Panic Turned to Brief Anger
I paused momentarily taking a big breath to spur myself down the
room towards my brother’s room. My mom says, "He has made progress,
they took him off the ventilator and he can breathe on his own."
This is her way of letting me know what I will see when I walk in the
room. We take a few more steps toward his room she continued "They have
him sedated to let him rest because they need his brain to heal. They did
not have to do surgery to control the bleeding on his brain. His brain is
not as swollen as it could have been." She pauses right outside a
room, a nurse sitting at a computer with a full view into what is probably my brother’s
room. The curtains are drawn so that only the nurse can see through the
window. My mom draws the curtain back, we step through them, I hold my
gaze toward the floor. Keeping my eyes Closed and taking a deep breath
before I look up hoping this is all just a really bad dream.
I finally raise my head and look at the
bed and there he is lying in the bed. Eyes swollen, black, road rash on
his arm and head. I release the breath I was holding and realize, he doesn't
look as bad as I think.
I look at mom and say, it's not as bad as
when dad was here. She nods her head in solemn agreement. I pepper her
with questions about the accident, about his prognosis and what the plan is to
get through this. She responded that the doctors aren't sure how bad it
is and they won't know until he wakes up out of a coma. Coma, I think to
myself and I say out loud, I thought he was sedated? My mom wearily
responds, "He is, but even when they reduce his sedation, he only thrashes
about, he doesn't wake up."
I fall into the chair next to her and I said to her, "What's
the plan? Are you going to move into the Family House or are you going to
travel back and forth?" In my heart, I know her answer, she will
find a way to move into the Family House and just like she did for my dad, she
won't leave his side." I think to myself, she is such an amazing
human, so self-sacrificing, I'm not sure I am her daughter. I realize at
that moment how angry I am at my brother for making my mother disrupt her life,
we were still devastated by the loss of dad and a grandfather. Life just
hurts sometimes.