Last Tuesday Morning

It all started like an ordinary day. I heard John get out of bed but kept on snoozing. When he got back, I didn’t know how long he’d been gone as by then I was just deciding to get up myself and had barely opened my eyes. But oddly he complained his shoulder hurt him really badly. So, he got into bed very gingerly and I asked him if anything happened the day before to strain a muscle. He didn’t think so. Hmm. I got some arnica cream to rub on his shoulder and saw that his pajama top had little bits of what looked like the stuff that falls from our many birch trees at this time of year. Then I noticed that his hands were bruised, swollen and bleeding. Then I saw a bump on his head that was also turning colors. His forearms were grazed badly on the inside of the elbows and the bottom of his bare feet had some cuts on them. I rubbed some of the cream on his shoulder while he winced in pain and he said he just wanted to go back to sleep. I wondered what was going on. Why didn’t he know what had happened? When he jumped up to go and feed the animals again, I knew something very serious was happening. But he’d forgotten that he did feed them already since I saw that our copper bucket filled with parings and bits of meat and bread had been taken outside. It was inconceivable to me that my strapping husband who is so expert at everything he does, didn’t know what had happened and what he had fallen into or on to hurt himself like that. He must have blacked out. What did that mean? So, I called the local doctor and John managed to get dressed and we raced down there to the practice.

But after testing various things and cleaning up his wounds we waited quite a while longer in their office to find out if the hospital wanted to see him. After another hour with nothing more happening and a temporary diagnosis that turned out to be incorrect, we left for home.

Another hour passed. Or maybe it was two hours. Time all morphed together in our hurry up and wait process. Then a call came in to schedule a CT scan in Christchurch, about 85 kilometers from home.

So, again we drove like the wind to deal with the traffic and just made it in time but didn’t know which building we were to go to or the name of the office. Fifteen minutes later after running breathlessly through the maze of the large medical complex, we found the right place. Hallelujah. We were just a few minutes late.

Eventually they called his name but he was in there a very long time and then I heard someone call my name. When I looked up it was an aide to take me to John. My heart sunk. But it was to get worse. They spotted 2 dark lumps on his brain. More waiting ensued. Our doctor from our local medical practice was conferring with the neurologists at the hospital to beg them to keep John overnight at least since we lived so far away and were fairly old. In time, after more waiting they agreed to find a bed for him. We were told to go speak to the Emergency personnel first, and then to the Assessment Ward. Too bad there was no parking in the Emergency area or anywhere else that wasn’t blocks away at the Botanic Gardens. Neither of us was in any mood to do this. I had been driving all day, which is not the way it usually is for us. He’s a better driver and can see better and knows the roads well. I am just the designated front seat driver that tells him what he should have done or where he should have turned, etc. Much etc.

Anyway, we drove around in circles and John said to park in the handicapped area and we did. We were handicapped by him. This hospital parking situation is a notable thorn in every patient’s side.

It was getting late and turning dark by then, almost 7 in the evening.

I was already dreading the drive home.

We went in and somehow somebody talked to us and sent us within a few minutes into many unknown corridors that eventually led to the Assessment area where he waited to find somebody who could tell us what to do next. Somebody did after a while. All the hospitals in the world are really swamped now and hardly anyone can find a bed in any hospital in this current stage of across-the-board illness.

So, we felt grateful he was put in a temporary bed in the ward and even more grateful later when they sent him to another bed in another ward. After about an hour and a half there, I had to start my trek homeward. John was going to have an MRI to further investigate whatever was happening but that was at some unknown time in the future since there were queues for all testing. But we both knew that he was in the right place to find out what was going on with him.

So, I left via various corridors and doors with my instructions in my head for how to get out of the city and onto the motorway that usually only John had previously driven us many times. Once I got that milestone under my belt, I thought it would be easier. Wrong. First off it was raining and I barely covered my head with my sweatshirt, thinking that we’d be driving home together I wasn’t exactly dressed for the cold or the wet or the dark. The electronic key didn’t work immediately and I got soaked while trying to force it. After about 20 attempts I finally unlocked the door. I barely knew where the lights were but got the wipers to turn on and turn off a few seconds later. But it was better than nothing. Then I thought I could drive forward but almost hit the concrete bunker in the center of my parking spot at the top. So, I had to put the car in reverse and backing out slowly I got through some of the lines of cars looking for spaces and went around an aisle towards the exit and hit a concrete curb I couldn’t see in the dark and had to wait until the cars behind me stopped to let me back up again over that curb and then move forward. By then I was starting to get nervous, but I calmed myself down and drove out of the hospital lot at the light and managed well enough to get out of the city though the oncoming lights were glaring after getting off a one-way system where we were all going in the same direction. Yippee. I felt on top of the world. Next, I had to conquer the onramp to the freeway. Did that too. What a gal. That was pretty easy actually since there wasn’t much traffic going in my direction and the road was divided so the oncoming traffic was over a

concrete wall which put them out of my direct vision. Once we got to the country though all of that changed. People were passing me in the rain because I was not speeding (into the unknown) and in fact was going a little under the limit since it was pitch effing black and the streets were like rivers in some places and the rain was pelting down. Personally, I prefer to drive for the conditions of the road and the visibility was so limited I felt it was like braille for me to follow it. At that point the issue was the lighting. Or should I say the non-lighting that wasn’t there. So, it was time for my bright lights. But so many semis were coming towards me, speeding towards me, that I had to keep turning them off, then drive blinded by their lights, then put them on again all the way until another car or truck was coming at me into the rural void. I made it to the limestone hills and through the pass, past the rivers of rain that inundated the windscreen making it almost impossible to see out of.

Finally, in the last part of this journey there were few if any cars on the country roads in the middle of nowhere near our cottage, off the shingled road of twists and turns with unfixed pot holes to navigate before that on the tar sealed parts. Then going into a dark house by the light of my phone, I somehow left part of the car’s lights on, until the next day, but so far that hasn’t drained the battery.

But of course, my battery is entirely drained and it’s running on empty.

From then on John stayed in hospital for 4 days and received conflicting serious diagnoses every day and had to retake all tests and still after all that they’ll need to figure it all out from a biopsy. That happens on Monday and he’ll be there another 4 days minimum after that but the results might not be known for up to 2 weeks more. Hopefully, fingers crossed, it is an infection that they can treat.

So, today, 10 days after this happened, we sat outside and had a few moments on a beautiful day to reflect on all of this. Our gardens give us so much more than a place to sit and ponder. Our animals do too. The cats, especially Ginger girl, have been traumatized by his absence and his weakness. In every way Ginger has found the time to sit on him and purr her heart out. She is his furry girlfriend. Sometimes she even tolerates my being near them. It used to bother me how she wheedled her way in making it hard for me to cuddle with him. But I understand now. She is purring to help him heal. That is their way. They sense what is happening and so every night there’s very little room for me to even get under the covers because each cat is sprawled out across John in some way and go way over where I might want to put my legs or feet. My sleep has been in the semi prone pretzel position. Not the best for my spinal issues but understandable so I don’t worry excessively about the love they give him so unconditionally.

We all want him to bounce back from whatever this is. It might be something that the doctors can treat. I am betting on that outcome.

I see his strength, his stoicism and his spirit edging this illness out. Let’s pray that I’m right.