The Home and The Heart, part III

Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasp'd no more -
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

Chatper 3 

The Five Words

It was another day and she was still in darkness.  The doctors had decided to not wake her up to give her more time to stabilize.  It would be 40 hours after she was initially put to sleep before they would try to wean her off anesthesia.  Was that normal?  They assured me it was.  Her motionless body was now warm, but she was absent.  Her brain was pumped with strong strange salts to keep it from even a dream, and her fragile heart was struggling to beat.

There was nothing to do in the hospital, and I returned home. 

My younger brother and a dear friend were with me that day, and I was grateful for their presence.  We talked about many things and tried to take our minds away from the clouds hovering above the home.

I woke up at 2am and looked to see if there was a message.  There were two missed calls.  At my home, the cellular reception is poor and calls are often dropped or not received.  The voicemails said nothing.  The hospital had given me access to her chart via an online tool.  I logged on with her name, and saw a few strange updates.    There was much activity, and many notes.  Many doctors had seen her in the middle of the night.  There was no mention of her waking up, but a note ominously mentioned that she had been taken for a scan of her brain.

What did that mean?  Wasn't it her heart that was to be healed?  Why this sudden interest in her brain?

People say that the well-known three-word gesture of affection is the sweetest sentence in the world.  That night I read another sentence, only it was five words, three adjectives and two nouns, and I hope no one ever has to read those cryptic words juxtaposed together.

The digital letters on her hospital chart coldly said: “LARGE ACUTE COMPLETED MCA INFARCT.”

Now, at present, when I understand what they mean, I realize that each of these words is devastating in itself, but that taken together, these five words are catastrophic.

One wishes it isn’t large.  Or acute.  Or that it is incomplete.  Or that another part of the body instead of MCA (Middle Cerebral Artery) is mentioned.  Or that another word, like occlusion, instead of infarct is used.

But those five words were there, precise, grave, unalterable.  I read those words again and again.  

LARGE.  ACUTE.  COMPLETED.  MCA.  INFARCT.

With trepidation, I woke up my brother and called the CVICU.  My dear friend also sat silently with us as we struggled to make sense of what had happened.

It was the middle of the night.  And that night would not end soon.  It would stretch into days and weeks.

…

When an infant comes into the world, its eyes wander about, unable to fixate.  It does not recognize anything, not even its mother’s face.  The infant cannot hold or turn its head.  It cannot yet eat, or speak, or understand.  But we know that it will do all those things in time.

That confidence is missing for an adult who is suddenly faced with these disabilities.

But the language of love is known to the infant, and I am certain, to the adult.

…

As I saw her on Tuesday, and held her tiny left hand, her now-open but wandering eyes could hardly see me or recognize me, but she squeezed my hand and held it tight, as if imploring me with all her feeble power to snatch her from the reaper who was already dragging her into eternal darkness.

She had prayed before being taken into those nether-worlds.  Had that prayer remained unheard?

I would move heaven and earth, I promised her in silence.

After a major brain stroke, the brain swells and the neurologists worry about what they call the “mid-line-shift”.  The one side of the brain that is injured, is inflamed, and pushes sideways and down.  More than a few millimeters, and it is all over.

Her left-brain was dying and bleeding inside.  The left-brain controls the right side of the body, and it contains the language faculty.  A large left-brain stroke like that, and the individual may never again understand words, and may never again utter one.  And of course, the right side of the face, the right arm, the right leg, all become flaccid and immobile.  The right eye has trouble focusing.  Her stroke symptom score was 22.  It was a very, very, severe blow.

She was on the brink.  They would have to cut open her skull too, if the inflammation increased even slightly.

…

The Harvard-trained surgeon who had mended her heart had come to visit.  And he watched her, somberly, in silence.  He knew and I knew, and we nodded at each other.  Some doctors are more sympathetic than others, but in that grave moment, he remained frozen and waited for me to say something.  I had nothing to say but I stared into his eyes.  And he winced.

He would never come back to see her again.

(to be continued)