Derailed (6 page)

I winced. Mom had always been slightly claustrophobic.

We kept on waiting, our conversation petering off for lack of anything useful to say. Estelle caught my attention with her eyes and rubbed her forehead with a couple of fingers. Her little signal to me that I was frowning again. But why not frown? My mom was in serious trouble, and there wasn't anything I could do.

Finally, a nurse peeked in and said if we wanted something to drink there was a pop machine out in the hall. “Wait,” I said when she started to leave. “We've been here over forty minutes. What's goin' on? The doctor said my mother would be back right away. Is everything okay?”

“Oh, I'm sure it is. I'll check.”

She came back to say Mom had been waiting for transport, but was on her way now.

Once the nurse had gone, Estelle sighed. “That probably means she was stranded out in the hall like she'd been forgotten.”

When they finally wheeled her into the bay, she lay on the gurney, covered by a thin sheet, eyes closed, mouth open. A tube fed oxygen to her nose, and an IV drip hung from a pole.

For an instant, I thought she was dead. Then I saw her chest rise slightly. I waited for a second breath to be sure. “Mom?”

I was never gladder to see her eyes open and track over until they finally focused on me. She raised her right hand in a limp wave.

Thank you, Jesus
; she was even conscious.

The nurse who'd gone to check on her busied herself tucking in the thin white blanket around her and adjusting her pillow. “There now, Ms. Bentley, does that feel better? Are you warm enough?”

Mom's eyes rolled up to look at the nurse, and a smile animated the right side of her face. But I noticed that the left side didn't seem to move.

“Can you lift your left hand, Mom?”

It moved no more than an inch.

I sucked in my breath as Estelle gripped my arm.

A doctor appeared and moved the curtain aside, asking if we'd mind stepping out for a few moments so we wouldn't distract Mom while he checked a few more things. I glanced at my mom. She was looking at me as if pleading for me not to leave.

“We'll be just outside, Mom. Don't worry, we'll be back.”

The nurse followed us, and I took the opportunity to ask whether she knew anything about what had happened.

“According to the paramedics, your mother was at Walgreen's picking up a prescription when the pharmacist noticed her slurred speech and having trouble getting the money out of her wallet. He asked her a couple of simple questions, had her try to hold her arms up, and told her to smile at him. Apparently, she had enough trouble with all three tasks that he had her sit down immediately and called 9-1-1. So I think we got help to her about as quickly as
possible. Which is good. Less chance of permanent damage.” The nurse smiled. “Excuse me,” she said, raising a finger as though she'd be back in a minute, and slipped away.

When the doctor finished, he came out and gave us his tentative prognosis.

Mom had apparently had an ischemic stroke, which he explained as a blood clot that had inhibited circulation to the right side of her brain. They planned to admit her and begin administering medication to dissolve the clot. They also needed to discover the source of the clot—he suspected her legs—and take steps to prevent new ones from forming. At that point they would assess how she was doing and design a plan for her rehabilitation. The doctor was hopeful for substantial recovery. “She still has a little movement on her left side, so that's good. And though there's some paralysis to the left side of her face, making it hard for her to speak clearly, the language centers of her brain don't seem to be damaged. But we won't know for sure until later.”

Estelle looked at me as though she wanted me to ask something more, but then she turned to the doctor. “What kind of time frame are we talking about here?”

“
Hmm
 . . . impossible to say. Barring complications, we'll probably begin rehab within forty-eight hours, and when she's out of acute care, we can talk about a rehabilitation center. That's usually most effective for the first two or three weeks. After that, if you can set her up in a supportive living environment, recovery can continue on an outpatient basis.”

For the first time, the implications of Estelle's question hit me. “Are you saying she's got to go to some place like a nursing home?”

He nodded. “Weeks, undoubtedly, but beyond that, it's hard to say. There's no telling how fast her recovery will go or how complete it will be. But if and when she achieves a certain level of functioning, there are home-based programs.”

He must have seen the shock on both our faces, because he raised both hands as though urging us to not go there. “Let's take it one step at a time. She seems like a spunky person, so let's just pray.”

Pray
? Oh yeah. St. Francis was a Catholic hospital.

“You can be sure we'll be praying,” Estelle said, almost fiercely, “and we've got some strong prayer warriors to call on too.”

We followed Mom when they transferred her to the critical-care ward and once the nurses had her settled, we went in and pulled up a couple of chairs to be near her. From somewhere—probably her big purse—Estelle pulled out hand lotion and began applying it to Mom's dry, old hands.

She looked up at Estelle and gave her a crooked smile and then started making noises with her mouth. I got up and leaned in close as she mumbled the same thing several times, the left side of her mouth remaining still like someone who'd received too much Novocain from the dentist.

“That's okay, Mom,” Estelle assured her, but Mom kept trying to compensate with exaggerated movements of the right side of her face.

She mumbled a long string of gibberish.

Finally, Estelle got it. “She's sayin' she thought they were trying to bury her!”

Mom's eyes lit up. “Eee-ya. Eee-ya!”

I hardly cared what she was saying . . . just that she was trying to communicate. It was like she was coming back to us.

Estelle patted her hand. “No one was tryin' to bury you, Mom. What are you talkin' about?”

Mom launched into trying to tell us with mumbled words and wild eye movements while she pointed with the arthritic gnarled finger of her right hand.

Just then the nurse came back in. “Your mother's getting a little agitated now. She needs her rest. Will you be back tomorrow?”

