No Rhyme or Reason

Chapter 9

I poured the hot coffee into two mugs and carried them carefully to the kitchen.

"Here you go," I said and handed one to my grams. Every morning when I woke up, I went out to the kitchen and made a big pot of coffee for my grandparents and me.

"Thank you, sweetie," my grams said as she took the coffee and walked to the couch to sit down.

I sat down, but my grams stopped walking and put the coffee down on the coffee table. 

"What's wrong?"

"I think I'm late to pick up Lindsay from school," she said and then started walking quickly towards the door.

I frowned and jumped off the couch to follow her, placing my mug on the coffee table. I started walking after her and heard the front door of our apartment open and then I heard a noise and then a thump.

"Gram!" I yelled and ran after her. I found her laying on the ground and dropped down on my knees beside her.

"Gramps!" I yelled out. "Are you okay?" I asked as I bent down beside my grandmother.

"What happened?" my gramps came running into the living room and dropped down beside us.

"My foot caught on the toys," grams said as she winced in pain and grabbed her hip. I looked up at gramps in concern.

"We're late to pick up Lindsay from school," she said, sounding like she was in pain.

"Is it your hip Mary?" my gramps asked since she was wincing and holding her hip. She blinked and looked around, like she wasn't sure where she was. 

"Liv, call an ambulance," my grandfather said. I jumped up and ran to the phone and called 911.

We spent the day in the hospital. They took her to get an x-ray to check to see if her hip was broken. The results showed a fracture. 

What was also worrisome were the events leading up to the fall. I told gramps and the hospital workers what happened, and they noted down everything. They completed a mental exam on her which showed that her dementia had progressed. They pulled gramps and me aside and talked to us about monitoring for further decline to the point where we couldn't care for her anymore. When they mentioned Long Term Care, my gramps and I both immediately started shaking our heads. Gramps had said that was ridiculous and that we could take care of her. I completely agreed. 

The nurses told us she would be admitted for at least a few days so that they could do some further bloodwork and get some new medications sorted out to help with her increasing mood swings and anxiety she had been experiencing lately. 

When the evening rolled around, I told gramps he could go home if he wanted for the night and I could stay with gram. There were only a couple chairs so we would have to sleep sitting in those, and I knew my gramps had a bad back.

He told me there was no way he was leaving her side and told me I could go home to sleep. I said the same thing as him that I wasn't leaving, so we both ended up staying the night at the hospital, sleeping in those stiff chairs.

I didn't end up getting any sleep that night, my mind constantly going to the "what if" place. The talk about moving her into a long term care facility kept my mind preoccupied. There was absolutely no way we were shipping her off to a facility where no one knew her. We could take care of her, and she wasn't that bad anyway. 

They were going to start her on medication and keep her for at least five days as they slowly upped her dose and monitored her blood pressure, which was high. 

That week, my gramps and I stayed at the hospital most of the time. I had to email my professors to let them know I would be gone all week and would miss classes. Whenever my grams was napping, I would open my laptop and try and get as much homework done as I could before she woke up.