paper rings (l.h.)

9

"We are so very, very grateful you were there, Mary."

My family continues repeating as I find myself staring at the tile floor that reflects the harsh fluorescent glow of the lights above. There was no denying that I was tired, my eyes were swollen from the panic attack I had on the way here, as well as staying the night in a waiting room chair - I probably looked worse than I felt.

But I wasn't focused on how tired I was. I didn't notice the crook in my neck, or the way my bones rattled as I froze from the hospital's AC. Luke had left about two hours ago, and to be honest I wasn't thinking much about him either. At least, not as much as I would have if I wasn't thinking about how pale my Grandmother looked, so helpless. It kept playing over and over in my head, how the strongest woman I knew turned so ghostly. She used to jump right back up when she and I used to take tumbles in her long stretches of land. I didn't want to think that this time she might not have gotten up on her own.

"I don't understand what's taking so long," Uncle Tim threw his hands up, out of all my memories of him growing up I never recalled him having the patience my Grandmother tried to plant in each one of us. That was never his strength with his nieces and nephews, anyway. "A million doctors and nurses yet no update."

"Please, Tim," my Aunt pleaded, resting her head in her hands. She was exhausted, too, all of us were. They had travelled all night, boarding the first plane they could. My Mom drove, same as my Uncle. 

"If it was bad, they would have told us already," my Mom repeats, sipping on her cup of hospital-kiosk coffee, and I had barely touched the McDonald's sandwich my Aunts had grabbed for me earlier this morning.

The Doctor didn't come until around eight AM, bright-eyed and refreshed after a long night in his own bed. He was young, couldn't have been a couple of years ahead of me. My Mom stands up before I realize exactly what's happening.

"Oh God," my Aunts exclaim when they, too realize that it was finally our turn. My Uncle and I aren't too far behind. We meet the Doctor in the waiting room entrance, I stay a step or two away from my huddle of family members.

"She's out of surgery," he begins, and a collective gasp or relief falls off of each of our chests. My Uncle nearly drops to his knees. My Grandmother was loved deeply, it was hard to even entertain the idea that she might have left a little earlier than what we had hoped. "She is medicated but asleep, we will wake her up after she rests for a little while longer."

"Can we see her?" My Aunt speaks up, her voice shaky.

The Doctor glances at us, a gentle and sort of sorrowful half-smile meets our eyes before he continues: "she's been through a lot last night. She is very tired, very weak. You can go see her, but just be prepared for it."

And with that, silently my family and I gathered our items from the waiting room corner we had adopted as our own. The early-morning episode of Good Morning America played it's intro as we began our journey through the never-ending halls of the hospital.

It smelled sterile up here. The AC was just as cold as it was downstairs, and everywhere I turned I saw lab coats and blue scrubs, a fragile man in a hospital gown desperately holding onto his IV stand. I stayed behind the group until my Mom noticed I stayed behind everyone else.

"I am so glad that we had you," she reaches over to hold my hand. I look towards her. "A broken hip, broken wrist... that could have been a death sentence if you weren't around."

"Yeah," I say defeatedly, not shaking the what if's that have haunted me once I was able to process exactly what happened. "Right."

We find my Grandmother asleep, her chest rising and lowering with each beep on the machine behind her. We walk slowly, as if she was a beast we would not dare to wake. Her lips were still pale, an oxygen tube connected from her nose to a machine behind her that I could not differentiate from the others with a gun to my head. Her lips were parted as she slept, wires crept from nearly every inch of her body. It wasn't a bad fall, and yet I feel as if I'm standing amongst a victim of something worse.