Chapter Twenty-Four
M y head whips toward the swinging doors again. Please be Marcia’s doctor coming to update us. Better yet, please be Marcia herself, no worse for wear and ready to go home.
I release my breath. It’s not Marcia or her doctor.
It’s the same energetic intern with the Jessica Day bangs and braid bopping down her back who’s been in and out of the waiting room multiple times over the last hour.
I’m not actually sure she’s an intern. She might be a resident or an attending.
After more than a decade watching Grey’s Anatomy , I still don’t know the difference.
I rub a small circle over my roiling stomach. The hospital smell doesn’t help. It’s a combination of sick people and antiseptic meant to disguise the smell of sick people, like hospital-scented Febreze.
I bounce at the sensation of Adam’s hand on my knee.
“You’re fidgeting.”
I slump in my leather chair. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Just stop.” He smiles wryly.
I appreciate his attempt at humor when I know he’s as terrified as me. His hair is standing up on top from pulling on it and he has the purple half-moons under his eyes of a person who hasn’t slept in days, even though it’s only been about two hours since Marcia’s incident.
When we found her on the kitchen floor, she said she was lightheaded, her chest was tight, and she was having trouble breathing. But her words came out jumbled. While waiting for the ambulance, all I could do was hold her hand and pray she wasn’t having a stroke.
I dig my fingernails into my palms to keep myself alert and focus my attention on The Real Housewives of Potomac playing out on one of the many flat screens affixed to the walls of the ER waiting room.
It’s not a show in my rotation, but its mindless cattiness and vanity are more welcome than MSNBC or CNN, which are broadcast on the other televisions.
With my own personal village in turmoil, I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to handle the politics of the world at large right now.
“Should you let your dad know what’s happening?” I ask Adam, even while my eyes drift between the TV and the doors. Any second now.
“I already did.”
“Good.” It occurs to me I might have to meet the man who shunned wonderful Marcia, his own mother, because of her sexual preferences, and kept her from her only grandchild.
“Jeffrey said, ‘Keep me posted.’”
I mutter “dick” under my breath before I can stop myself.
Next to me, Adam laughs. “Agreed.”
Deciding a watched door doesn’t open, I angle my body to face Adam and try to read his thoughts.
If I’m scared… and make no mistake, my fear threatens to drown me…
how must he feel? My vocal cords ache to assure him Marcia will be okay, but I don’t know if this is true—it was a stroke that killed Nana—and lying won’t help anyone.
“I’m not with Ashley.”
I push my lips together. “Who?”
“The girl from the library… and Keybar.”
My face heats up. “Oh. Okay. Thanks for telling me.” I tap my fingers along my thigh. “Your timing is weird though.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a distraction from…” He waves his hand around the waiting room. “All this.”
I nod. Since he opened it up, I’ll see his distraction and raise it with a nosy question. “Does she know you’re not with her?”
“She does now.”
My eyebrows lift.
“I let her down easily.” He pins his eyes on me. “I have a crush on someone else.”
I blink hard. He means me. I like this boy so much and I’m also so afraid for Marcia. The storm of emotions brewing inside me is overwhelming.
Adam takes my hand and squeezes. “Thank you for being there for my grandma when I wasn’t.”
I squeeze back. “You’re here now.” We stare meaningfully at each other for a beat before dropping hands and returning to our individual worries about Marcia.
I give up on TRHOP and attempt to use the time wisely on a reading assignment for school.
I’m on my second read-through of an article on “identifying information need through storytelling”—because I only absorbed every third word the first time—when the door from the restricted area swings open and a middle-aged Black woman in a white lab coat over scrubs approaches us.
Her badge identifies her as Dr. Samantha Philips. “You’re Marcia Haber’s family?”
We stand. “Yes. I’m her grandson. This is her roommate… her friend,” Adam says, pointing his elbow at me. “How is she?”
The next words out of this doctor’s mouth mean everything and my tear ducts activate, prepared to cry in devastation or relief.
“Your grandmother is going to be fine.”
Next to me, Adam lets his head drop back and gives thanks to the ceiling.
I cover my eyes with my hands and breathe deeply.
Once our bodies recover from the initial relief response, Adam asks, “What happened?”
“Did she… did she have a stroke? Her words were all jumbled. I read that was a sign of a stroke,” I say. She’s going to be fine.
“I caution you not to rely on WebMD for a medical diagnosis,” Dr. Philips says, not unkindly.
“Although slurred speech can be a sign of a stroke, Marcia went into a hypertensive crisis, which is a sudden, severe increase in blood pressure. The symptoms—chest pain, shortness of breath, slurred speech—can all mimic a stroke. If not treated immediately, it could lead to a heart attack or stroke, so it’s lucky you found her when you did and got her here so quickly. ”
Even though she’s going to be fine, my nerves fire up at the knowledge Marcia might not have been as lucky if we hadn’t gotten home when we did. Maybe we should have taken the subway.
Dr. Philips studies me. “I can see your brain working overtime. There’s nothing you could have or should have done differently. You were perfect. She’ll be fine.”
“What happens now?” Adam asks.
“I’ll work with her internist to monitor the dosage of her blood pressure medication more closely to prevent it from happening again. I’m holding her overnight for observation, but you can see her now.”
“You go first,” I tell Adam. “You’re blood.”
He shakes his head. “You’re like her best friend. You should go first.”
The doctor glances between us in confusion. “You can both see her together if you want.”
“Oh, right,” I say at the same time Adam says, “I didn’t know that was an option.” We look at each other and laugh.
Dr. Philips leads us through the doors and down the hallway. After two lefts and a right, we arrive outside her room, and the doctor leaves us alone with a promise to come check on Marcia later.
She’s in the bed closest to the door with her eyes closed.
There’s a sheet midway through the room dividing it in half for another patient.
Even in a twin-size bed, Marcia looks tiny in her hospital gown.
I’m struck again by how fortunate we are that she can be fixed with medication when others in hospitals meet with much worse fates. My eyes prickle.
Hovering over her sleeping form, Adam whispers, “Should we wake her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m up,” she says, opening her eyes and smiling weakly. “Fancy seeing you two here.”
Adam bends to hug her.
I’m riveted to the spot. I want to hug her too, but she’s not my grandma. My lips tremble.
When Adam releases her, she cocks her head at me. “Come over here, you.”
I embrace her lightly, careful not to pull out any of her tubes, and try unsuccessfully not to cry.
She laughs. “I’m fine. Unless that’s why you’re crying.”
I wipe my eyes. “Stop it.”
Adam chuckles.
I jab him lightly in the side. “I cry when I’m happy.”
He snorts at this.
Marcia looks between us. “Seriously. I’m in the safest place I can be. They ran the gamut of tests. What I had qualifies as a hypertensive urgency, not emergency, which is much less severe.”
“The word urgent doesn’t strike me as mild,” I mutter. Neither does the blood pressure monitor lit up with squiggly lines next to her bed.
“They’re only keeping me overnight as a precaution.”
A nurse pops in and checks her monitor, nodding at us before ducking back out.
“I should get some sleep,” Marcia says.
“Do you want us to stay with you?” Adam asks.
She glances around the tiny space in her half of the room, where we’re standing so close to each other I can see a faint red stain of fruit punch on Adam’s hairline. Was Fruit Punch–Gate really just this morning? It’s been a long day.
“Where? There’s only one chair. Go home. Both of you. I’ll call you in the morning when I’m being discharged.”
Adam scratches his head. “If you’re sure.”
“I am. I’m in a hospital, Adam. I don’t need a babysitter or private health aide.” Her tone screams, “I mean business.”
After another round of hugs, we do as she says and leave.