Friday Again

    

Friday Again

     The police called Dad first thing in the morning to say that they had a lead. That means a bunch of clues together I think. A Jane Doe had been brought into the hospital last Saturday after an alleged mugging. The lady whose name wasn't Jane but that they were calling Jane had a head injury and was in a medically induced coma. That means that they had given her drugs so that she could sleep for a while and let her body heal. It was Mama, I knew that it was Mama, it had to be Mama. She was pretty beat up and had had surgery to lessen the pressure on her brain. The police asked Dad if Mama had any distinguishing features, tattoos, scars, anything that would help them identify her. He told them that she had a lot of curly hair and a c-section scar from having me, but that was all that he could think of and he also asked if we could see her. The Constable said not until they had made some more enquiries. So no. I thought that it had to be Mama, had to, had to, had to be her…… He said that they would be in touch.

     Dad and I hugged for a really long time and I cried and after a while so did Dad and I prayed the whole time and asked for my mother to come back to us. I didn't care how, we just needed her back! After a while Dad said that he needed to do some stuff in the shop and I understood and told him sure. I knew from Mama telling me that different people handle things in different ways. Rather than talking about things, Dad liked to do things. It turned out that I liked to do things too so I decided to take Red and go for a walk.

     The whole time we were walking I was praying and talking to God and talking to Red and all I could think of was Mama. It is so hard to wait and I really needed to find out what hospital she is at and if it is her….it's got to be her, it just has to be! Dad said that I needed to breathe and keep calm so that I don't have a seizure but I couldn’t think of anything but Mama right now.

    I couldn’t stand it and thought about how I could get to the hospital, the only hospital that I knew of that was close, near my high school. It seemed like that the letter and the rosary and the wallet, those three things were Mama’s way of letting me know what happened to her. She was looking for me, just as much as we were looking for her, I just knew it. I had to find a way to get to her but how? Maybe while I was at school I could go check it out. I had been thinking of ways to get out of going to school. Maybe I should go and do a little looking on my own. Dad might not agree but Nancy Drew would!

     Anyway I put Red in her crate and grabbed my backpack. I yelled a quick goodbye to Dad in the shop and ran down our long, long driveway as fast as I could. The special needs bus had come and gone but I figured that I could grab the regular school bus if I showed the driver my school i.d. card. I got on and grabbed the first empty seat that I could find. I knew that Dad would call me if the police got back to him. I didn't like leaving him but I had this pain in my chest and I knew that I had to try to find her. That’s all that mattered.

     I avoided looking at anybody on the bus which wasn’t hard to do--- everybody had their earbuds in and were all doing the same thing. My problem was going to be how to get out of going to class when I was at school already. If I asked Dad to call me in as sick he would want to come get me but if I went to class I would have Ms. Bay with me and would not be able to escape. 

     I decided to tell a lie. This was a very exceptional situation. I went into the office and told the lady at the desk that my father was picking me up for a doctor’s appointment. I asked her to let the BASES classroom know and that he would sign me out when he got there. I said I was going to sit outside because it was such a nice day. I smiled. Then I went outside and sat on the bench for as long as I could stand it. After a bit I got up and started walking towards the hospital. There were lots of other kids being dropped off and walking towards the school so no one even noticed that I was heading the wrong way. Who would care anyway?

     It took me about seven minutes to walk the few blocks to the hospital. This was the same hospital where I was born, where my grandma died, where I had been taken to emergency so many times after so many seizures. It was not my favourite place but not a bad place either. I just did not like the smell there.

     Most of my other trips to the hospital have been through the emergency department so I was not as familiar with the rest of the place. I figured that the elevator would be the best place to start. There were a lot of people coming and going. I was going to have to be invisible if I wanted to look around a bit so I tried to look like I knew where I was going. I got in the elevator and looked at the panel with the floor numbers and there it was: ICU - 7th Floor. I went for it and pushed number seven. Elevators are kind of weird since the coronavirus. Everyone tries not to breathe on each other so everyone is looking in different directions; anyway, nobody cared what I was doing. I just tried to hold my breath for the ride. I got off on the seventh floor and looked around. ICU actually stands for intensive care unit. I preferred to think of it as a message from my mother but whatever, I was determined to find out if Mama was here or not. My problem was that there was a big red sign that said ‘No Admittance to the ICU’. On the other side of the elevator was the hospice or palliative care ward. That’s where my grandma had died. It was easy to get in there; visiting hours were pretty much all the time and the nurses were super nice there. I had to think about what to do and I had to do it fast. Mama was waiting for me to find her. I sat down in one of the ugly brown chairs by the elevator and thought. My brain felt tired after a while. Then I decided to pray. 

