Ben Taub County Hospital, Sat., 2 am, continued

(note: this is a continuation of an earlier post with the same title)

This is my mother. My mother whose once slender hands used to play “Moonlight Sonata” on our upright piano. My mother who had gorgeous reddish, brown hair, a slender waistline even after two kids, smooth, freckled, fair skin. My mother who sang at weddings, was the church secretary, and taught preschoolers to finger paint with pudding.

She turns her weathered and weary face toward me. For a moment there is no recognition in her eyes. I step toward her, “Mom?”

I want her to smile. I want her to express relief and joy at seeing me. What she expresses is non-chalance, almost an expectation that I’d be there.

“Hey, Baby. Can you get me some ice?” Her voice is raspy through her swollen mouth. I look around her bed area toward the curtain that creates her make shift room. No sign of ice or a table.

“Sure.” I recover myself from my own expectations and go along with her reaction. As if I’ve been there all along, as if we see each other everyday. And maybe she’s right. Maybe that’s how it should be.

Turning outside the curtain to make this request of an attendant, I see that everyone is busy. Reality: there is no attendant. We are in the ER of a county hospital, not the Mayo Clinic.

The best I can do after searching is a moist swab. I dab it onto her cracked lips. I want to comfort her, want her to feel better. And the logic inside me is screaming What is the point?!? This is not a band aid on a 2 inch wound. This is the little Dutch boy’s thumb in the Hoover Dam!

And there is that truth. That recognition that feels so much like helplessness. But the truth is that I am powerless. I am powerless over the devastation of this disease over her body, over her life, over mine.

Her directionless, electrocuted-like hair atop her yellow leather skin is enough to confirm it. The added truth that she is here because she was living in her car – now impounded – and was asaulted in it becomes more weight than I can stand under. I tell her I’ll be back and break away, my face starting to crumple as my hand hides my trembling mouth.