Chekhov’s Mistess

Letter from Brooklyn: Ghosts and Heroes

The entrance to the NYU Medical Center is grand, more like a hotel than hospital, yet the gateway for most of its unlucky inhabitants is a small dark alley off to the side marked “Emergency Room.” Arrive with an infant (or in my case two) and you move to the front of the line, otherwise cast off into an interminable wait for paperwork, triage, scarcely cleaned gurney, eventual fleeting visit from barely identifiable doctors nurses. No need to go into the cacophony of this place. Everyone is allowed in. My wife’s lament that “we may never leave this place” was met with agreement from a disembodied voice behind a curtain separating our gurney space to the next. That woman had an infant too and we chatted through the curtain but never saw her face. Just before her in that space was a cancer patient who had been very very nauseous. Just after, a suicidal student from NYU whose frank dialogue with a nurse – while another whose job was to merely sit watching the very young man sat silent – haunts me still. “Are you suicidal?” “Yes” “Are you homicidal, do you want to kill anyone besides yourself?” “No” he says. “Good for me” she says. The brief description of the rope – (this sort of thing is a very real problem at NYU by the way) – and the nurse’s last question to which I heard no response – “Do you hear voices?”

Seven and half hours later, quarter to three am, one of our sons is admitted to the pediatric ward with Bronchialitis. Not much to do but put him on oxygen until he can breath on his own. The entire time of his stay – four sleepless days – he’s attached to a machine measuring “sats” the oxygen level in his blood. 90s good 80s bad. In the 80s doctors hover and watch.

Don’t give parents numbers to watch. By the time the doctor turned off the machine on Friday because our son was ready to be on his own, the SATS numbers were our obsession both comforting and disconcerting.

By the time you get through a certain amount of life you may have spent some time in hospitals. I have. What you learn is this: Nurses are heroes. After knowing I would have a sleepless and foodless night one brought me chicken noodle soup she picked up on her way into work the next day. For eight hour stretches these people become your family. From time to time we still summon the strength of Marta, the nurse who helped us through the birth of our first son four years ago, because her strength became ours. Selfless strength compassion. There were others more sick than our son on the floor – you can hear their cries throughout the night – but nobody acts that way.

Everyone moves on it’s a constantly shifting environment. Our sons are getting back to normal now, thank you. Literary note: while waiting in the emergency room I read aloud to my wife in hopes of passing time – waiting waiting waiting – from Gabriel Josipovici’s Goldberg: Variations. It probably seemed odd and I wonder if someone might have overheard us just as we listened to all the activity around us. The story from that beautiful book I picked at random begins with the birth of twins, the death of another daughter and later the death of one of the twins. Hardly appropriate reading for the situation, although it didn’t really feel that way at the time just because it was a great story. Some people – me – always rely on these things (and these things, writing) to get me through.

We are all breathing freely now. Happy Holidays.

comments

Bud, I always take a novel into the hospital with me if my kids go in - it sharpens the mind, I think, they are rarely in danger
once stabilised, and I know I can read a book again later if it’s not making sense. Our hospitals never seem to have magazines either.
And it does get you through. Glad to hear all ended well, have a very happy holiday.

    – Genevieve Tucker (12/18  at  09:06 PM)

Bud, man, glad everything was OK. Went through somethign similar in that my wife was in NYU on bed rest due to pelvic fractures. Same dealio: nurses = amazing, at least in the high risk obstetric ward. And machines with numbers = scary. Thankfully our daughter-to-be’s numbers were always good I just had to watch a coupla scary drops in my wife’s blood pressure along the way…

Anyhow, look forward to meeting the recovered crew in teh Gardens sometime soon!

    – Richard Nash (12/19  at  01:25 AM)

Wow! That post brings back a lot of memories. My son’s birth was very simple and easy--at least as simple and easy as the birth of your only child can be--and even then the nurses were amazing. My niece was 90 days premature, and that was terrifying--machines, those numbers you spoke of that alternatly terrify and comfort, the dull cries of children much sicker, dying even, than my niece. Since that experience, I’ve begun to regard nurses as the embodiment of compassion. I am forever in awe of their fortitude in the face of so much pain and loss, and their endurance.

I wonder why we find comfort in art when confronted with pain and wierd, uncomfortable situations. I’ve done it myself, read a few edifying lines of poetry or prose to help me get through a difficult moment. Perhaps it’s the ritual--a true reader craves the written word;by reading we return to someplace that’s safe and familiar. Or perhaps opening a book at these moments is a turn away from reality and towards beauty.

I’m glad that your children are well!

    – Brian (12/19  at  08:21 PM)

Thank you very much for the post.  I have been a pediatric nurse for 13 years, and it is an emotionally draining, and thankless job.  It is nice, and rare that people see the effort that we put into our work.  I also am a die hard bibliophile, and also have a book always handy to pass the time.  A great story is a relief, even if the timing seems strange.
Hope your babies are feeling better.

Thank you again,

Booklover,
http://ijustfinished.blogspot.com

    – Booklover (12/27  at  08:00 AM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: December 18, 2007
• Filed Under:
  Song of Myself: Diary

• Comments:4
• Links to this Post: Technorati

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