     Our Father who art in heaven please help me find my mother please help me find my mother please help me find her please help her to be okay please God for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever amen.

     This was not a prayer that I had ever prayed before but it seemed right for the moment so I kept praying it. Then I started to think about something the youth pastor had talked about when we got in difficult or trying situations. Well this was difficult and I was trying not to do anything else wrong today but I needed help. It was WWJD which stands for What Would Jesus Do? I am pretty sure that he would find a way to get into the ICU but Jesus was a grown man and a healer himself so probably no one would question him. I had seen on television where people steal a uniform or sneak in in a laundry hamper but I would not get away with that. I am a kid. So I kept sitting there and I kept praying. I just kept concentrating on Mama, thinking about her being here and being okay. 

     After a while I got an idea--- WWGD? What would Grandma do? It didn't take me long to figure out; I was pretty sure that Grandma would do the quietest and easiest thing and just go straight to the source. I think that Mama calls it the path of least resistance. Grandma would go to the hospital chapel. You might not know that hospitals have tiny churches in them but they do. They also have hospital chaplains which are like priests or pastors. They are kept pretty busy visiting people in their hospital rooms, giving patients communion or talking to people’s families. It might not be a really cheerful job at a hospital but somebody has to do it.

     The guy that was working here when Grandma was here was called Pastor Steve and he was a really nice old guy. He visited my grandmother a lot and really made her time in the hospital a lot nicer. Plus he always had a bowl of the caramels Grandma liked on his desk which made him a hero to me. I decided that rather than storming the castle like in The Princess Bride, I would go and see if Pastor Steve was busy and see what he had to say. Unfortunately that meant getting back on the elevator but I guess if I could hold my breath going up, I could just as easily hold it going down to the first floor.

     So I got lost on the first floor for a while and finally made it to the chapel which is like a small church. It is pretty plain so everyone of different religions can feel comfortable there but it has a few benches called pews and a bit of stained glass in it, just to keep it real. Pastor Steve was cleaning the metal panels on the door with an antibacterial wipe. He said that it wasn’t in his job description but that he liked to do his part then he smiled really big. He asked me what brought me there and I told him the whole story. At this point I would have talked to a chair if it had asked me a question! Pastor Steve listened to all of it, just nodding and smiling then looking real serious at the real serious parts. He told me because of privacy laws and since coronavirus and everything that he couldn't take me to see the lady they called Jane Doe. He also said that he wanted to help, if he could. Pastor Steve said that he had to make a few phone calls and that he would come right back. I asked him if it would take long and he said no. I asked if it would be about seven minutes and he said yes, about that. I told him okay and that I would wait. While I was waiting I memorized a bible reading that was on the wall:

     “When I said my foot was slipping your love, Oh Lord supported me. When anxiety was great in me, your consolation brought joy to my soul.” Psalm 94 vs. 18-19. 

I’m not sure who wrote that but I guess everybody has problems. Even those guys in the bible.

     The next thing I know Pastor Steve was back and he had a smile on his face. I asked him why he was smiling and he said that he always tried to smile because God is always good. I told him that I would feel better if I got to see the lady who might be my mother on the seventh floor. He said that I needed to be patient for a little longer. A few minutes later a lady with really long straight blond hair knocked on his office door and handed Pastor Steve an envelope. He thanked her, took the envelope and opened the flap like he was giving someone an award or something. He looked at the card which was about the size of a credit card and said to me who is this? There was a picture of a very cute baby with dark hair and dark eyes and a pale pink dress on but I would know that photo anywhere. It’s me! I asked him where he got it and he said that all my questions would be answered in short order (whatever that means). All of a sudden my dad and Constable Dubois walked into the pastor’s office. My dad’s face looked flat so I was not sure if he was mad at me or not; the constable’s face was flat too but I am pretty that he looked like that most of the time. I started to tell Dad about why I was there and apologized for not being at school and all he did was hug me for a very long time. Or for what seemed like a very long time when other people were standing there waiting and watching us.

