Tears.
The rain danced on the windshield between sweeps of the large wiper blades. The emergency lights reflected off the falling drops as they shattered into the large, clear window. The water, asleep on the street, trapped all the flashing colors of the light bar on our ambulance like a prism and disoriented me. I eased off the gas, gripped the wheel tighter, and squinted my eyes from the rainbow of colors reflecting off the wet surfaces passing by my driver's side window.
The siren seemed louder. It reverberated off the large glass pane windows of the Starbucks and echoed between the brick walls of the restaurants closely packed next to one another. The wiper blades slapped back and forth and made every image seem like animation, as though they were drawn on index cards and flipping through the palm of my hand.
We were on the way to a possible stroke. It was a nice neighborhood, one where people only call 911 when they really need it. A neighborhood that apologizes for interrupting our imagined busy lives and is embarrassed by all the decorative, flashing apparatus outside their manicured lawns.
I walked up the driveway, rain defying gravity and dropping upwards from beneath my hat. A freshly paved drive was surrounded by manicured lawn. At the top of the hill, next to the steps that led inside the brick home, was a four-door Cadillac. It was silver, and clean, but certainly not out of date. A car that was probably paid for by a social security check and a pension from 30 years with the same company.
We opened the glass-paned front doors and dripped cold rain onto the warm wooden floors. Our shoes squeaked as we traversed the living room to the ornamental couch. A stand up piano sat in the corner next to the gas fireplace. On its mantle sat framed pictures of generations of loved family.
My partner turned and started out towards the ambulance. "I'm going to see if that hospital will take her," he said. "She's within that window for a stroke alert.
I stepped forward, raindrops freckling her face as I blinked at her through my glasses. Her shirt was tucked in, her hair was combed, and her pants had evidence of incontinence. She lied on her back with her eyes wide open and her mouth closed, drooping significantly on the left side. As though someone had flipped a switch on the left side of her body, all motor skills and means of gesturing were on pause. I raised her left arm, asked her to hold it in the air with her eyes closed, and let go. It dropped like the electric ball in Times Square on New Year's Eve.
She closed her eyes. A tear formed only in her right eye.
We picked her up and placed her on the bed with damp sheets from the rain. The firemen coordinated buckling her in as I found a blanket to cover her up. The plastic oxygen mask rattled on her face and fogged with each breath. "We're going to be doing a lot of things at once when we get outside, okay?" I said as we began wheeling her out the door. "We're going to take good care of you."
In her mind, she spoke clearly and eloquently, like her favorite author from the book club she had recently joined. I heard nothing but slurs and broken sentences. It was as though she was speaking a foreign language and no one around here could translate.
"I know it's scary, and I know you're trying to say something to me," I said. "We can figure this out together."
The night's sky sifted water drops on us from the sky above like a baker over a cutting board. We opened the double doors of the ambulance and slid her, and the metal bed she was uncomfortably resting on, into the two locking mechanisms. My partner sat on one side, and I crammed myself on the small square seat to her right. Both arms were grabbed and as I strapped a blood pressure cuff on her right arm, my partner poked a green-hubbed needle into her other. We talked medically to one another as she sat below the yellow lights listening to rain drops burst on the top of the ambulance.
I crawled out from my cramped hole as my partner talked to her softly. He did more neurological exams and explained what was going on with her. She attempted to smile, crookedly, and still cried softly from one eye.
We arrived to the ED in four minutes. It had been 14 minutes since she called 911 and 24 minutes since the onset of all her stroke symptoms. We pushed her down the hall and into a large room where a young lady sat in the corner in pink scrubs with a brown clipboard in her white hands. The doctor followed in behind us.
The story was told quickly and precisely. Medical terminology lofted back and forth in front of her like a heated tennis match. Her eyes, flinching left, then right, bounced back and forth. Monitors beeped and techs spoke in code to one another. They talked about her as if she wasn't there.
"Let's send the blood and get her off to C.T.," commanded the doctor.
No one had talked to her yet. I removed our bed from the hospital room and push it into the crowded hall, next to an elderly man in a wheelchair watching the commotion in front of him. I leaned my shoulder on the metal frame of the large double door and watched and listened.
The doctor asked her some quick, cold questions and she attempted to respond, but was unable. The doctor, already mentally twenty minutes in the future, abruptly attempted to explain what was going to happen. The ED tech unlocked the bed and grabbed the two black handles at the head. The monitor sat propped to her left and the blood pressure unit rested to her right.
Everyone was doing what they were supposed to be doing. And everyone also forgot the most important thing they should have been doing. As they wheeled her past me I grabbed the black rail to her left. "Everything is going to be alright," I said.
