The woman’s face twisted in a paroxysm of wounded rage and confuson. I could see the red webbing spread across the sclera of her widened eyes as she stared at the wall. Then she shook her head.
“He’s going to be all right. This is something they can fix. It’s going to be all right.” She half whimpered, half laughed while her feet kicked up and down like a child sitting in a large, high chair.
“We are going to admit him to one of our intensive care units,” said the doctor. “But I want to be honest with you, I don’t think he can survive this.” The “this” here was a devastating cardiac event. When the heart doesn’t pump properly, oxygenated blood can’t reach the places it needs to reach. Organs begin to fail very quickly, and if enough of these systems fail, we die. This was what Mr. Deng was doing in room eleven of the Emergency Department.
My hand rested upon Mrs. Deng’s shoulder as she shut her eyes and shook her head. Her friend sat close beside her, quiet but attentive. And that is how it is with truth sometimes. Some truths are horrible, and when they rush upon us like a tidal wave, we close our eyes, turn our heads, and pray that we are left standing. Or our loved ones. Above all, we’d like for them to keep their feet, to be protected from the roaring wave.
“Would you like to see him before he’s transferred to the ICU?”
She looked up at me and nodded fervently. “Yes!”
“Okay, if you’re ready, we can go now?”
She nodded again, and her friend and I stood by her and she slowly rose from the chair. Mrs. Deng was about forty years old. Unlike her husband, who was Chinese, she was Caucasian. I watched her closely as she made uncertain steps downs the hallway. I half expected her to face plant onto the cool tile of the floor.
Grief can make anyone crazy. I’ve seen grown adults throw themselves upon the ground in loud demonstrations of grief. It’s easy to judge such displays of vulnerability, and to shake one’s head and ask, “Why can’t they just keep it together?” But sometimes we fall apart. Death can take us apart and leave us blubbering.
But something felt off with Mrs. Deng. She seemed strangely infantile. People regress in crises, but I felt red flags go up that day. Maybe some mental illness, I thought. Or maybe the influence of some drug. It didn’t matter at that moment. At that moment, I walked beside her as she lurched through the hall, shamble-footed and unsteady. I tried to prepare her for when she saw her husband. I told her about the ventilator breathing for him, and the tube that was inserted into his mouth and guided into his trachea. The doctor had said as much earlier, and I was parroting him. It can be shocking to see a loved one connected to strange medical machines.
“He was reading a fucking book!” she said. “That was what he was going to do today, and I wanted him to clean to house!” She laughed. It was a rueful, barking sound. I half crazily wondered what book it was he was planning to read, but I wisely refrained from asking.
We paused outside the room. “We can go in when you’re ready,” I said. She nodded her head, her mouth twitching. And we stepped into the room.
She sat in a chair at his bedside, urging him to wake up. But he never would. Other family members arrived. It wasn’t long before everyone realized that this was a goodbye. They kissed his face, one by one, and left the room.
I spent a lot of time with Mrs. Deng and her family that day, and there is more that could be said about it. Probably a lot that I have forgotten happened. That’s how life is. It rushes by, and some things brand themselves onto our brains and hearts. Some things are lost forever. Her strange suffering is imprinted on me. And I wonder what has become of her. But I’ll always remember the last thing Mrs. Deng said to her husband:
“I’m sorry you didn’t get to finish your book.”
There is something about life I am supposed to learn here. About the chances and changes of life and death. How each moment could be our last. But I can't draw out an easy moral this time. I suppose that sometimes the best we can do is shamble along, hoping that even if we can't understand... we aren't alone. But sometimes even that truth feels as far away as another galaxy, and we feel alone... cold in outer space.
I pray Mrs. Deng does not feel alone...
**Names and medical details have been altered to protect patient privacy.
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