Waiting: Practice with mood, setting, dialogue

When I left the house yesterday morning, I brought with me, a sweater, a book, a notebook, and a pen.

The sweater is because the main thing I've learned the last few days is that hospital waiting rooms are COLD. The book was to block out reality. The notebook and pen were in case I needed to take notes, but also because John Dufresne, leader of the writing workshop I attended last month, had suggested to always carry writing supplies. You never know when the muse will visit.

Or in my case, maybe you need something else to help you pass the time.  

Here are some scribblings from yesterday.

They were waiting at the curb. Disconcerting because they aren't waiting at the curb-type people. They are sit in the house and read the paper until the ride arrives type people. No they're not that either.They don't wait for rides. They drive everywhere on their own and do it just fine. Geez. They'd driven back and forth to Florida as recently as March. Today two cars sit unused in the driveway. My parents are standing at the curb.

Dialogue practice:
We've said good mornings and how are yous and are tooling down a busy street with lots of traffic lights and young drivers. Neither the young drivers' radios or cars need to be as loud as they are. We have to be at the hospital in seven minutes. We are nine minutes away. 

"So yeah, there might be a little complication," he says. "The lead's a little buried in the tissue around the heart. To get it out there might be some bleeding and uh yeah, this whole thing could turn into open heart surgery."

(A lead is a gizmo in a pacemaker. The lead carries an electrical current. My father's pacemaker has four leads. Two are good. One was capped off a few years ago as a safety measure because it had been recalled by the manufacturer. Then there's this renegade, this loose cannon which is fractured or frayed or almost fractured or frayed and needs to be dismantled before it randomly fires and harms my dad. They're replacing the lead and replacing the whole pacemaker too.)   

The whooshing sound is the driver, me, breathing out hard, like I practice in yoga.

"The doctor says it happens in three out of one hundred cases. It probably won't happen. but you never know."

"You're going to be fine. I can feel it," I say. What's the point in saying anything negative anyhow?

There's a break in the traffic. I switch lanes and gun it.

Setting notes:
Waiting room: cream walls, gray-green chairs, some couches long enough to sleep on, Meredith Viera on the television screen -- Who Wants to be a Millionaire. None of the three people in the room are watching. The television is mute. The only sound, other than the hum of the air conditioning comes from me, on the phone at the desk. I'm telling my mother, who is one building over, in the infusion clinic getting her weekly treatment, where to come when she gets done. The treatment, scheduled weeks ago, is at the same time as my father's surgery.

Practice with mood shifts:

They let me in to see my dad before they put him under. The pre-op area is a big rectangular room chopped up on all sides into twenty or so curtained spaces containing a bed, a chair, and monitors. In the middle of all this a nursing station with glass walls that muffle the work sounds: ringing phones, conversations about patients. There's one area where the rooms are blocked off by opaque walls, not glass, not curtains. In front of that area are three big young guys in police blues. They all wear bullet-proof vests.

My dad and I joke a little bit about who they could be protecting or preventing. The nurses won't tell us. Maybe it's Whitey Bulger, my mother says. It's much later when she says this. She's not here right now, though we feel her presence.

Surgery is delayed ninety minutes. My dad is a little annoyed by this. He's sick of waiting. He hasn't eaten in 18 hours. He's spent most of the last three days in hospital beds. But in the grand scheme of things, he knows the extra wait time is minor. He's a trouper.

My dad tells me to leave and visit with my mother.

It's down one floor, a walk through the lobby, outside for five minutes, up six floors and two reception areas later. The last secretary has directed me down a long carpeted hallway lined with curtains. The walls of this building are glass, so light filters in. I see bits of blue lake in the distance whenever the curtains are askew. I stop at this last nurse's station and when the nurse raises her head from her paperwork, we both shriek each others' names. We laugh and hug. I can actually feel the heaviness in my chest disappear. Funny. I didn't even know the heaviness was there, until it left.

We became friends 21 years ago, when our oldest, both girls, became friends in kindergarten. Then our youngest became friends too. Last time we'd seen each other was in Target a few years ago, I think.  

She leads me to my mother. The two of us sit for awhile. She reads her book. I read mine. It's quiet and peaceful. The sky is brighter than any piece of turquoise I saw in Santa Fe. The clouds are few but so white they sparkle. They did the right thing, making this particular building all windows and putting this particular clinic on the top floor. 

When we leave, Tina and I hug again. Then my mother and I take the elevator down six levels, walk for five minutes, take the elevator up a level and join my dad.

Ten minutes later, he went in to surgery. Many many hours later, he came out just fine. There were no complications. Right now all is good. The sky is just as blue as it was yesterday.