deal with the patient across the hall, as if the highlight of their day is hooking up his oxygen and washing his feet off. It almost sounds like working in retail...but the stakes are so much higher. If I lose it, the worst that can happen is that someone gets pissed off and goes somewhere else. If they lose it, it could mean life or death. Perhaps that's what rings false about their bedside manner; it is the jocularity of a clown on a tightrope, or of a comedian at gunpoint. That's got to wear on you, and I can't imagine doing it for long hours and being on call on top of that. I wonder if they get mental health coverage....
I think part of the problem I'm having today is that hospitals are so incredibly boring. I've long since finished the book I brought along, and I can't very well hop out for a bite to eat...and that's one of the reasons I started writing this article. Quite literally, it was either pick up the handheld or meditate, and I couldn't take meditation in this setting. Even the view out the window is boring, and there are only so many ways you can reprioritize planned technology purchases before you realize that you're only doing it out of desperate boredom.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I still have about forty minutes until my mother gets out of recovery.