And another turn in the plot…

/ Brett Ann Stanciu

My body falls apart again, and my daughter drives me to Dartmouth. “My car only goes to this ER,” she tells me when I hint at negotiating a closer ER. She asks her blunt and even-toned questions, “What are you afraid of?”

Among other things, I’m afraid of waiting, in pain, which is what happens, and I survive that, of course. The hours in the ER waiting room introduce us to an intimate slice of others’ lives. The man who drove a screwdriver into his hand and didn’t seek antibiotics (not a good choice), another who crammed his hand between his two fighting dogs (the hand lost), a woman with a damaged foot who phones her mother on speakerphone. Across the large room, listening, I wince at the painful distance in that relationship.

Eventually, I’m given a bed in what’s labeled Hall 3. Shift change, a kind nurse hustles to give me meds. In the hallway, we are yet in the swirling mix of others’ lives. A hall mate (not a roommate) who I never see but who’s recently widowed; his companion struggles to figure out his meds. Later, my daughter steps outside and sees a prisoner who’s a patient run through the parking lot, high drama. She leaves after midnight. “Drive safely,” I say, “text me when you’re home.”

In the night, the surgeons stop in, and again the next morning, when the surgeons and the Good Doctor my oncologist meet in my room. Like a rushing train, surgery is coming rapidly and unavoidably towards me. Much as I’d rather not, really rather not, I begin to accept this. I think: get my tools together to survive this. Print out my manuscript, collect books and a knitting project. In all these countless hours in varying hospital rooms and hallways, I’ve never been bored. Frustrated and weeping, laughing and curious, but never dull. Another thing to be grateful for.

I’d rather not, but here’s another bend in my story, as with my hall mate and waiting room companions…

40 thoughts on “And another turn in the plot…”

  5. Hearing of this recent painful twist in your story makes me even more grateful for the gift of visiting with you Tuesday (which was my birthday). I promise to keep sending my love your way! Your body and spirit are powerful! Continue to meditate on as many positive and beautiful things as possible! 💗

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  7. Oh, damn. I’d been ejoying your descriptions of spring, of being outside, and feeling the chemo leave your body. These ‘plot twists’ are brutal, but I add my good wishes to those of your myriad supporters. Heal.

    Lisa

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  16. Thinking of you and hoping you’ll soon be home listening to the birdsong, bees humming, and puttering in the garden! Keeping you in my prayers.

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