“Sir, you need to wait in line,” the nurse began sternly, as though she dealt with this kind of thing all day. “As soon as-.”
“No, you listen to me,” I said urgently, tears running down my face, “my fiancé was just brought unconscious and I’m not going anywhere until you direct me to where she is.” My voice was rising but I didn’t care, just as I didn’t care about the small crowd of people who were now watching, or the security guard who was inching closer to me, ready to intervene if I got aggressive. I forced myself to calm down. Getting banned from the hospital wasn’t going to help Em.
“What’s her name?” the nurse asked, finally relenting as she tapped away on her keyboard.
“Emma. Emma Mancelli.” I replied, my heart rate returning somewhere around normal. My hands were balled into fists by my side.
“The doctors are with her now. I will get one of them out here to take you to her. Sit over there,” she said, pointing to a group of seats near the entrance to the ER. Wordlessly, I walked over to the seats and sat down. Every time the doors opened I jumped expecting it to be for me, yet each time it wasn’t. The image of her lying there, lifeless was running through my mind on permanent replay. If I’d checked on her first before feeding the cat…maybe those few minutes would prove to have been valuable.
“Are you here for Emma Mancelli?”
I looked up, a doctor stood in front of me, his hand outstretched. Standing up, I shook his hand, embarrassed that my own was shaking and clammy.
“Yes. How is she?” I croaked, not wanting to know the answer if it wasn’t good, but needing to know or I’d drive myself crazy.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Simon,” I replied, “Em could be dead back there for all I know and you want my name?” I said incredulously.
“Simon, Emma is critical, but stable,” he began, his voice grim, “your fiancé suffered a brain hemorrhage, or a small stroke. We believe it was caused by a blood clot that formed in her uterus, outside of the amniotic sac. Blood clots are not always life threatening, but in your fiancés case, we believe the clot may have traveled to her brain. We will know more after we do some tests.”
He pushed open the door, allowing me to walk through first.
“So what is her prognosis? Just give me something to work with here,” I added, before he could feed me the ‘we won’t know until we do more tests’ line.
He hesitated, “I don’t know what to tell you, Simon. It’s not looking great, but I’ve seen people in worse condition fully recover.” I nodded and kept walking.
I hated hospitals. I’d been in way too many of the things and witnessed way too many loved ones suffer in them. My sister had been in and out of hospitals all her life and when my father killed himself, it was the ER where we last saw him alive, if you can call being kept alive by machines actually alive.
I remember that day perfectly. I was in college when I’d gotten the call from mom. Though I couldn’t make out what she was trying to tell me, the pit in my stomach told me it was bad. I hadn’t known dad was depressed. It wasn’t something he spoke about, or showed any signs of. In the weeks following his suicide, I kept wondering if there were signs I’d missed. If I’d spent more time with him maybe I would have noticed. We’d had a close relationship as far as I was concerned and the anger I felt towards him for what he did took me years to control.
It took mom over two years to be able to talk about finding him. I can’t imagine that feeling, though I suspect it was somewhat like walking in and finding Emma today. At least, that’s how I imagine it would be. He had overdosed in the bath, after visiting my sister in hospital when she caught a chest infection.
Did he blame himself for her injuries? Maybe.
He had been driving when the crash happened. He had blacked out at the wheel (the cause of which had turned out to be epilepsy) and crashed into a tree. I don’t remember much about it, I was only nine, but my sister had suffered massive injuries. She’d spent months in hospital and then rehabilitation until she was strong enough to come home. My fourteen year old sister had gone from being a funny, smart, popular cheerleader with perfect grades to a vegetable. It was like she wasn’t in there any more, just an empty shell that would stare blankly at the wall all day. She couldn’t communicate at all. I feel like an asshole of a person even thinking it, but I often thought she would have been better off if she’s died that day, maybe we all would have.
Mom and dad had cared for her for a long time, only putting her in respite for short breaks at a time. After dad’s death, it became too much for mom. Andrew was overseas at the time of dad’s death which added to mom’s difficulty in coping.
“Simon?”
I snapped back to attention, following the doctor. He led me through the double doors, into the High Dependency Intensive Care Unit. My heart plummeted as we passed bed after bed containing people hooked up to every machine possible. He led me into a small cubical. A nurse sat at the end of the bed and machines surrounded the rest of it.
Emma lay motionless, her skin pale and her face drawn. Tears pierced my eyes as I stared at her, unsure of how to react. She looked like she was sleeping, like at any moment she’d wake up and I would take her home. Tubes ran everywhere connecting to huge serious looking machines. A heart monitor beeped regularly. I tried to focus on that, knowing so long as that beeped regularly at least I knew she was still alive.
The nurse smiled at me, motioning for me to come closer. My heart pounding, I edged around the bed until I was standing right up against it. The safety rail was raised, pressing into my abdomen as I leaned in to take her hand. It was warm and soft and if I closed my eyes I could imagine we were at home, curled up in bed together.
Leaning forward, I kissed her, careful not to disturb the tubes. Catching sight of her bump, a wave of guilt swept through me. I’d been so focused on Emma that our baby had escaped my thoughts. Some father I was, I had no idea if our baby was okay because I hadn’t thought to fucking ask.
What the hell was I going to do? I had no answer.
An oversized armchair sat in the corner of the room behind me. It looked like it had seen better days, with its red vinyl beginning to fade and wear and tear starting to show through. As I dragged it closer to the bed, I wondered just how many people had used this as a makeshift bed. It was at least comfortable, though I didn’t know if I’d still be saying that in ten hours.
“How is she?” I asked the nurse, more just for conversation than actually expecting a useful answer.
“She’s stable, her vitals are steady. They are both good signs at this stage,” she replied. I
nodded, my eyes not leaving Emma. I reached for her hand, her soft skin felt like silk against my own. She had to make it, I wasn’t going to let her leave me.