Chapter 18
Much like the Sunshine Plaza, the hospital emergency room on Christmas Eve-eve is not a place I would recommend anyone visiting if they are sensitive to crowds or germs. There is an abundance of both, and not nearly enough places to sit.
The fluorescent lights are aggressive in their assault on all senses, and there is always a baby crying.
The growing meltdown I am trying to keep under wraps feels like a fuse that cannot be stamped out, or an atom bomb about to hit critical mass.
I almost want to let it, to demonstrate to my family and everyone else in here that there is a difference between my experience and simply being an overly sensitive or difficult person.
Not everyone is capable of igniting a chain reaction that results in an energetic explosion.
It calms me a little to think about. I perhaps spend too much time considering ways in which I can prove people wrong, but it feels like a constructive outlet for my current dysregulation, or at least more constructive than replaying and analysing every single thing I have ever done wrong in the entire course of my life.
Mum is not talking to any of us, Maeve included, because we have all done something to personally offend her in the thirty minutes between getting the phone call, going home to collect some things, and arriving here.
She is instead pacing and muttering, alternating between crunching breath mints like ice chips and dousing her hands in sanitiser, emanating an energy so lethal that even strangers are giving her a wide berth, despite the overcrowded space.
This does not have a calming effect on any of us.
The receptionist has asked us to wait a moment while she figures out exactly where Dad might be, and the waiting room is bursting at the seams. I look around at the children, old people, wheelchairs, bandaged limbs, and so much coughing.
It seems like a good time to take a break and find a mask, seeing as the new viruses and their crowds of supporting illnesses seem to spike every year at Christmas, and I am so good at doing poorly.
Olivia and Maeve are busy in the children’s corner, enthusiastically using the equipment that has been touched by every sick child in the vicinity.
Luke is plugging coins into the vending machine with the air of someone doing the most important job in the room.
Fran is by my side, a place he has not left since Luke’s call came through.
He leads me over to two seats that have been freed up after a mother and teenage boy have been called to the desk.
‘Should we get anything for your mum? Water, maybe?’ he asks.
‘I don’t think so. She will be upset by the price of water in the hospital, and the price of parking, and the brand of water . . .’
‘Yep, got it.’
He squeezes my shoulder and stays quiet as we wait. I find myself regulating my breathing in line with his, and this gives me something to do until Mum’s name is called by a nurse who has appeared in front of a set of automatic doors.
‘Send Dad our love, we’ll be here,’ I call out, but Mum does not respond or acknowledge that she heard.
I can no longer sit still, so I loiter outside the gate into the kids’ area, waving and making faces at Maeve until Elsie reappears, her face contorted and her hands balled in tight fists. Fran stays close to my side as I make my way over to her.
‘How is he, can we see him?’ Olivia asks, standing and walking over to the gate.
‘Your father didn’t have a heart attack, he’s just not getting enough attention at home, apparently,’ Mum announces, her hands opening and closing, and her eyes darting in every direction but ours.
The people in the seats around us widen their eyes and look away.
‘What do you mean?’ Olivia asks.
‘It wasn’t a heart attack,’ Mum repeats. ‘He just couldn’t handle that the focus wasn’t on him for once.’
‘So, it was nothing?’ Olivia looks more confused than before, bouncing Maeve on her hip. She comes out of the play area to try and create some semblance of privacy for this tricky conversation. Luke remains silent, drinking his Coke.
‘The doctor called it a panic attack, as though he has anything to panic about. Come on, Luke. It’s time to go home.’
‘Mum, I think panic attacks can cause heart attack–like symptoms,’ Olivia says, keeping her voice quiet and steady.
‘I just don’t understand why he would do this to me two days before Christmas.’ Mum is pacing in circles, wringing her hands and not blinking, not even once.
‘Mum, I understand you’re upset. We’ve all had a huge shock,’ I say, trying to find empathy for her in this moment, and mostly failing.
‘I’m surprised you have even noticed something is happening, seeing as it doesn’t involve you in any way,’ she replies, her voice a hiss.
There are so many terrible things I wish to say to her that I cannot find where to start, and instead am left gulping like a fish.
