As the driver pulls into the ambulance bay at the hospital, a wave of relief washes over me. Now that we have arrived, I can finally exhale. This is not our first ambulance ride to this world-class medical center, and I am more than confident that the team of preeminent medical experts will be able to fix whatever ails my mother, as they have so many times before. Yet, witnessing my mother in anguish guts me to my core.
I’m holding my mother’s child-sized hand while the EMTs wheel her gurney down the long hallway toward the emergency room. My mother is ninety-three years old and in a great deal of pain. I can see the distress in her soft blue eyes as she struggles to quell the nausea and position her body in a way that might alleviate her suffering. I’m concerned – just three months ago she had a bowel surgery at this hospital and now her doctor suspects she may have another bowel obstruction. It’s heartrending to think that my sweet mother might have to bear the trauma of yet another operation.
When my mother’s gurney reaches the end of the hall, we are greeted with a muffled cacophony of voices, punctuated by the insistent beeping from medical monitors. As we pass the nurses’ station, I hand a folder containing all of my mother’s medical records to the nurse at the desk.
The ER is busier than normal for a Thursday morning. Instead of being assigned to one of the more private glassed-in rooms, my mother is wheeled into a small treatment area with only curtains separating her from the next patient. The ER team takes her vitals while I try to explain her symptoms and recent medical history. They’re polite but, perhaps because I don’t have a medical degree, they seem to disregard much of what I say.
My mother is moaning now. There’s little I can do besides adjust the bed and hold her hand to try to comfort her. Despite her obvious nausea, the ER doctors want her to drink a large cup of barium so they can do an X-ray of her intestines. My mother may be in excruciating pain, but she’s a good patient. I hold the cup for her while she dutifully sips the chalky liquid through a straw.
I’m trying to simultaneously answer all of the doctors’ questions and comfort my mother, when a large woman in blue hospital scrubs rolls a small standing desk with a laptop into our curtained area. She begins to ask basic intake questions.
“What’s the patient’s full name?” she asks.
I’m confused.
“Don’t you have that already?” I ask.
“I need you to answer these questions,” she insists.
“I gave a folder with her entire medical history to the nurse at the desk,” I explain.
“I need you to answer these questions,” she repeats.
“But you already have this information. It’s in her medical file, which I gave to the nurse at the desk.”
“Are you having a bad day?” she asks in a cloying, sarcastic tone.
I stare at her, incredulous.
In a voice as steady, measured and modulated as I can muster, I reply, “I’m in the ER with my ninety-three-year-old mother who is writhing in pain, and the doctors don’t know what’s wrong with her. So, yes. Yes, I’m having a bad day.”
“Well, my best friend died this morning,” she says matter-of-factly. Suddenly she’s weeping; tears are tumbling down her cheeks. The next thing I know, I’m embracing her, a stranger, trying to comfort her as she weeps. When she’s able to contain her tears, I give her the information that she needs and off she goes.
While the doctors are waiting for my mother to finish sipping the full cup of barium, they continue to conduct a variety of tests. A young, fresh-faced intern conducts an EKG and notices something on the readout is amiss.
“It’s probably nothing. We’ll run it again,” she tells me.
“Wait,” I say as a decades-old memory resurfaces. “When my mother had a heart attack twenty years ago, she didn’t have typical symptoms. She experienced nausea, like today.”
“Really, it’s probably only an artifact of the EKG,” the intern explains.
She runs it again, but the artifact persists.
Again, I try to explain, “Twenty years ago …” but no one is listening.
She consults the attending ER doctor and they run the EKG a third time. The artifact is still there; my mother’s heart is failing. A cardiologist is brought in and they begin to talk about performing an angioplasty. However, after consulting a neurologist, it’s determined that, due to her medical history, an angioplasty could cause hemorrhaging in my mother’s brain and, thus, is not a viable option. Our only choice is to wait and hope her heart begins to remodel itself, the stronger heart muscles compensating for those that have been injured.
My mother is admitted to a room in the cardiac ICU where we wait, trying to remain hopeful. The next day, Friday, she doesn’t feel like eating, which isn’t like her. But on Saturday morning, she says she wants grilled salmon for breakfast. Not surprisingly, grilled salmon is not on the hospital’s breakfast menu, but I am undeterred.
My mother is scheduled for a special test to assess whether her heart is recovering. I’m not permitted to accompany her to this test. As soon as the transport team comes to wheel her off to be tested, I go downstairs where, adjacent to the hospital lobby, a lovely restaurant is serving brunch. I order grilled salmon to-go.
When my mother returns from the test, the beautifully prepared salmon is waiting for her. She eats hungrily, enjoying every mouthful. This feels like a really good sign.
A while later, a doctor whom I’ve never seen before comes to discuss her test results.
“We’ll know in twenty-four to forty-eight hours whether her heart will recover,” he tells me.
“My sister lives on the East Coast. She’ll have to fly in to be here with us. Should I tell her to come or to wait?”
“Tell her to come. Come now,” he says.
I look into his eyes and hope slips from my grasp, shattering into a million shards. Each shard slices into my heart as I realize my mother will not survive what, moments earlier, I earnestly believed would be “just another bump in the road.” Despite all my efforts to contain them, tears are cascading down my cheeks. The next thing I know, this kind doctor, this stranger, embraces me as I weep. When I’m able to contain my tears, I call my sister.
“Come,” I tell her. “Come now.”
Editors Note: “Embracing Strangers” was originally published online on the Antithesis Journal
