“Jesus! I never thought I’d get to be this old,” said the man in the hospital bed across the room from me to his friend on the phone.
I had been sharing a room with him for a short time in the cardiac unit while being checked out because of a series of events I’d recently experienced that included dizziness, shortness of breath and passing out—all symptoms that raised the alarm bells such that, a little before midnight, an ambulance was summoned.
The ambulance attendant, a congenial man named Larry, was in full battle regalia, gowned and gloved and wearing an industrial-looking dual cartridge face mask and goggles. He greeted me as if I’d just stepped off the Diamond Princess, plying me with the usual questions—have I had a recent fever, a sore throat, a headache, a cough? After replying “no” to all the above, Larry performed a quick EKG, blood pressure check, etc., none of which shed much light on the situation. He then focused on what I wanted them to do for me. Following advice that a trip to the ER would enable further testing to see what was afoot, I chose to go for a ride. Michelle, however, was informed she would not be allowed to follow, or to visit me in hospital, for safety reasons. She appeared forlorn and I felt likewise as I waved goodbye to her through the back doors of the ambulance.
During the drive to the hospital, Larry drew some blood and then prepared to insert an entry port into my left arm to allow the administration of fluids, should that become necessary. I approached this procedure with considerable trepidation, hoping the bumps encountered as we traversed Petaluma’s poorly maintained streets would not coincide with Larry’s insertion of the device. Luck was on my side, as it turned out, and the procedure went without incident.
After a bumpy but boredom-free ride to the reception area of the hospital, thanks to Larry, whose bedside manner made an undesirable situation considerably less so, we reached the hospital shortly after midnight. My arrival at the facility was somewhat surreal. White canopies had been erected outside the entryway to the Emergency Room in which masked, gowned and gloved personnel plied me with the same round of questions Larry had asked in the ambulance.
After passing my entry screening, a male nurse whose sense of humor and comic timing would place him in good standing on Comedy Central, wheeled me inside while entertaining me with amusing quips and off-the-wall comments that made me feel like I’d purchased a ticket to a guided tour hosted by John Oliver from ‘Last Week Tonight.’
After lying on a gurney in a small ER enclosure for a couple of hours trying my hardest not to hear a Latin American attendant joke with his fellow workers with a voice that could drown out a mariachi band, I was subjected to a series of preliminary tests, answering the same questions I would later be asked several additional times by different doctors, specialists, and other personnel concerning what symptoms occasioned my visit. A while afterward, I was informed they liked me so much they wanted me to stay overnight to learn more about me.
Some time later, I was finally wheeled to the room that would house me for the next 14 hours, where I would spend a fitful and mostly sleepless night listening to the quiet moaning of the nameless companion occupying the bed by the window while wondering what had brought him to this place. A drape hung between us, obstructing my view of his side of the room. I remember thinking to myself as I listened to his gasping and moaning that that he sounded like he wasn’t having a very good time.
The night drew on and I grew wearier and wearier but I also felt strangely amped up by the novelty of my situation. After having assiduously avoided contact with anyone but my wife for weeks, I now found myself in the midst of hordes of hospital workers, all wearing masks, save one, but none of them observing, by the nature of their jobs, the oft-heralded distancing guidelines designed to protect us all from contracting the coronavirus. In spite of that, or possibly because of it, weariness finally defeated adrenaline and I found myself desperate for a sleep aid to get what little rest the situation might provide me. After debating the night nurse—the only person I encountered during my stay who wasn’t wearing a mask—over which medication would be allowed me, she produced the trazadone tablet I had requested, removing it from its wrapper and handing it to me with her ungloved hand. I debated momentarily whether to refuse it, but it was 3:20 am and I’d only had 5 hours sleep the previous night, so necessity trumped caution and I swallowed the pill in the hopes it would suffice to give me respite, however brief.
Many events conspired together, as the night wore on, each providing assurances that what little sleep I was able to grab would be hard won.
Throughout the night, the incessant sound of a music tv channel, volume turned low, perfused the room, beginning with polite, correct and ultimately soothing low-key piano music, but then transforming into ruthlessly insidious Chinese flute music designed to drive people insane and virtually guarantee they would flee in terror should they ever again suffer the misfortune of sensing the presence of a single scintilla of the dreadfully disorienting droning.
Somewhere around 5:45 in the morning my roommate asked for a nurse to turn his tv to a news channel. The nurse who responded offered him headphones but whatever response he mumbled was quickly muted by the tv’s speaker as it recounted the morning’s headlines, beginning at low volume but soon becoming louder, more invasive and less conducive to snoozing. I managed to mutter “turn it down, please,” to a passing nurse, who persuaded my fellow cardiac patient to avail himself of the headphones.
It wasn’t long before a needle-bearing vampire appeared in a nurse’s getup stating her intent to acquire more blood samples from my previously punctured arm. A half-hour or so afterward, another nurse showed up to “check my vitals.” Somewhat less than an hour after that, a different nurse appeared saying she wanted to administer an orthostatic blood pressure test that demanded measurements while I was lying still, sitting and standing.
Between the 4:00 am bathroom episode my companion initiated and the nurse who assisted him while shouting as if she was coaching a baseball team, to being awakened to provide more blood for the needle-bearing vampire who appeared shortly before six, to the inevitable vitals check that followed on the heels of the blood draw just after I had dozed off one more time, I felt like I’d been transported to some sadistic stay-awake zone where anything beyond brief cat-naps were prohibited by the authorities and late-night clamor was strongly encouraged.
