The hospital visit December 2020

And then I saw you. Because you were ‘end of life’ and were testing negative, the kind, helpful sister of the ward allowed us to see you in a special room, masked and gowned. It was a shock. The stubble didn’t help. You looked like you’d been hiding in a dugout for three weeks. Thin. The rapid, shallow rise and fall of your chest. Only your bright eyes and your surprisingly glossy hair looked like you. D was her vibrant self. Filling the little treatment room they’d wheeled your bed into with her vitality and warmth. Animated, engaging, making you laugh. I started rubbing the chest cream I’d made that morning into your neck, your shoulders, your arms. I had this idea I could get through the layers of hospitalization with pure natural herbal medicine.

You began to cough. It was too much. I had to stop. What could I do if I couldn’t do that? Heal you is all I want to do. I sat back, holding your hand in mine.

I dragged words up and stumbled over them, L’s end of term party, how we hoped the school would stay open so he wouldn’t miss out. Present buying and K’s birthday and could you manage if I video-called her?

In a moment of unconditional love, I told you if you need to let go it’s okay. You met my eyes and I backtracked. “But I don’t want you to,” I said immediately. Your selfish child scared and not ready. Not nearly ready yet.

You looked so tired. I asked should we go but you were too polite to say yes even to me until I offered to get some tissues from the nurse and you said “Yes please and you can make arrangements while you’re there.”

“Make what arrangements?” I asked.

“To leave,” you said.

I laughed later, when I told S, joking that you should have just said for “god’s sake go”, and she said “He never would.”

After they’d wheeled you back to the ward the hospital sister, full of kindness and admiration for you, talked to D and me about home hospice care. How you said all along you wanted to go home. How you never stopped asking when you were going to be discharged. And that’s what we’re trying to do. As the medic talked about your euphemistic end of life plan I tried to listen. I knew it was stuff I might rely on. Her words swam over me while I sunk to the strangely calming rumble of water under the surface.

Waiting now. For the hospital and the discharge team and the palliative care team to organise against a ticking clock.

All I want is time. And I’m scared I’ve had it all.