by

Pepper L. Bauer

It was a dark and stormy night.

I looked at the words scrolled across the screen of the terminal. "Nah," I muttered as I pressed the delete button. "Too 'Snoopyesque'".

"I know, I know," I yelled and started typing furiously. The dog sleeping under my desk opened one eye and looked up at me strangely.

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak, and weary."

I sat back and squinted at the completed sentence, weakly and wearily pondering whether it was ethical to plagiarize Edgar Allen Poe. I sighed and punched the delete key again.

I stood, stretched, and started pacing the room; cold coffee sloshing around in the mug nestled between my hands. It was October, and I needed to think of something scary to write for Halloween. As always, the deadline loomed while my mind took a sabbatical.

Frustrated, I sat back down, closed my eyes, and let my thoughts wander. Sometimes, when I daydream, it gives birth to great ideas; mostly, I just fall asleep.

My meditation deepened; sweet Morpheus beckoned, and I sank lower in the chair. Suddenly, I snapped awake and sat up, my heart racing. "Ugh," I shuddered. I had just remembered a horror story.

It was a bright and sunny day.

I puttered in my kitchen, straightening up the morning mess. My telephone rang, abruptly shattering the morning peacefulness. I picked it up, and recognized my mother's voice. "Grandma is having chest pains."

Dropping everything, I rushed over to my parent's house where my 90 year old Grandma was recuperating after oral surgery.

Mom and I called Grandma's surgeon, and he suggested we take her in to the emergency room. She seemed to be getting worse, so we called 911. Soon the ambulance arrived, and (Do, Do, Do, Do) the nightmare began.

Jumping into my car, Mom and I beat the ambulance to the hospital. Grandma finally arrived, and the ambulance attendants wheeled her into a partitioned area for examination.

A couple hours and several vials of blood later, no one still knew what the heck was going on. Grandma's blood pressure was perfect, and the blood work did not show evidence of a heart attack. The EKG showed a slight change from the one taken before her oral surgery, but nothing major.

Hours passed. Grandma became increasingly uncomfortable. Both her arms were dark purple from the two or three people who tried to get blood from her with less than satisfactory results. She was stuck lying in an extremely unpleasant position, staring straight up at the florescent lights. We couldn't move her; they had her trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. She was thirsty and starved.

Mom and I couldn't stand the situation any longer and decided to try to get someone's attention to help Grandma. That's when (cue the scary music) we realized that we had become invisible. Every time we tried to talk to a doctor or nurse, we disappeared. I would stand in front of the medical personnel, waving my hands and jumping up and down, but they just stared right through me and frowned, as if wondering where the breeze was coming from.

Time crept to a halt. Mom and I covered Grandma's eyes with a Kleenex, then finally found a way to shut off the lights. We took turns resting on the only chair in the cubicle, while speculating whether we were in hospital purgatory; sentenced to spend eternity. Because of our invisibility, of course, no one answered us.

Suddenly, the curtain jerked open, and the lights came on. Blinking, I stepped back as two women grabbed grandma's gurney and started pushing her out the door. "Where are you going?" I panted, as Mom and I scurried to keep up.

One of the gurney-pushers turned and looked at me, seemingly surprised that I had appeared next to her. "Oh, we're admitting Mrs. Farrar for observation. We're taking her to a room now." Mom and I looked at each other and smiled as we all paraded into the elevator. Finally, some action.

The entourage arrived at grandma's room and proceeded to get her settled. Grandma's family doctor can't make hospital rounds any more due to bad knees, so we discovered that Dr. Anonymous (not his real name) usually substituted for him at the hospital. We have to take the staff's word for it; we actually never saw him.

What Mom and I did see that first night, was a series of student doctors, with their learners permits, none of which had a clue. I shivered as I watched them. Now, that was frightening.

Grandma was starved. Since surgery the day before, the only thing she had eaten in 36 hours was a little tomato soup. Mom and I asked everyone we saw if she could have something to eat or drink. We were told that she had to wait until some senior doctor somewhere, (probably home enjoying supper), gave an order that she could eat. Eons later, when the order arrived, the staff said the kitchen was closed, so they didn't know when they could get a tray up to her. I was about ready to order in a pizza.

Around 9:00 PM a woman came in and introduced herself as "one of the doctors" on the floor. She said that they couldn't find anything seriously wrong, so after one more test in the morning, Grandma could go home. It was what they called a "23 hour admit". We were ecstatic.

