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In the basement ER, I watched the isolette containing our 5 day old son carried on staffs by four nurses in battle dress. The walked with their knees slightly bent to keep him level and anticipate any shocks. Behind them linked by tubing and cables was a cart full of monitors and IV bags. I walked beside them until they entered the elevator and the doors slid closed between us.
Everyone joked that the elevator had some kind of short or ghost running the 4th floor where the Neonatal ICU was located. Sometimes the elevator would stop and open even though no one was waiting to get on. Or it would pass by right enough, but number 4 did not light with the rest of the series. I knew from our short stay at Ramstein that the NICU would be filled with tiny preemies, four of whom put together would not outweigh our 9 lb. 13 oz. boy.
The Nurses at Incilik had nicknamed him "Bruiser". First he began breathing a little fast, and on his third day his heartrate went up to 183 bpm. The chest X ray showed the delicate lattice of his ribs lining a heart shadow 3 times what it should have been. And so we were flown from Turkey to Germany, and from Germany to Washington D.C. How could they bring us so far if there were no hope that they could do something?
My husband kept saying it was like an exercise, a test to see how well their systems could accomodate an emergency of this kind.
"he's not doing well" the nurse with captain's bars on her collar told us. I sat in my wheelchair by the NICU wondering what she meant by that. The baby's heartrate had done some funny things during delivery and the doctor had told me to push with all my might. It left me with a tear that the nurses in Turkey took turns dressing so they could see it for themselves.
I recalled the facetious illustration of quantum probability, Schroedinger's Cat- both dead and alive until an act of observation occured. My future turned in the air like a coin tossed in slow motion. Was the outcome determined by the force of the toss or by currents in the air or by the coefficient of friction of th surface on which it landed? Perhaps by the slight variance in weight from the printing of the date or the engraving of the city initial where it was minted. Or some crud stuck to the surface. When the captain returned she had a doctor with her, and a civilian who was introduced as a grief counselor who took us off into a side room.
"We wish we could have done more..."
The brought us the body to see. It didn't do me much good as I spent the morning of the funeral on the 5th floor, in the secure psych wing. I thought he was going to be resurrected, the next day I thought he would be given a chimp or robot heart. The next day I woke up and was told it was Christmas eve, that two weeks had passed where I had only experienced two days. But the day after that I remembered what had happened, and I knew he was really dead and no one could save me from it. (There is more about this in the first pooka landmark).
With awareness came a hunger to be free of the guards and the locking doors and the always being waken at 6:30 a.m. I visualized walking out of the ward with my black hat and my green suitcase. I knew I would limp, the medicines kept my muscles from working right. Sometime during my psychotic break the bleeding had stopped, I didn't even remember it hurting.
There were a lot of different people, some teens who had been driven to attempt suicide by academic setbacks, some recovering drug addicts, some people with pleasant demeanors but inexplicable pain in their guts. And then there were the true whackjobs like myself. We'd sit and talk about the true translation of the bible, why the freemasons didn't kill Tolstoy before he published War and Peace, and whether baptists should be forced to watch Star Trek.
I wanted to go back and work as a volunteer with my friends, but was told I would have to wait and year and in a year I was in Utah, back at school and arguing with my husband over whether to have another baby.
When I opened my hotmail today and saw that WRAMC is slated for closure, it stirred a lot of feelings and memories. I know that the Bethesda facility is a better hospital, that's where the presidents have their procedures done. And the name will go with it. But despite the fact that in 12 1/2 years I never have gone back to walk those halls or ride the funky elevator, it would have been nice to think I could. Maybe I will between now and when the place is razed and given a new life in a different building.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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