Breakfast arrived and with it the opportunity to see who had been responsible for the sonic interruptions that had robbed me of my sleep. The drawing back of the curtain that had hung between us allowed me to view for the first time the owner of the voice that had vexed my sleep so. Having earlier heard a nurse address him as “Eugene,” I waved at the man as he lay across the room from me and said “Hi, Eugene, I’m Tim.” His response was less than enthusiastic as he returned my greeting with a look and a mumbled acknowledgement that gave the impression he didn’t feel like talking.
My sense that Eugene wasn’t interested in engaging with me persisted throughout the day. A little after noon, I quipped about something a nurse had just done, aiming the comment in his direction, but receiving no indication he’d heard it. I remember wondering at the time if he might have been hard of hearing, but I didn’t feel like shouting, so I dismissed it. At one point, around midafternoon, when my room-mate was making unusual-sounding noises, I looked over in his direction and, seeing his head hanging forward in a manner suggesting he might have been in distress, I asked if he was ok. He responded that he was alright.
That was the extent of my communication with Eugene. I mostly occupied myself, when I wasn’t being poked or prodded, with reading the news and writing a story on my iPad. I learned shortly after noon that I would be discharged later in the day, once someone named “Elaine” had processed my discharge papers. For whatever reason, I didn’t finally escape my confinement until around 4:30, and then, in a hurried manner under unexpected circumstances.
I spent a fair amount of time that day overhearing Eugene interacting with his nurses and talking with his friends who called him on the hospital phone to commiserate about his hospitalization. He received a handful of phone calls that day, all of which were relatively short conversations. He spoke as if he were the only person in the room, so I could easily hear what he was saying. Judging by the sound of his responses to their questions, the callers were people who obviously cared a lot about him. His responses to their expressions of concern for him and news they were sharing with him indicated the care he felt for them too. He expressed joy over hearing what seemed like good news about some young person’s achievement and commiserated with another who bore news of some unfortunate event.
Eugene’s physical therapist asked him what he liked to do in his retirement: he said he used to like to “turn wood on a lathe” before his wife had a stroke about four or five months ago. The therapist asked him how bad it was. He said “pretty bad,“ adding that it, “put an end to that.” He said his role at home following his wife’s stroke had become “chief cook and bottle-washer”.
I learned from listening that Eugene himself had recently suffered a couple of strokes and was waiting to be tested to check his legs for blood clots, adding that the results might impact his impending heart surgery. He spoke of hoping to be transferred, perhaps the next day, to a rehabilitation facility in Petaluma, where he expected to remain for a week or two. He mentioned the names of two people who would help care for his wife until his return.
Brief snapshots of a life in decline, Eugene’s words bespoke pathos; their poignancy was moving, memorable even. This stranger with whom I’d spoken only several words during the 13 or so hours we shared that room touched something inside me I’ve seldom felt with others I’ve known for years. It felt almost voyeuristic to jot down some of his words, yet I felt strangely compelled to record them, so touched I was by them. His words carried with them a sense of importance that seemed to extend beyond the immediate moment.
As the afternoon drew on, Eugene seemed to grow more restless. He received another call, this one, from the tone of his response, bore news that someone in his circle had either been stricken with some life-changing illness or perhaps had even perished. The news elicited in him the normal responses of concern and commiseration one expresses in such times, after which he said to the person on the other end of the phone, “These golden years are just not what they’re meant to be.”
An hour or so later, he rang for a nurse to take him to the bathroom. He used a walker, with the nurse’s help, to cross the room to reach it. A journey of perhaps 18 or so feet, it required passing by the foot of my bed, followed by a slight rightward turn in order to enter the room where the toilet was located, it being on the other side of the wall less than three feet from where I lay writing my story.
Little more than a half-hour later, he called for a nurse again. After waiting a few minutes with no one answering his page, he rang yet again. A nursing assistant, a large man, came to his aid, only this time Eugene eschewed the walker and made his way, with the nurse steadying him, past my bed and into the bathroom.
Little did I know what would happen next.
After waiting a minute or two, the nurse called out to Eugene asking if he was finished. Hearing no response, he looked inside and grew alarmed. He called out for help and a number of people appeared at the doorway. In what seemed like no time at all, there were 4 or 5 nurses gathered inside the door at the foot of my bed and at least that many more standing just outside the doorway. A voice in the crowd asked, “is he breathing?” Another replied “he has no pulse.” A moment passed. Another person said “wait, maybe . . .” followed by silence. I then began to sense the unspoken feeling growing among those present that the worst had occurred.
Suddenly, I felt out of place, as if I were an observer, transported instantly and without warning into the middle of an unfolding and deadly drama in which I had no business being a part of. I looked up from my iPad—on which I’d been writing about an experience I’d had as a youth at a barbershop in the town where I grew up—wondering what would happen next, when I saw the legs and feet of my roommate lying flat on the floor as someone dragged him past me and out of view beyond the foot of my bed, the picture of his plaid pajama bottom-clad legs forever glued in my memory.
A nurse appeared from the midst of the throng gathered outside my door, catching my eye as she walked toward me, beckoning me with eyes and gesture to follow her. I grabbed my iPad and iPhone and dutifully complied as she led me out of the room to a chair 20-odd feet down the hallway and just out of view of my room where I was directed to sit with her and another nurse until a different room could be provided for me while I awaited my discharge.
In reflecting on the incident during the drive home, I found myself thinking that, while Eugene’s struggle may now be over, his wife’s is not. The enormity of the impact his absence will mean for her ongoing care is terrible to contemplate. It seemed so sad and unfair! Life sometimes deals a cruel hand to us for no apparent reason! I found myself thinking, by extension, how the lack of attention to proper funding of eldercare is one of our society’s deepest shames.
Then my thoughts turned to how everything can change, literally in one instant, as it had for Eugene and his wife that afternoon, I will never forget the last words I heard him say, not long before he departed, “These golden years are just not what they’re meant to be.”
Tim Konrad
2020.04.26
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