Rushing back

I hadn't planned on going to Fort Smith, but it became absolutely necessary. I got a call from Nana this afternoon, telling me that she was taking Papa to the emergency room. He was having trouble breathing, and he couldn't stop trembling. I got to a stopping point with my work and told the boss that I had to get on the road.

It was a quiet hour and a half drive. It's normally two hours, but having been back so many times recently, I've gotten quite good at knowing where the speed traps are. I think I topped out around ninety-five, quite a feat given the condition of my car. I didn't stop once, and was coasting on fumes by the time I got to the hospital.

Sparks hospital was where I was born. It was where my father died. And now, I was walking around all over the place, trying to find where Nana and Papa were. He was moved up to the second floor ICU, and I didn't find them right away, but I did find one of the waiting rooms with the a sign that read "MacManus Family". No one was in the room, so I kept looking. Finally, I found a nurse and she showed me where Papa's room was.

I walked in and greeted the family. Papa was going completely nuts in his bed. He was not happy at all to be hooked up to all those monitors, his catheter, etc. When I walked in, he was in the middle of taking his pulse monitor off, rolling up the cord and tossing it across the room. Nana walked to the foot of the bed and retreived the monitor and put it back on his finger, all the while giving him a dirty look like she's had to do that many times so far.

I went to the side of the bed, taking Papa's hand and telling him hello. For a moment, I thought his handshake was a little too enthusiastic, but then I realized it was mostly muscle ticks. He kept fiddling with his oxygen mask, trying to take it off, but a little slap on the arm from Nana straightened him out in a flash.

My aunt and uncle had left to get us all some dinner, and I offered to stay with Papa if Nana wanted to go with them. I knew it was a stupid thing to ask a woman to leave her husband of fifty years' bedside in the ICU, but it just kinda slipped out. I handed my uncle enough cash to cover the entire family as a way of redeeming my moment of idiocy.

After a while, they returned with the food, just in time for Papa's dinner of hospital spaghetti and jello. I thought that was rather cruel to give food that so easily falls off a spoon to a man with such shaky hands. So, I helped feed him. He couldn't eat all to much, as the pain meds were making him queasy. Soon after, he went to sleep. Nana told us all to leave her alone with him for the first shift of the night. My uncle got the next shift, and I got the one after that. The rest fo us retired to the waitning room to get some rest, but none of us could sleep.

Just down the hall from Papa's room was the room that my father died in a little over fifteen years ago. I wanted to walk past the room, but I chickened out. It was in an area that was more restricted, and I figured my explanation for being there would sound a little, I don't know, insane.

Wandering the halls, I found myself in the vending room, where I saw the seventies-style coin-operated coffee/hot chocolate machine that I remember was there when my father was in the ICU. I remember drinking so much hot chocolate from that machine that I'm surprised I wasn't admitted for sugar shock. I got a cup for old time's sake, and it tasted stale, like it was the same batch of cocoa mix that was in there last time was here.

So now, I'm hyper as hell from the cocoa, and I'm hacking into the courtesy phone line to post on the blog. I've got a few hours to kill before my shift, and sleeping is out of the question. I think I'll step outside for a smoke, maybe take a chance that Grace is still awake enough for a phone call.