I had just awakened from a dream in which my former church’s former nursery worker was out of jail, the children in the nursery were playing nicely, and the church was glad to have me back as their pastor.
While I puzzled over what feelings, exactly, I was having about these implausible events, the phone rang. “H’lo?”
“Gasp, wheeze,” said a pair of lungs on the other end of the line.
“Hi, Mom.” My mom and I spent Thanksgiving Day together watching movies with our take-out turkey dinners. She had just gotten over a cold and was having difficulty breathing after exerting herself. I had expressed concern, but she assured me it was just because she had overdone it on the first day she really felt good. Since Mom has a history of only-really-serious-if-they’re-not-attended-to heart problems, I was still concerned.
“Gasp. I’m sorry, wheeze, to wake you, hhhhhoney,” said Mom.
“It’s ok. I was kind of awake anyway. What’s up?” I had no idea what time it was, having slept fitfully due to an unrefilled sleeping prescription, and concern for my dog, rather, what might come out of my dog. I’ll finish with Mom first.
“Gasp, gasp, gasp. I think, wheeze, I need you to, gasp, tt-hhhhake me to the, wheeze, heeemergency room.”
“Do you think maybe I should call the ambulance and meet you at the hospital?” asking, but already knowing the answer.
“N-hhhhhho. I’m downstairs, gasp. I’ve put on cl-hhhhean clothes, wheeze, and I’ll wait hhhhhhere for you.”
Flashback to the previous evening. I arrived home late from our Thanksgiving fete and went to check on my dog, Phoebe. Phoebe had been exiled to our small jungle of a backyard due to an ailment of the diarrhetic variety. Thanks to a well-used litter box, my cat, Grayson, was able to remain in the house while suffering from the same symptoms, if not the same disease. We left the vet last Monday with antibiotics and the advice to feed them yogurt to encourage healthy gut flora.
As I said, I went to the backyard to check on Phoebe and found no happy puppy face, no furiously wagging tail, no pouncing forepaws. The gate was shut, but the yard was empty. I knew she had to be in the yard if the gate was shut. I searched. I called, “Pheeeebeee” trying at one and the same time to reach the dog without waking the neighbors on the other side of the duplex. No Phoebe. Phu—, I mean, to heck with not waking the neighbors. “PHEEEEBEEE!”
I went back to my car to get the flashlight now in my glove compartment after I had attempted in the middle of a central Texas cow pasture to decipher a combination padlock by the glow of my cell phone. Still no Phoebe.
Now that I’ve returned to my dubious state of sanity, I realize that Phoebe was safer wandering around my neighborhood in the middle of the night than I was. While gentrification has reached much of this original Houston community, I live on the edge where graffiti tags still mark gang turf. I didn’t go completely Stanley Kowalski in my hunt for the dog, though my inner Stanley was tearing his tee. “PHEEEEBEEE!”
Obviously, I did manage to find my Phoebe, hence the fitful sleep, waking every hour or so to see if I needed to grab her leash for another midnight potty run.
I arrived to see Mom putting her whole body into her breathing, up and down, up and down. The image of the bellows in Hades’ mythical forge was a little too close for comfort.
We reached the stoplight to the main road. “Whhhheeee, gasp, nhhhheed to go by the Phhhhhhost Hhhhhofffice.”
“Don’t you think we could do that on the way back?”
“Hhhhhit’s on the whhhhhay.”
Fearful of internet spies and viruses, even though she uses a Mac, Mom has never discovered the wonders of online banking. I was concerned that she might need to mail a check to cover a bill and didn’t want to add to her anxiety. I did as she asked. At the Post Office Mom handed me the envelopes from our Netflix marathon the day before. This couldn’t have waited?
“Hhhhhit’s on the whhhhhay,” Mom said again.
The waiting room didn’t seem too full at that hour of the morning, and Mom’s vitals were stable, so we settled in for what we hoped was a short wait. After about an hour and a half, Mom gave the familiar shudder that shows she’s in pain.
“What’s wrong?
“It’s nothing.” Being able to sit up had improved Mom’s breathing. “I’m just feeling a little pain down my left side.”
I teleported to the triage desk. “My mother’s having pain down her left side,” I said to the triage nurse who was helping an elderly man control his bloody nose.
“We’ll get to her in a minute. Please move aside while we get this man’s information.”
Half an hour later. Different triage nurse. “Would you please come see my mother? She’s having pain down her left side that wasn’t present when we got here.”
Mom, as usual, downplayed the pain.
“You need to see the doctor,” said the triage nurse.
“Well, I’m ready,” said Mom.
“Unfortunately, our doctor isn’t ready,” said the nurse.
I’m panicking, and there’s a part of me that’s thinking it would serve him right if he had to pick my not petite mother up off the floor when she coded. “But, what about the pain?”
“Look,” he said, irritated. “Her vitals are stable.” TWO HOURS AGO!!!! “She just has to wait.”
The waiting room filled. No patients were called in. One or two came out. Mom and I began to wonder if there was really a doctor behind the doors at all.
When I returned from hunting down the hospital halls for my friend Chuck, the chaplain, Mom had made it into the treatment area. “When the doctors got here for the 11:00 shift, everything started to go pretty quickly,” she said.
Turns out Mom has a touch of pneumonia and will be in the hospital for a couple of days. Doc said she could go home Sunday if she was feeling like a million dollars. “What if I’m only feeling like $500,000?” she asked.
“Then you’ll have to bribe me,” the doctor laughed.
I have to say it’s pretty much a tossup where I’d rather be on the day after Thanksgiving—the shopping mall or the emergency room. I was looking forward to getting home to tumble into a nap.
That wasn’t to be right away, however. After a full day in the emergency room with my mother, I got home to find–
the cat had puked in my bed.