     Anyway Constable Dubois (which means something about wood in French, in case you don’t know) said that they had reason to believe that the unconscious woman upstairs might be my mother and that we were going to go upstairs and see if Dad could identify her. We could not stay, he could not touch her or make any noise and he could only see her through a window for just a minute. Pastor Steve said that she was in a medically induced coma so she could hear us but that we could not wake her up until she felt better. She had been through a lot. They said that really only Dad could see her but that as a favour to me they were going to let me come up too. He said that she was going to be okay but that it was in God’s hands. I think Constable Dubois’s face changed when Pastor Steve said that but I’m not sure. So we went up in the elevator, all of us facing different ways, the way we had learned to do when COVID was so bad and all of us got off on the seventh floor.

     I was used to how the hospital looked and smelled by now but going into the ICU was different. The walls were green and muted and it was very quiet in there but it also felt stressful like things could change very fast. I expected nurses and doctors to go running down the hall with someone yelling Code Blue, like you see on television. I was scared but excited and worried about how Mama would be, if Jane Doe really was Mama. I remembered what Great Grandpa said about not putting tomorrow’s clouds in front of today’s sunshine. I wondered if that even applied to this situation. What I needed to do was to take this one step at a time: first see if it was my mother and then deal with whatever came next. I squeezed Dad’s hand and even though I was sort of too old to hold my father’s hand, it felt like the right thing to do. I could tell that he was pretty darn scared too. I tried not to look in the rooms but most of the doors were closed but you could hear the beeping and whooshing sounds that the medical machines made. I guess those were the same machines that were keeping people like Jane Doe alive. We stood outside in the hall while Pastor Steve talked to a doctor and a nurse. Then Constable Dubois said a few things to them that I couldn’t hear.  He motioned Dad to come over and they all talked for a minute. I stood there feeling so shaky in my legs and my stomach and my head that I thought that this must be what a seizure feels like when it starts. Of course I have never remembered any of my seizures so I wouldn’t know. I have had almost 100 seizures, most of them since I started high school, most of them the big ones. I have bruised every part of myself from falling, bitten my tongue so many times, broken my wrist, broken my nose, even lost a front tooth. But all I cared about right then was getting my mother back. I squeezed Dad’s hand again just as he walked into the room where Jane Doe slept. He seemed like he was gone a long time but when he came out of the room he was crying. I didn’t know what this meant; I have never seen my Dad’s face so crumpled up and so sad before. “It’s her!” he managed to whisper in my ear as he hugged me. “She’s pretty banged up, but it’s her. It’s Mama!”

     The next thing I knew, I was lying on a cot in a room near Emergency. Dad said that I fainted. I guess I hadn’t been eating very much, drinking enough water or sleeping very well. I was embarrassed but at least I didn’t have a seizure! He said that he would take me home now. I was really upset about not getting to see Mama but Dad said that he would explain it to me on the way home. He wanted me to eat and also rest.

     Anyway with all the new rules in hospitals, Dad said that I would not be able to see Mama until she was feeling a bit better. Or maybe he meant until she was looking a bit better. From what I overheard when Dad was on the phone, Mama had been mugged  which meant she was robbed and had fallen and banged her head pretty badly. They had shaved off some of her hair to do surgery to release some of the pressure on her brain. She was still in a medically-induced coma which meant that they gave her a lot of drugs so that she could sleep while her body healed. I still had a lot of questions but I was tired and hungry and happy and sad all at the same time. It felt like just too much of everything.

     Dad and I headed home and Red was super happy to see us. I sat down with her and told her that we had found Mama and how relieved we all were. Dad wanted me to rest and eat and feel better so we ordered a pizza and watched Groundhog Day. Even though it wasn't February 2nd it felt like the right thing to do. We went to bed early knowing finally that Mama was safe.