Monday, September 21, 2009
9/15/09
My father is always our comic relief, our strong-hold, our rock. Today, I saw my rock reduced to a pebble. Nikki’s hip has been bleeding blood and pus through the bandage at an alarming rate. The nurses are not allowed to change the bandaging on it because of the seriousness of the wound, so the smell and sight of the area are repulsive. The alarm in Dad’s eyes cut me. I can see the emotional and financial strain building behind his thick glasses, eclipsing his piercing blue eyes. In the last forty-eight hours, my heart has been broken and emotions strained until I thought I could bear no more, but I still had strength, I still had spirit. But now I’ve nearly lost even that.
9/14/09
I can hardly bear to be in the room. Every time I look at her, the pain starts in my soul, bubbles up through my chest, explodes in my throat, and I realize I can’t breathe. The tears run unchecked and inexorable.
The ventilator makes an eerie, repetitive sound as it pumps oxygen into her previously collapsed lungs, chest steadily rising and falling with each new burst of air… ch, whoooo…ch, whoooo…ch, whoooo. Her plump lips, the same lips that have captivated her helpless male admirers since the beginning of her existence, now chapped and cracking, envelope the mouthpiece to the ventilator taped to her head. The feeding tube, supplying puke-green baby food, runs through her nose into her bruised intestines. It is taped to the cute, round tip of her nose with a single strip. Her head hangs helplessly to her left, exposing her neck, punctured by one of the numerous IVs. Her blood pumping through the veins in her neck pops the skin out as if there were a miniature professional boxer inside, unleashing our frustrations on the flesh.
I touch her forehead and retract my hand. She feels too hot. I remind myself that a fever is inevitable. Still, I find the nurse and ask for a temperature check. “No,” she says, “It’s went down. It is 101 degrees now.” I suppose that is good news. Doesn’t feel like it.
I raise the blanket to look at her fractured arm. It is wrapped with mounds of bandaging, a temporary cast of sorts, waiting until the doctors can stabilize her bruised, dislodged, agitated, cut insides, before they can even start on her shattered bones.
I cannot bring myself to lift her nightgown. I know under there lays her stomach, left open after the initial surgeries so the doctors can return and check the progress of their work and finish up any loose ends—literally. My parents say there is a vertical incision from the naval to just under the breasts, and the skin is stretched open, stuffed with gauze, and covered by a strange film. The removed spleen lies somewhere in disposal. Under the gauze, the slightly lacerated liver is seeping its fluids that the tubes work tirelessly to drain from the stomach.
I go to the other side of the bed. I lift the cover and look at her left hand. Several of the fingers are broken, the hand bruised and swollen, skin so tight it looks as though it may burst. I lift her arm as though my touch alone may shatter it, though I know she is on enough medication to satisfy a South American drug lord. I lift the padding underneath her arm. I try to ignore the smell as I stare at the blood soaking through the gauze and onto the sheet, leaving a jagged-edged circle, brownish maroon and blatant.
They found her in the field on the other side of the guardrail of the south-bound lane, 104 feet from the motorcycle; they found the motorcycle on the inside shoulder of the north-bound lane, just short of going into the oncoming traffic. The sympathetic Sheriff, who was the first authority on the scene, forced her to stay down as she made repeated attempts to sit up. He kept her still long enough for the ambulance to arrive. She mumbled incoherent answers to the paramedics, who immediately called for a life-flight. Five hours before, she proudly told me that she had gotten to drive a motorcycle for the first time by herself the day before, and she might even get to drive again that night (She didn’t mention she would be driving alone on a two-hour drive down the interstate going 80 mph). Five hours after, she lay swollen, bruised, prostrate, and closer to death than life on a hospital bed.
The ventilator makes an eerie, repetitive sound as it pumps oxygen into her previously collapsed lungs, chest steadily rising and falling with each new burst of air… ch, whoooo…ch, whoooo…ch, whoooo. Her plump lips, the same lips that have captivated her helpless male admirers since the beginning of her existence, now chapped and cracking, envelope the mouthpiece to the ventilator taped to her head. The feeding tube, supplying puke-green baby food, runs through her nose into her bruised intestines. It is taped to the cute, round tip of her nose with a single strip. Her head hangs helplessly to her left, exposing her neck, punctured by one of the numerous IVs. Her blood pumping through the veins in her neck pops the skin out as if there were a miniature professional boxer inside, unleashing our frustrations on the flesh.
I touch her forehead and retract my hand. She feels too hot. I remind myself that a fever is inevitable. Still, I find the nurse and ask for a temperature check. “No,” she says, “It’s went down. It is 101 degrees now.” I suppose that is good news. Doesn’t feel like it.
I raise the blanket to look at her fractured arm. It is wrapped with mounds of bandaging, a temporary cast of sorts, waiting until the doctors can stabilize her bruised, dislodged, agitated, cut insides, before they can even start on her shattered bones.
I cannot bring myself to lift her nightgown. I know under there lays her stomach, left open after the initial surgeries so the doctors can return and check the progress of their work and finish up any loose ends—literally. My parents say there is a vertical incision from the naval to just under the breasts, and the skin is stretched open, stuffed with gauze, and covered by a strange film. The removed spleen lies somewhere in disposal. Under the gauze, the slightly lacerated liver is seeping its fluids that the tubes work tirelessly to drain from the stomach.
I go to the other side of the bed. I lift the cover and look at her left hand. Several of the fingers are broken, the hand bruised and swollen, skin so tight it looks as though it may burst. I lift her arm as though my touch alone may shatter it, though I know she is on enough medication to satisfy a South American drug lord. I lift the padding underneath her arm. I try to ignore the smell as I stare at the blood soaking through the gauze and onto the sheet, leaving a jagged-edged circle, brownish maroon and blatant.
They found her in the field on the other side of the guardrail of the south-bound lane, 104 feet from the motorcycle; they found the motorcycle on the inside shoulder of the north-bound lane, just short of going into the oncoming traffic. The sympathetic Sheriff, who was the first authority on the scene, forced her to stay down as she made repeated attempts to sit up. He kept her still long enough for the ambulance to arrive. She mumbled incoherent answers to the paramedics, who immediately called for a life-flight. Five hours before, she proudly told me that she had gotten to drive a motorcycle for the first time by herself the day before, and she might even get to drive again that night (She didn’t mention she would be driving alone on a two-hour drive down the interstate going 80 mph). Five hours after, she lay swollen, bruised, prostrate, and closer to death than life on a hospital bed.
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