April 12 2008-2006

My face is pressed against the cool glass. I stare unseeing into the rain outside my window. My eyes are wet with unfallen tears, and in this moment I am here
and there.
I sit in the ER, holding my daughter on my lap, she is sobbing moaning and every few minutes throwing up. They have done a CAT scan, they have given her morphine (?) and have hooked her up to an IV that keeps her fluid levels up since she has been vomiting for hours.
I am mesmerized by the sounds of the Hospital.
I go back in my mind, She looks so small and frail on the hospital bed. Her hands all gnarled with age and arthritis. She moans in her sleep and I reach out and take her hand..” I am here Yaya…Shhhh it’s okay…” She lifts her unseeing eyes and whispers “water?” I hold the straw to her lips and push the grey hair that has fallen across her face.
“Momma?”
I am pulled back, ” yes sweetie?”
” Am I going to die?” my little angel asks me. She grabs my hand so small and soft in mine ” I don’t like hospitals, my head hurts and I want to go home.” she begins to cry again.
” I know peanut, but they have to make sure your brain is okay, it’s okay, I am here” I push her long chestnut hair away from her cherubic face. I wince at the black purple bruise that runs from her forehead down her cheek, the nasty strawberry abrasion that covers it. I wonder in my head if every lesson must be learned the hard way, how many times have I fussed at her to wear her helmet? Sigh….
Her IV makes that clicking sound, and the heart monitor beeps again.
I fade in..
“She wants to go home.” I tell the doctor for the hundredth time it feels. ” She does not want to die here in your hospital, you have told me the cancer is in her Liver..please let me take her home.” They know there is nothing more they can do for her, and yet when she wakes up, he tells her that she should go home and rest for a few days and come back to start her Chemo. She reaches up and tugs at the port that they have put in her body. She nods.
” You will take me home?” She asks, as if I had not come across the country to be with her. ” of course” I smile a smile I know she can not see. “We need to get all these buzzers bells and tweets off of you first.”
we wait, for them to remove IV’s and catheters and monitors and…
click click
” I am gonna throw up momma” I lunge for the basin, and hold her while she gags and spits a tablespoon into the bowl. She leans back ” I’m tired Momma, can’t I go to sleep?”her eyes so dark behind the bruising.
My mind skitters around…I am in a hospital, but are you suppose to let head trauma sleep? I think it’s dangerous, but it’s 1 AM and this child is always asleep by 9, I inhale slowly….” let me ask a nurse.” I tell her.
I de-tangle myself from her embrace and step out from behind the curtains..” excuse me?”
“excuse me?”
“um…hello? excuse me?”
I feel my stress and frustration war inside of me..” nurse?” I finally get ones attention
” can she sleep?, she is so tired…I..” I break off
she marches in looks at charts and monitors, turns back to me ” yes..let her her rest, we can monitor her as well…”
I kiss the top of her head..” sleep peanut, I am right here” she grabs my hand in a vice grip and stretches out. With in minutes she is asleep as her grip relaxes in mine.
I gaze at the wall, the kitchen in my new house was that color of green, it took me a month to realize it was hospital green, which is why my lovely kitchen made my chest so tight.
I hate hospitals, I think it takes an incredible amount of energy to work in one.
I am lifting her into a wheel chair, I cover her lap with a quilt,” Comfortable Yaya?” She nods. I roll her to the picture window in the dining room. Her world has been a Monet painting for the last several years, but the daffodils and tulips are in bloom, the birds are singing and I know spring is her favorite season.She sits in front of the window, and then rests her head on the cool glass.