“Please, wait!” Estelle held up her hand. “She's tryin' to tell us somethin'. Mom, are you talkin' about that MRI? Is that it? That big machine they slid you into, and it went
bang, bang, bang
?”

Even with the paralysis on the left side, Mom's face expressed obvious relief as she sighed and closed her eyes.

“Well, you don't need to worry, dear. That was just a hospital test. No one's gonna bury you.” Estelle patted her hand.

The nurse pushed forward with a strained smile on her face. “I really need to check her vitals now and give her a shot so she can rest.”

I eyed her, trying to decide whether to be assertive or plaintive. Finally, I took a deep breath. “Couldn't I just stay with my mother overnight?”

“I'm sorry, sir. When she's in a regular room, yes, but not here in the critical-care unit.”

I didn't see why not, but Estelle touched my arm to urge me to not make a fuss.

I leaned down, realizing as I did so that Mom wasn't hard of hearing—at least not any more so than usual. “We're goin' now, Mom. But we'll be back in the morning.”

Eyes still closed, she gave us a crooked smile, and we left.

“Where y'all been?” DaShawn scolded as we came into the apartment. “There ain't nothin' to eat!”

I glanced at Estelle out of the corner of my eye. Had she also forgotten? Didn't matter.
I'd
forgotten, so there was good reason for the dark frown on my grandson's face.
Man! Is that how I look when I frown? No wonder Estelle's been on me to break the habit
.

I sighed and pulled my attention back to the situation at hand. “Now, just cool down, son. I'm sorry we didn't call. We should've, but we've had an emergency. Great-Grandma's in the hospital.”

Shock wiped the frown from DaShawn's brow as his eyes got large. “
Hospital
! She okay?”

Estelle sighed and tossed her coat on the recliner. “No. She's not okay. That's why she's in the hospital. She had a stroke.”

“What's that mean? She gonna die?”

“We don't think so. Least not now. But she's facin' a long road of recovery.” Estelle was digging in the refrigerator as she answered DaShawn. “Whadda you mean, there ain't nothin' to eat? What's wrong with this leftover spaghetti?” She pulled out a big tub.
“Serve yourselves what you want and nuke it. I'll throw together a little salad.”

While we ate, we filled DaShawn in the best we could on what had happened to his great-grandma. He was sobered, and I realized how deeply he loved her. We'd become a tight family.

Later, as DaShawn watched TV, Estelle and I did the dishes and then sat back down at the table with fresh coffee. I hadn't had time to think about the implications of Mom's stroke, but it was starting to sink in. “If Mom's gonna be in a nursing home for . . . for maybe months, what's that mean about her living in our new place? We just bought ourselves a two-flat. Got a pretty hefty mortgage to meet!”

Estelle slowly nodded her head. “And she's likely to need full-time support even if she does recover. We knew this would come someday, but . . .”

“But what?”

“Well, don't forget—before we got married, even before I started working at Manna House, I did in-home elder care. I'm a certified nurse assistant, ya know.”

I'd totally forgotten Estelle was a CNA. “You sayin' you'd take care of Mom? What about your job?”

“It's not what I wanna do, Harry, but she's family. We do what family needs, not just what we want.”

My wife's comments rocked me. I knew she loved my mom, but I hadn't realized how deeply she'd made “my people her people,” or however Ruth had said that line in the Bible. I reached out and took Estelle's hand, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. “Uh, yeah. That'd be great, babe, but that's months in the future from what the doctor said. And not even certain then. Even if she did move in, I'm still not sure it'd crack our mortgage nut. I mean, we'd have Mom's housing money—like we planned—but we'd lose your Manna House income.”

“Ha! It's hardly worth countin', Harry.”

She was right about that, though every little bit helped. But something was troubling me. “I don't get it, Estelle. We went into this thinkin' God was leadin' us. We prayed. We asked all our friends to
pray. Buying the two-flat so Mom could live independent but still be near us seemed like a solid plan. And there wasn't one person who suggested it was the wrong thing to do! Now I'm feelin' the whole plan's been derailed.”

She leaned back in her chair and used both hands to draw her long, black hair with the attractive silver streaks away from her face. “We're not to follow our friends, Harry. We're supposed to follow the Lord.”

“I know! I know, but . . . but aren't godly friends supposed to help us test whether we're hearin' him right?” She nodded, and I took a deep breath. “What else were we supposed to do? Maybe we didn't hear God right. But . . .” I thought for a moment. “Everything seemed to work out so smoothly. I mean, it was almost like he was doing little miracles on our behalf to help us to buy that place, and then—
poof
!”

“Now Harry, you know God ain't brought us this far to leave us.” She began to hum, and then broke into the familiar chorus. “
I don't feel no ways tired
 . . .” She hummed some more, and then sang the last line, “
I don't believe He brought me this far to leave me
.”

The song hung in the air.

Well . . . maybe he hadn't left me, but that gut-wrenching feeling of abandonment gripped me again like it had a couple years ago when I thought I was going blind. God had finally brought me through that awful experience, but somehow, what I knew in my head didn't help how I felt right then. Like someone had cut my anchor and I was totally adrift.

Estelle had to work Tuesday, so I spent most of
the day with Mom. She slept a lot, and of course, we couldn't have a conversation even when she was awake, but I think it reassured her that I was there. In the afternoon when Estelle was due to get off work, I left to pick her up, promising Mom we'd be back later.

But Estelle insisted on replacing me for the evening. “I'll take that little CD player with some praise music. That'll perk her up. And I might do her nails for her. They looked a little ragged last night. I'll be fine. So don't worry.”