"He is in critical care," the Intensive Care Unit nurse had explained to us as we sat in the waiting room. "By that, we mean that we are unsure if he will survive." I remember thinking that her tone was far too methodical to be delivering news about the fragility of life, the newly tangible possibility of death that had burst into the foreground. We all recognized it was there, but sidestepped the topic in conversation, like barefoot people avoid a shattered wine glass on a tile floor. Death was our new next-door neighbor.
Critical Care. Unsure if he will survive. We.
Who was this “we” she was referring to? Was my family included in the collective “we,” or was she exclusively referring to the medical team, who to me consistently seemed like they knew more about his condition than they were letting on? Was my familial “we” merely seen as a group of outsiders looking in on the spectacle that had suddenly and with an overbearing sense of emergency become our lives, like a group of elementary school students staring through the glass to see some sort of zoo animal? We must have been, for it all seemed much bigger than we were, with more fortitude. What an incredible powerlessness, to watch a pack of M.D.s aflutter, circling around him on a hospital bed. Which is why I didn't watch at first. The condition was invisible but weighed so much.
“You can go see him if you want to,” someone in the waiting room suggested. The doctors and nurses had him hooked up to a thermo-cool machine, which they said was to prevent the brain damage that goes along with the loss of blood flow during cardiac arrest. At the time I remember being perplexed by this—why would they induce hypothermia on a sick person? After the fact, I looked into it a little more to get a better understanding of what it all meant.
Approximately 300,000 people in the United States {experience sudden cardiac arrest each year} ...Despite nearly 40 years of prehospital advanced life support, the survival rate of out-of- hospital cardiac arrest is very poor. Less than half of victims who develop return of spontaneous circulation survive to leave the hospital alive, and the cause of death is anoxic brain injury in most patients who die within one month of the cardiac arrest. Inducing mild therapeutic hypothermia {using thermo-cool catheter} in selected patients surviving out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest has a major impact on long-term neurologically intact survival and may prove to be one of the most important clinical advancements in the science of resuscitation...Hypothermia after cardiac arrest in humans demonstrate{s} decreased mortality[i].
This was when the doctors weren't sure what the results of his stent surgery would be, so we waited impatiently as children on Christmas Eve, but bereft of the excitement; in its place, there was dread and anticipation of the worst.
In times like these you lose track of what day it is. You completely forget your work schedule. You systematically respond to phone calls and texts asking about his progress, asking if you need anything. You always say “The prognosis is good. The doctors are optimistic. No, I don’t need anything,” but you aren't sure why your impulse is to lie. Are doctors ever optimistic? And your needs are through the roof. I guess you know there is nothing anyone could offer you that would ground you in the present, that would fulfill the capital N needs like Stability, Answers, Time, The Future.
People you have never met before are suddenly dropping off dinners in square Tupper Ware containers that you will never eat, and every time you walk in the front door, your grandmother is vacuuming your living room again, the home phone is ringing, and the tea kettle seems to perpetually whistle.
