Karen has had a severe haemorrhagic stroke in her lower hypothalamus, we are going to do surgery to drain the blood but it will take a number of hours. We want to find out what caused the strokeâŚ. Thereâs something odd about this stranger calling my mother âKarenâ.
They wheel Mum off and we leave. Both Dad and I hesitate. It feels like we should stick around indefinitely to make sure Mum doesnât get overlooked as she did when she first arrived. What would have happened if we werenât there to help her upright whenever she retched? As weâre walking back to the car, everything seems unreal. People eating fast food in the concourse; buying groceries at M&S. We drive home in silence â thereâs nothing much to say. Itâs late when we get home. My sister is wired â like sheâs had too much sugar.
âWhere is Mummy?â
âSheâs in hospital for now,â my dad says. She accepts this as answer enough. No further questions. She must be tired. He doesnât say that sheâs going to be OK, because itâs clear to us that she wonât be for a long time. He takes her off to bed. I think this is the latest sheâs ever been up. I am too tired to sleep. Outside I hear my visitor cat miaowing and I let him into the house. Itâs a quick bowl of milk for him. Iâm too tired to give him much attention, but it feels good to press him against me. He looks shocked when I let him out too soon for his liking.
Iâm so tired as I go up to my room. I fall onto my bed and hear the padding footsteps of my dog coming to see me â maybe he can smell the cat. I wonder what he thinks is happening. How could a dog even begin to understand this kind of stuff? My phone is buzzing incessantly, âWordâs gotten outâ I museâŚeveryone probably wants to help, wants to know if Iâm âOKâ. What could I say? I put my phone on airplane mode â people are an issue for tomorrow.
I try to sleep, comforted by the heavy breathing of the dog at the foot of my bed and rain on the roof. I can see the red light blinking on the incinerator at the hospital â easy to spot in this flat city. There is no comfort in knowing: This is where Mum is tonight. Just this morning, Mum had taken us to the dentist. Something which should have filled my little sister and me with dread, somehow it became fun with Mum as we sang along to the radio. She knew the songs I liked and the ones I pretended not to like anymore but still did. I have no one to sing with now. Too tired to sing anyway.
Today seems just as rushed as yesterday, but we donât seem to get far. Itâs 11 by the time we go for a walk with the dog and Iâve put my little sisterâs hair in panda bunches to make her smile. Everything takes forever to do. I wonder whether weâre either too tired or too scared to set off early to the hospital. On the walk we find one stray daffodil â my dad makes a big deal of this, pointing out how odd this is for October. Heâs trying to distract us. Every time LĂŠa sees any flower, she exclaims: âWeâll give them to Mum!â. We donât. Itâs difficult to explain to her that flowers do not belong in the part of the hospital where Mum is. I wonder about that: Why donât they? I picture nurses and doctors trying to resuscitate someone and having to fend off bouquets of flowers. No, surely that canât be the reason? Infection risk? Mosquitoes? Allergies?
I sleep-walk out of the car park on the way to the main entrance of the hospital. LĂŠa tugs at my hand â she makes a game of jumping onto huge concrete bollards as we walk towards the hospital. Her excitement seems out of place, but I can feel that sheâs nervous underneath it all. Making the best of it. I can see that Dad wants to say something like: âBe careful!â. He doesnât. How badly can things go wrong in comparison to Mumâs stroke? Mum always lets me climb things â trees, walls â confident that nothing will really go wrong and if it did, that Iâd be able to handle it.
I show LĂŠa a life-sized cut-out of a scary looking flu virus at the reception while my dad tries to find out where Mum is. My sister loves the virus. The whole trip to the hospital suddenly seems much more exciting to her, as if weâre going to be encountering all sorts of funny looking and essentially harmless monsters during our visit. And it really does feel like a labyrinth â the hospital. Either weâre tired or itâs been designed by someone with no sense of direction or itâs a bit of both. I once heard my parents talking about someone they knew who actually got misplaced in the same hospital on the way to an operating room and wonder if the same thing can happen to Mum. Or to us.
The intercom buzzes. Weâre at the door of the NCCU. I fiddle while Dad presses the buzzer over and over â too hard. âDonât keep pressing the button, be more patientâ would be what he normally tells me if I do this. He worries about these things â donât want to bother them, but wants to get in. My little sister distracts herself by jabbing her fingers at the staff photos on a notice board: âBoy, girl, girl, girlâ. Finally, a voice chirps and weâre in. No greetings. Nurses and doctors everywhere. Surprisingly quiet really. Every single bed is full of someone; someoneâs dad, someoneâs mum⌠mostly greyer than my mum. There are wires everywhere and nurses in green fatigues waging war against death. Or something. Where is she⌠where is she? All the patients actually do look so similar.
There she is⌠sheâs completely out of it. Comatose. Unaware. Iâve never seen her like this; not really. Maybe when we go camping or so I may catch sight of Mum sleeping. But sheâs a light sleeper really. Maybe because sheâs always had to be kind of aware of us. Maybe because sheâs always had to be aware of measuring her blood sugars â comes with type one diabetes. But this is different â she seems completely unresponsive, and also fragile. I can sense my dad and sister hesitating instead of rushing to her. The nurses have to encourage us to do every next step. Is it even OK to draw chairs up to her bed? Can I take her hand in mine? Itâs like we need to ask permission here: Mum seems to belong to them now.
Dad told me that it felt as if the hospital âownedâ me when I was born almost two months prematurely and kept in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) in a âTupperware containerâ (as he called the little see-through cots the babies were kept in). Iâve even seen pictures of me looking confused by all the stuff (black and white mobiles, photos of Mum and Dad) my dad kept putting up in the cot for me. I think it was my parentsâ way of âowningâ me and I enjoyed their stories of how the nurses kept removing most of these things and my parents then replacing them. I wonder what kind of things we can do here to âownâ Mum in a place where every person and every bed can look so similar at first glance.
I take Mumâs hand and squeeze it. Still her hands, her nails. But colder and coiled with wires and blue with bruises on her wrist. âHi Mum⌠we are all hereâ. No response. My sister asks about the tube in her mouth and the machines. Actually, there really are tubes everywhere and the rails around the bed make her seem even more fragile. There are two purple marker stripes on her forehead â they kind of annoy me, but I suppose that they probably need them to line her up for something. But she still looks like Mum. Thereâs a friendly, beard of a nurse, kind smiles â not too much â just right. He gives my sister a stethoscope and she canât believe her luck â something for her doctorâs kit.
Thereâs a little kitchen and resting room for relatives. LĂŠa seems delighted to find it, complete with childrenâs toys. It has a notice board. Someone has carefully crafted bubbles with two or three words in them. I read out loud with my sister: âFinally, pleaseâ âlook afterâ âyourselvesâ âGetting enoughâ ârest, eating andâ âdrinking isâ âcrucial, Yourâ âLoved one needsâ âyou to be wellâ âcoming daysâ. They must have left the words âin theâ out, so that âcoming daysâ sound kind of scary. I canât help myself â my dad and I resort to humour when weâre stressed, and I wonder what would happen if I rearrange...