‘Right, well I reckon it’s time to take you home,’ Luke says, taking control and redirecting Elsie’s focus from me in a way I can only interpret as kind.
‘We’ll come too, Maeve is long overdue her nap,’ Olivia says.
‘I want to see Dad, though – can you wait?’ I ask.
Mum has already started walking towards the exit. Luke follows without looking back, and Olivia makes a sympathetic face, as though she wishes she could stay too. I shake Maeve’s hand goodbye, a little joke I like to do.
‘I can drop you home,’ Fran says.
‘Great, we’ll see you back there. Send Dad our love,’ Olivia says, and they are gone.
My head is spinning. We rushed here like our lives depended on it, and now because Dad’s physiological symptoms have pointed to a different ailment than we initially believed, everyone leaves without even seeing him.
How does that make any sense? Something is very wrong with this family.
I ask the woman at the desk if I can go through and see my dad.
She tells me to wait to the side, while she calls someone to bring me through.
I wonder how many members of staff heard Elsie’s outburst. I wonder if it is something they see a lot of, or if Mum is unique in this unfortunate way.
‘I won’t be long,’ I say to Fran, and follow the nurse through the doors to a long hallway.
We take a few turns, this way and that, and I do not even try to remember the way out. I can only hope someone will show me where to go when I am done.
‘He’s through here, the bed closest to the window,’ the nurse says, and leaves me to my visit.
Dad is lying back in his bed watching TV when I walk in. He does not seem to notice me at first.
‘Hey, Dad, how are you feeling?’ I say, announcing my presence.
He turns, eyes tired, his body looking as though it has shrunk to the size of an old person.
‘I’m fine, it’s all a big misunderstanding. I’m just waiting to go home,’ he says, none of the normal reassurance in his voice.
‘Mum said it was a panic attack. What happened?’
‘Oh, it’s nothing like that. I overdid it with the lawns is all.’
‘So, it wasn’t a panic attack?’
‘And what would I have to panic about? Nothing, I’m fine.’
When someone puts up a brick wall, there is very little you can do to acknowledge your understanding that there are things hidden behind it.
While I would agree that I cannot think of anything Dad would have to panic about, that is not really how anxiety and panic works.
He wants to ignore it, to push it down and turn away, and I have to let it happen like that because I am not the one in charge of his life.
But the knowledge that there exists a pain behind the wall does not sit well for me, more because of the wall than the pain.
Are we not allowed to feel things? Should we not be able to talk about these things with our family?
Because if not, what is the point of any of this?
A more eloquent or emotionally regulated person would be able to say this to their father as he lies in a hospital bed, but I am not that person, perhaps exactly because my dad is the kind of dad who is only ever fine, and my mum is the kind of mum who gets frustrated with the idea of someone having a panic attack in the first place.
Perhaps the long-term survival of their marriage has relied solely on neither having any big feelings at either end of the scale.
That strikes me as particularly sad. I am not sure I have ever had the inclination to zoom out enough to think about it, only viewing them until now in their roles as my parents.
More self-absorption – Elsie is not wrong.
That and the fact that the necessary genetic and environmental factors are not present.
It does not make it impossible, though. I vow to keep trying, to figure out a way to scale the wall.
And I understand now that excessive talking is not the only way to connect with someone, so I sit on the chair beside his bed and take his hand in mine.
He does not look at me, but he allows this and so this is how we stay.
Time passes without me; hospitals are not all that interested in time.
‘Do you know when you are getting out?’ I eventually ask.
‘I’m waiting on one more doctor to give me the all clear; they said he would be around soon. I’m ready to go, my emails are probably piling up.’
‘Fran and I will wait, then. Your emails can, too. You’re on leave, Dad. And we can bring you home.’
‘That would be nice, thank you. Do you want my apple juice?’
‘Yes, please.’
I let go of his hand to take the little cup from his tray, peel back the foil, and sip the sweet drink slowly. I think about the fact that one day he and Mum will not be around. It is a horrific thought, and one I cannot sit with for long.
‘I love you, Dad. I am glad you’re okay. And I get it, it’s hard. It’s really hard,’ I say, trying to put everything I am feeling into those few words.