I Spent Seven Hours in the ER Last Night

And the only hint of light was my neighbor who held my hand all the way.

Photo by Vladislav Muslakov on Unsplash

I can’t breathe, my mother says. Her body is volcanic. She gasps mouthfuls of air. Here we go again.

Instructions: Pull on your coat and pad to the kitchen. Call the car service. We know where you live, kid. Bear the weight of her body down six flights of stairs. Zip her jacket and ease her into the car, easy, easy, and she rolls the window down and you sit in the front seat with your coat pulled up to your ears with the heat blasting because it’s snowing and cold and the night is still and cruel and the cab driver eyes her in the mirror. Shakes his head. Look at what you put your kid through.

Pull her through the revolving doors. Set her down in a chair. Fill out all the forms. Hold her hand when she says the damn cigarettes will do her in when we both know smokes don’t make your body quake. Stare up at the television when they wheel her back. You’ve seen this episode of Taxi before. You’ve seen the same people in the waiting room before. The cracks in the ceiling paint are the same as before. And you sit like this and focus on steadying your breath. Don’t cry, don’t wail, don’t weep—don’t let yourself feel the hurt full and complete.

And when it’s over, when you call another cab and ease her into another backseat and carry her up six flights of stairs and pull the covers over her body and smooth her hair out of her eyes, do you finally crawl into bed. You bite the pillows because it’s better than screaming. As you fall asleep you wonder when—not if—this will happen again. When you have to bear the weight of her, take care of her. You wonder if she would do this for you.

You are ten.

---

Two days ago, I slipped and fell down my stairs. My kneecap shifted and I heard a crack and I screamed and covered my mouth with my hands. And through this pain that stabs and sears, while a shattered plate cuts my toes, I worry that I’ve sullied the clothes I carried down the stairs. I worry about the handful of items I have to sell.

I don’t do well with hospitals but I force myself to go to Urgent Care, which is much like using WebMD to self-diagnose a disease. After a handful of x-rays and medication that rivals Skittles in terms of potency, I come home and feel no better than when I left.

It was only today when my knee kept popping out again and again, did I panic. A panic so deep my chest stilled. I couldn’t breathe. It’s then my neighbor sends me a text and asks if I need anything. She and her husband could come over, give Felix his insulin, feed him his food. What do you need? she asks. I steady myself and weigh the physical pain I feel with the desire to erect walls. Refuse help. I can do it all on my own. If I was a child bearing a woman’s body the stairs, surely I can go it alone.

But I fold. I do the thing I hate most doing—I ask for help. Can you take me to the ER? A minute later she texts: I’m standing outside your door. She drives me to the hospital and tells me to stay in the car. She’ll get a wheelchair. I’m frantic, on the verge of frenzy. No, not a scene or a fuss, but she hears none of it. Out she comes with a wheelchair and a nurse and bears the weight of my body as I get out of the car.

I collapse into the wheelchair and sob uncontrollably. My face is a river, awash in pain. Shame. She squeezes my hand and tells me she’s here and we’ll get through this. In the past year, she nearly died she tells me. ER trips, surgeries—a mess with her kidneys so she knows fear and pain.

We both hate the hordes of people, the noise, the too-bright lights. I close my eyes and sob in the middle of the waiting room while she completes my paperwork, pulls out my insurance and ID cards. Tells everyone in a five mile radius that this woman is in severe pain. You need to help her. I sob while she texts her father to see if he can call in some favors to get me seen faster because apparently everyone in Bakersfield knows one another and this is her home. Born and raised.

I open my mouth to speak but no sound comes out.

Instead, she offers me pictures of her new rescue kitten. Look at that belly! I respond with photos of Felix from his Rubenesque period. We speak in cat photos until I can control myself. When I finally do speak I tell her I’m not like this. I don’t cry. When my mother died, it took me six months to shed a tear and I did it privately. I don’t do this.

She nods her head and says she knows. And it’s still okay that I’m a weeping mess in an ER waiting room.

After I check in, I tell her to go home because I know emergency rooms. I’ve got hours to kill. And for the next seven hours, I’ll cry again, my knee will snap, crackle, and pop, I’ll feel sick from the morphine. I tell the radiologist the MRI is a war crime. You didn’t tell me about the loud sounds, how the ground beneath me shifts and moves. I tell him I need to know these things. I can’t control my kneecap shifting underneath my skin. I can’t control any of this. And I’ll weep again a few more times and get sick from more morphine and start shaking when the doctor tells me I fractured this, tore that.

And yes, you’ll need surgery. In response, I say, I think, I might possibly, faint. I have insurance and I can barely afford this visit.

My neighbors texts me the entire evening. Ask for more morphine! Advocate for yourself! Tell them you need a blanket! Healthcare in the U.S. is an atrocity! She and her husband send me photos and videos of Felix from my apartment. They’re feeding and refilling his water bowl and marvel over his majestic coat.

I text: no one believes me when I say he’s cuter in person. They both text me. Ask me what I need. How can we help? What can we do?

For a moment, I have to set my phone down because I’m not used to this—someone taking care. Kindness without conditions. Care minus emotional terrorism. Decency because it’s the humane thing to do. I’m not used to people being human that acts of kindness consistently shock me to the bone.

I feel broken in all the ways one could be broken. My knees feel like tectonic plates, shifting. And I’m always tired, so tired. I came home an hour ago and it’s 4:30 in the morning and still I can’t sleep. Part of me wants to fast forward to betterment. Another part, a deeper part, wonders if better is a reality. I laugh through tears to my neighbor and say, it can’t get much darker than this. I tell her I don’t understand. I’m doing everything I can do but I feel like I’m climbing with torn knees out of quicksand. I want betterment but I worry, always worry, if the ground will pull me under.

---

Postscript:

• Paid peeps—I’m making a big effort to share two posts next week: a round-up of all the wonderful essays I’ve read on writing as of late and another banger how-to. But bear with me because I’m on crutches, have the equivalent of Skittles for pain medication, and will likely wage war with Kaiser to get an orthopedic appointment because I apparently have to wait TWO WEEKS to see one. Shifty knees, et all.

• Felix is doing better. He’s gained a little weight back and baring today’s set-back, he’s been getting his insulin regularly. He’s not racing around my home, but he’s spending more time in front of the window, hissing at the feral cats outside, which pleases me.

• Since I’m basically un-hireable (thanks to all the kind friends who shared my latest LinkedIn post), I sell clothes. On eBay and Poshmark.