The next day, mom and I arrived at the hospital to pick up Grandma bright and early. We weren't sure if the 23-hour admit started when she entered the emergency room, or when she finally got in her room. We didn't want her to have to stay any longer than necessary. She hated being there.

When mom and I arrived at grandma's room, it was obvious that she wasn't ready to leave. Worse yet, she was attached to her bed by a tube and a catheter. Needless to say, she was not a happy camper.

Mom and I went out to the nurse's station to see what the heck was going on. Twenty minutes later, we found someone who admitted actually taking care of grandma. The nurse informed us that they gave her a water pill the night before. So, "for their own convenience", the staff catheterized her so they wouldn't have to take her to the bathroom every hour. It was driving her nuts and we were not amused.

Sensing a long day, I went downstairs to the coffee shop and bought some caffeine to go. Then, mom and I settled in to wait for a doctor.

Hours passed, and the sun sank slowly in the west. No one came to grandma's hospital room but a social worker and the "lunch lady". The "lunch lady" just put the tray on her side table and left. The social worker wasn't there to see grandma. She would have gotten more attention at home.

The social worker was visiting with grandma's elderly roommate, and we could overhear her questions. "Can you draw a clock?"

The roommate was insulted and gave silly answers. Not a good idea, since the social worker controlled her future. I wondered if they interrogated grandma when we weren't there. The tedious waiting was making me paranoid.

Restless, I started pacing. Every chance I got, I stopped and asked the nurses what time the doctor usually made rounds. I thought if I bugged them enough, they might call him.

At last, a fresh-faced child stuck his head into the hospital room. "Hi, I'm Dr. Anonymous' student, and he wanted me to tell you that we want to keep Mrs. Farrar one more day for observation."

Mom and I both leaped to our feet. "Why?" we said in unison. The kid stepped back; evidently, we startled him.

"Well, her heart doesn't seem to be damaged, but part of it beats kind of slow. It probably has for a long time, and the anesthesia from her oral surgery just stressed it out, but we want to monitor her one more night. I promise she can go home first thing tomorrow."

I looked at the young man uncomfortably shifting from foot to foot. "Of course grandma's heart beats slow, she's ninety," I said. "It's not like she runs marathons."

I was getting testy. Someone might have let us know seven hours ago that they had no intention of releasing grandma. Irreverently, I wondered if the hospital would be so anxious to keep her, if she didn't have such good suplimental insurance.

"She can go home first thing tomorrow, I promise," the resident stuttered, then hurried out the door.

The fall air was intoxicating on Friday morning as mom and I drove the now familiar path to the hospital. Once again, we arrived early, hoping to get grandma out of there as soon as possible. We burst into her room with anticipation, only to have our high hopes replaced by Deja vu. She still lay in bed, asleep, tethered by tubing, definitely not ready to go home.

Deflated, mom and collapsed onto the two chairs at the foot of the hospital bed. Our disappointment was overwhelming.

The social worker quietly entered the room, walked past us, and up to the side of grandma's bed. She shook her awake. "Dear," the social worker asked with a condescending tone. "Do you need help getting someone to come cook meals for you in your apartment?"

Groggy, Grandma looked puzzled. "Why? I go out just about every night, and the nights I stay in, we have meals downstairs.

The woman persisted. "How about making your lunch? You need a good lunch."

Grandma shook her head no. "I get 'Meals on Wheels" lunches, and don't always eat them cause I'm gone so much."

The social worker looked skeptical.

I spoke up. "It's true. She has a more active social life than I do."

Now, the social worker appeared irritated. She came over to speak to mom. "When Mrs. Farrar is released, are you just going to leave her at her apartment?"

"No, she's going to stay with me until she gets her strength back." Mom's facial expression brought back memories of my childhood. It was the same look she gave us kids when she had to explain something painfully obvious.

The social worker left the room abruptly. Mom and I looked at each other. "That was odd," I said.

The day stretched on interminably, a carbon copy of the day before. I started haunting the nurse's station again, inquiring about grandma's doctors. "When do they usually make rounds? Did anyone say she could leave?"

The patient nurses answered my questions as best they could. No, no one said anything about grandma leaving; and they had no idea when the doctor would show up. Maybe he'd come by around three.