These, Are Notes To Our Children.

There’s a girl in the next room crying. I can hear her through the crack in the curtain. I think there’s something wrong with her stomach. Her mother is kissing her, I can hear wet kisses, caring kisses; she is telling her it’s going to be alright. Her father is trying to joke with her, reassuring her; “this is a clever way of getting out of doing homework for the next couple of weeks.” These three disembodied voices laugh behind the curtain; it’s intimate, and dark, but uplifting too. All of this is twisted here, inside the same space.

Down the hall a man is screaming, “Oh God, Oh God, Oh my God!” It is a slow, steady droning; a back beat filling up this space. Emergency Room Drum Music. There have been two suicides brought in tonight. Every room is full, every one is busy.

It’s a Saturday night. It’s about 11 p.m. I’m sitting in the E.R. with my friend and his family. We brought his father in a little over 3 hours ago. His father is in the process of dying; not how we talk about dying as in aging, but passing out of this place. Pulmonary Fibrosis is destroying his body, but he seems so resilient. At about 8 o’clock this evening, half way into the city, my friend got “the call” and in rush traffic I turned the car around and we sped back to his house, to his folks, to real life.

He’s sitting next to me on the way back to pick up his father and his mother, and he’s apologizing to me about our plans being ruined. About not being able to go into the city for coffee, about our feet not dancing to industrial music, apologizing for life ringing in to let us know it’s still quite very present and real.

I tell him to be quiet, how unnecessary his apology is, how it’s no big deal, how time spent with someone is just time; it doesn’t matter what you do, or where you are, sometimes it’s only the sense of being in someone else’s relative orbit that really matters. He grumbles at me, he does this a lot. I find it endearing, considering everything else. I find myself thinking, “I like this person, and care for them a great deal.”

We get back to his house, he asks me if I’m coming to the hospital, I say yes and we gather up his father and his mother, and we go. There are no sirens escorting us, no lights, just two cars speeding through the rain on back roads to get to necessary air and doctors.

The emergency room at the hospital is full, it’s been and is a busy night. Two suicide attempts, a broken hip, some really bad physical fights. We get a room, situate ourselves, and listen to the other patients in the rooms around us. It’s a little voyeuristic; there’s no separation here; even the clothing provided gives access to everything.

There’s a routine with the visits to the E.R. I’m told, there’s blood, and chest x-rays, usually it turns into an overnight. I watch my friend’s father, I hold my smile, I try to joke. He smiles back, he really is resilient. He says he’s not spending the night, that he’s coming home with us; I watch my friend and his mother, they reassure and say “we’ll wait and see.”

They tell stories to each other and to me, this family. I’m somewhat new here, in this space, with their process, but not -this- process, and somehow despite this being a closed door for many others, I’ve managed to find my way through it. I know this is important. When I smile and wink at my friend’s father I do it knowing how important our moment together is. He winks back at me, and he says to his son, “We’re having a moment, your friend [me] and I, and you missed it.” This makes me laugh because there’s so much of him there, still fighting underneath the surface, and I feel that this has to be what my friend sees, what he encourages despite the relentlessness of others and their predictions, what he wants to win in the end, not the disease.

The “Oh God, Oh God, Oh My God!” is gone now. They must have sedated him or taken him away. The girl in the room next to ours is quieter as well, still talking with her parents; I can hear smiles in their language, this makes me smile in turn. Our gang is packing up things to leave now; STATS have returned to normal, medication given through intravenous therapy has helped to reduce pain levels, he’s breathing better, and his color has returned. It’s about 12:15 am, officially Sunday morning.

We drive back to the house, settle respective adults in their places, and head out for calories because neither one of us has had food or caffeine. After two failed attempts we find a 24 hour diner, sit, and actually rest.

He’s thanking me, my friend, for being there, for being supportive. I tell him, again, to be quiet. I tell him I wouldn’t want to know the person that would have just dropped him off at the curb of his house after a call like that and left him to handle that situation for the night by himself. I would discard said described person, I would shun them; a part of me would hate them for not wanting to be involved. For not caring.

And that’s my point. Being involved. Getting involved. Connection. Caring. Not just on the surface, but to where someone else can have a moment with you; to where you both know it and feel it. This, this is important to life, to us, all of us, in life.

[For my friend the stoic, never complaining, an endless fountain of giving, who will remain anonymous. For his father, who is amazing and resilient despite all odds. And for his mother, protector and nurturer of all that is good and hopeful, for the love and for the bond. Thanks to Kyle and Lindsy and all the readers for your company these past few weeks! Be well, and take care. - Melinda]