She blinked twice and tears ran down her cheeks. Tears, like raindrops, fell from both eyes.
The siren seemed louder. It reverberated off the large glass pane windows of the Starbucks and echoed between the brick walls of the restaurants closely packed next to one another. The wiper blades slapped back and forth and made every image seem like animation, as though they were drawn on index cards and flipping through the palm of my hand.
We were on the way to a possible stroke. It was a nice neighborhood, one where people only call 911 when they really need it. A neighborhood that apologizes for interrupting our imagined busy lives and is embarrassed by all the decorative, flashing apparatus outside their manicured lawns.
I walked up the driveway, rain defying gravity and dropping upwards from beneath my hat. A freshly paved drive was surrounded by manicured lawn. At the top of the hill, next to the steps that led inside the brick home, was a four-door Cadillac. It was silver, and clean, but certainly not out of date. A car that was probably paid for by a social security check and a pension from 30 years with the same company.
We opened the glass-paned front doors and dripped cold rain onto the warm wooden floors. Our shoes squeaked as we traversed the living room to the ornamental couch. A stand up piano sat in the corner next to the gas fireplace. On its mantle sat framed pictures of generations of loved family.
My partner turned and started out towards the ambulance. "I'm going to see if that hospital will take her," he said. "She's within that window for a stroke alert.
I stepped forward, raindrops freckling her face as I blinked at her through my glasses. Her shirt was tucked in, her hair was combed, and her pants had evidence of incontinence. She lied on her back with her eyes wide open and her mouth closed, drooping significantly on the left side. As though someone had flipped a switch on the left side of her body, all motor skills and means of gesturing were on pause. I raised her left arm, asked her to hold it in the air with her eyes closed, and let go. It dropped like the electric ball in Times Square on New Year's Eve.
She closed her eyes. A tear formed only in her right eye.
We picked her up and placed her on the bed with damp sheets from the rain. The firemen coordinated buckling her in as I found a blanket to cover her up. The plastic oxygen mask rattled on her face and fogged with each breath. "We're going to be doing a lot of things at once when we get outside, okay?" I said as we began wheeling her out the door. "We're going to take good care of you."
In her mind, she spoke clearly and eloquently, like her favorite author from the book club she had recently joined. I heard nothing but slurs and broken sentences. It was as though she was speaking a foreign language and no one around here could translate.
"I know it's scary, and I know you're trying to say something to me," I said. "We can figure this out together."
The night's sky sifted water drops on us from the sky above like a baker over a cutting board. We opened the double doors of the ambulance and slid her, and the metal bed she was uncomfortably resting on, into the two locking mechanisms. My partner sat on one side, and I crammed myself on the small square seat to her right. Both arms were grabbed and as I strapped a blood pressure cuff on her right arm, my partner poked a green-hubbed needle into her other. We talked medically to one another as she sat below the yellow lights listening to rain drops burst on the top of the ambulance.
I crawled out from my cramped hole as my partner talked to her softly. He did more neurological exams and explained what was going on with her. She attempted to smile, crookedly, and still cried softly from one eye.
We arrived to the ED in four minutes. It had been 14 minutes since she called 911 and 24 minutes since the onset of all her stroke symptoms. We pushed her down the hall and into a large room where a young lady sat in the corner in pink scrubs with a brown clipboard in her white hands. The doctor followed in behind us.
The story was told quickly and precisely. Medical terminology lofted back and forth in front of her like a heated tennis match. Her eyes, flinching left, then right, bounced back and forth. Monitors beeped and techs spoke in code to one another. They talked about her as if she wasn't there.
"Let's send the blood and get her off to C.T.," commanded the doctor.
No one had talked to her yet. I removed our bed from the hospital room and push it into the crowded hall, next to an elderly man in a wheelchair watching the commotion in front of him. I leaned my shoulder on the metal frame of the large double door and watched and listened.
The doctor asked her some quick, cold questions and she attempted to respond, but was unable. The doctor, already mentally twenty minutes in the future, abruptly attempted to explain what was going to happen. The ED tech unlocked the bed and grabbed the two black handles at the head. The monitor sat propped to her left and the blood pressure unit rested to her right.
Everyone was doing what they were supposed to be doing. And everyone also forgot the most important thing they should have been doing. As they wheeled her past me I grabbed the black rail to her left. "Everything is going to be alright," I said.
She blinked twice and tears ran down her cheeks. Tears, like raindrops, fell from both eyes.
Comments
You really hit it on the head with this one. I can honestly say that there are few things that get to my cold, hard heart like the look of fear and confusion on the face of an octogenarian that is slowly realizing that they will not be able to control this THING that is happening to them.