By Janelle Retka
Fall 2013 Kaplan Award Winner
It was the third or fourth day spent pressed up against bleached white hospital walls. The waiting room of the ICU was filled with tension; the most I had experience in this hall since we arrived. The doctors would be meeting with Seth and his mom, Debbie, to update them on the results of the most recent MRI. No one had anything left to say—we’d already ground all of the small talk into dust. So we waited.
The doctor walked around the corner without any hesitation. His eyes spanned the crowd for the faces he was supposed to know. Debbie and Seth stood up. The doctor greeted them briskly, then led them down the hall toward the conference room. Before disappearing down the hall, Seth’s head turned back, and he tossed his hand, sending a weak wave. The noises of the waiting room flat lined: not a sound to be heard.
I could feel the anxiety creeping through my body. As my cheeks filled with fire, I knew I needed some fresh air. For the past few days, I had barely stepped outside the confines of these white walls for more than a cup of coffee and an afternoon cigarette. It was time for that cigarette.
The rain beat down hard against the fields of asphalt outside. We stood in a cluster overlooking the freeway, the skyscrapers, the span of Seattle sky, the looming darkness. It was challenging to light a cigarette; even harder to keep it lit, as the tobacco soaked up the atmosphere. All I could hear were the raindrops as they thrashed against the ground. I wanted to be one of those raindrops, pressed tightly against the cold, hard, cement—or even better, buried beneath it.
We shuffled inside. Walking in the front doors of the hospital was like entering a vacuum: all of the sound, texture, and feelings were trapped in the barricade that separated the hospital rooms from the outdoors, and then they were wiped away by bleach. We tucked ourselves back into our ICU waiting room nooks. Oftentimes we even tucked ourselves into one another. Holding someone, or being held, made it all seem better for a few minutes.
Seth walked slowly back around that corner. His head lower, he told us:
“We’re going to keep trying. I’m going to be honest with you guys, though. They said that he’s a vegetable. If he survives, he’ll never walk again, or talk, or feed himself. But we’re not giving up on him—he’s my brother. I can’t give up on him. They said we can wait another month, but if there’s no progress by then, there won’t be any.”
It was exactly what we had anticipated hearing, but it seemed impossible. Zach: our 19-year-old, optimistic, adventurous, thrill-seeking friend. He had climbed a tower that outstretched his luck. A thirty-foot fall landed him within these white walls of Harborview, where he was “in the best hands.” It seemed that not even these hands could save him, because they could not go back and break his fall.
* * *
We spent a great deal more time outside, beneath the open skies that day. Said a lot of “I love you’s.” My shoes were soggy. Eventually, the rain falling embraced us entirely—sorrow and all. It was oddly comforting. The day felt endless, like night would never arrive. My drenched clothes clung to my bony body. Cigarette smoke clung to my lungs. Our hands reeked of tobacco. We could all use a drink, but who could handle staying up any longer for a beer?
We lugged ourselves down to the cafeteria, and attempted to feed ourselves. Instead we sat slumped around a table, and I laughed. It was an uncomfortable, inappropriate laugh. My emotions were so accustomed to being suppressed and so comfortable buried beneath layers of coping mechanisms that they forgot how to surface. It was the only way to let out the feelings that were drowning me. I was torn apart by the thought of losing Zach, but my tears were wiped away by the great, bleached white walls. So I laughed.
* * *
Days slowly began to pass. School had to be attended to, but I found myself filled with the same anxiety I had felt in the waiting room every time I settled into my lectures. I itched to get back to the hospital. Every moment away, I was cheating Zach of some attention he would never miss. I began to realize that Zach was not feeling the pain of this loss. It was those of us he might leave behind that would ache.
The waiting room hosted at least one restless and familiar face every time I returned. Mostly, we continued to sit in silence. Once in a while, someone would ask for an update. There was nothing much to say. The white walls might have served as a canvas for thought. Instead, our creativity was continuously sterilized by the bleach, barricaded by the front doors, and drowned out by the hum of the florescent lights overhead.
We talked to Zach for a few minutes each day. The nurses said that this was a great way to encourage comatose patients to persevere. This made us talk more. The struggle was a balance between too much brain activity, and not enough. Although dubbed brain-dead by doctors, Zach’s brain was still being monitored and had a level of activity that needed to be maintained, if there was to be any hope of survival. “We got the joke, Zach,” we would say, “you can wake up, now.”
* * *
Our two wooden chairs fit snug against the marble table in front of us. Steam drifted gently into the open space above our coffee cups. Colors of green and yellow coated the walls in the background and filled the room with vitality. A few months had passed, and spring had turned to fall. Zach’s optimistic grin stretched across his face as if no battle had been fought and this was just another cup of coffee: “I’m done with all of my therapy in two weeks.”
These words were like gold. Nothing could have wiped them away.