Emergency rooms are horrible. If There is a hell on earth (and my mean grandmother always said there was), it would certainly be an emergency room. People were bleeding and howling everywhere. Six televisions blared six different talk shows. And the room stank with fear. Maybe I was in a dream.
When I’m a nurse I am not going to work in one, that’s for sure.
They belted Aunt Eleanor onto a rolling table and flew through the swinging doors. It is the hardest thing in the world to let go of someone you love, let them go through those swinging doors with strangers who might be able to save their lives, but maybe not. Letting go is not something I’m cut out to do. If Joe Brewer hadn’t been holding on to my arm, I would have followed Aunt Eleanor, made sure they were saving her right. But Joe Brewer knew enough about me to hold on tight and make me stay in the waiting room.
I sat down, stood up, and sat down again, then told Mr. Joe Brewer that he ought to call Frank at the Red Eye and tell her what happened. Somebody needed to see about Bunny.
While he called I looked at the other people in the waiting room, but they were too sad to describe. Mothers, brothers, sisters, wives, all with their hearts cut wide open because their loved ones had disappeared through the swinging doors. Just like Eleanor.
Suddenly a honking car skidded to a stop outside the glass doors. A man ran in screaming, “My wife needs help! She’s having our baby now.”
I swiveled around just in time to see a dozen medical people swirl around him and surround the car. I walked over to watch through the glass, but a wall of blue scrubs blocked my sight. It looked like the mother was in the backseat. After a few minutes, one of the doctors turned around with an armful of blanket. The top of a tiny wet head showed with a circle of dark hair. And goo, some white goo. The automatic doors opened for him and I heard the baby cry as the doctor rushed through the swinging doors. Two nurses hurried behind him arguing about the time of birth. One said this minute, the other said it was three minutes later. How important is the exact minute of your birth? On TV shows they do the same thing with time of death. The father pushed the new mother in a wheelchair, rushing after their baby, but a nurse stopped him at the swinging door and took his wife away.
I watched the father sit down and start making phone calls. He was happy. I guessed it was better to be born in an emergency room than die in one. But I wouldn’t want either one. The six swirling television screens made me feel like I was inside a kaleidoscope.
Time must have passed, because just when I thought I couldn’t stand it anymore, Frank and Sister Joan flew in like mother birds. All four of us chattered, talking over each other. What? When? Where? How? Until all was told.
After that, since we couldn’t control the surgery, we started talking about things we could control. Did we need anything to eat or drink. Had anyone told the other nuns, or Gaylord Lewis. Where were the cars. Joe’s car was still at the door. Eleanor’s blue van was across town where we had parked.
Frank and Sister Joan sandwiched me on the waiting chairs while Joe Brewer moved his car to the regular parking. When he returned we sat all in a row, the four of us, in silence because we’d run out of chatter. Our complete thoughts were holding on to Eleanor’s life.
Waiting and waiting and waiting. Pacing. Wait some more. All four of us until finally a doctor walked up to us and said, “I have good news.” And the breath we let out could have blown the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria all the way to America. The doctor explained that Eleanor had an obstruction in her bowel, but they had gone in and fixed her. Soon as the doctors stitched her up, she would go into the recovery room.
I was relieved, but I needed to see her to believe it.
“Thank God.” Frank began rustling about, readying herself to leave. “Ruby, let’s go home and get some rest. She won’t be able to have visitors tonight.”
“Nope,” I said. “Not leaving.”
“Don’t be silly,” Frank said. “Children are little bags of germs—hospitals hate them.”
“You don’t understand. I have to stay. I help at the school infirmary all the time. I have nerves of steel. Everybody says so.”
“Hospitals have rules.” Sister Joan tried to sound firm, but she was a softie. “Visiting hours.”
“But I’m family,” I said. “I’m her only family right now.”
Frank and Sister Joan looked at each other. Nobody had told them that the secret was out.
“Yes, I know you guys know who I am,” I said. “That’s why we came down to Austin. To meet Joe Brewer and see my mother.”
Sister Joan laughed that yawny laugh and said, “Glad that’s out in the open.”
I turned to Joe Brewer. “I am not leaving this hospital until I see her. I can’t.”
Joe Brewer put an arm around my shoulder and told the two women that he would keep me down in Austin for the night. “Might be nice for Sister Eleanor to see a friendly face when she wakes up.”
Then he found Eleanor’s van keys and told the ladies where they could find the parking garage.
Frank scowled and pulled her chin, then nodded reluctantly. Sister Joan said a little prayer and took the keys.
As Frank and Sister Joan walked out together, bumping into each other and turning back, they said, “Call me, Ruby Clyde. I’ll come get you.” And again they said, “You don’t ever need a reason.” A few more steps. “Just call me.”
I waved and said, “Go home now. I can’t call you if you are still here.”
My mother birds dragged each other away.
* * *
Mr. Joe Brewer parked me in the hospital room and told me to sit still until Eleanor got out of recovery. He was going back to the office to get some things, he said. So I sat down in a wide chair and looked around. Life-saving equipment was blinking in the shadows. That was all a good lesson for me about being a nurse. The bed had buttons, the wall had buttons. There were wires and tubes and machines on wheels.
I prayed. I made a deal with God that if he saved Eleanor Rose I would do everything on earth to be easy, and help her, and make her happy. I think it is okay to strike bargains with God, if it’s not to get something for your own self. I wanted Eleanor Rose to live, that wasn’t selfish. Except that if she lived I’d get to stay with her at Paradise Ranch and that was selfish, but it wasn’t all selfish.
Waiting alone in that hospital room made me so nervous I fell flat asleep, twirling into another world. I had a nightmare there. It chills my blood just to think of it, but I’ll tell it anyway, now that the pictures are flashing in my mind. There was a hideous clown following me and he knew my name. Every time one of his big shoes slapped down, he would sing a letter from my name R-U-B-Y, four steps, and then he would stop and scream Clyyyyyyyyyyde. And when he did that, peaches shot out of his mouth like machine gun bullets.
When I woke up, Aunt Eleanor was asleep in the hospital bed. Her lips were cracked and there was spittle in the corners. She wasn’t using her nose enough to breathe, so you could smell her insides when she exhaled. Otherwise she looked okay for a gray skinny lady with no hair. Better than dead, that’s for sure.
I pulled a chair right up to her bedside so I could look at her face until she woke up. I wanted her to see me first instead of waking up in a hospital room alone, not knowing what had happened. That would scare the daylights out of me, waking up like that. I wasn’t going to let that happen to her.
After a long time, she stirred. She snorted in the back of her throat and her eyes opened halfway.
On the bedside table there was a little sponge on a stick sitting in a glass of water. I took the sponge and dabbed her lips. That made her tongue stick out. I dabbed her tongue. That made her smack her lips. I kept dabbing until her eyes began to focus. When I felt she could see me I leaned close and whispered, “Aunt Eleanor, you are in the hospital but you are okay. You had a bowel obstruction, but they saved your life.”
Eleanor Rose looked at me, then she turned her head just enough to kiss my hand. “What a lovely little girl,” she said. “You are like a song that was never sung.”