Page 96 of The No Touch Roommate Rule
Time slows until I swear, I can feel the sharp end of the secondhand stabbing into my eyelid with every tick, making it twitch. The hospital that’s always been a quick jaunt across town seems hours away.
I catalog mundane details to keep my mind from spiraling to worst-case scenarios. The hard plastic seat under my ass. Oxygen tanks rattling in their brackets. The smell of bleach and a hint of exhaust. The paramedic’s wedding ring catching in the light.
Nana’s hand…small and still on the gurney.
I hate every second of not knowing whether she’ll be okay, but I don’t reallyfeelit. The world has gone flat, two-dimensional. My pulse is steady, but everything feels muffled, like someone’s wrapped a scarf around my head. My hands aren’t shaking anymore.
Neither is my voice as I tell the paramedic about Nana’s medications. “Metoprolol for blood pressure. I think it’s twenty-five milligrams twice a day, but I can call her doctor as soon as we get to the hospital. He’s a family friend. Um, and amultivitamin and Omega-3 tablets for memory. I think that’s about it. Aside from the heart issues, she’s in great health for her age.”
The paramedic asks a follow-up question about her history.
I tell her calmly, evenly, about the heart attack two years ago.
I sound like I’m talking about a stranger, someone I couldn’t care less about, even though I love this woman more than anyone on earth. Even though she was more of a parent to me than my mother or father ever were.
But…this is what I do.
What I’ve always done, for as long as I can remember.
When shit gets ugly—really ugly—suddenly I’m five years old again, tucked into the linen closet downstairs, the one farthest from my parents’ bedroom. I play Sonic the Hedgehog on my Nintendo DS, numbing with endless races to collect rings, shutting out the chaos as my parents do their best to destroy each other upstairs.
I’d already learned that chaos was my cue to turn invisible.
Go underground. Disappear.
I’m here, but I’m not here. All the function, none of the distracting feelings. It’s my superpower.
I probably would have been a great marine, right up until the moment the numbness went away, and I had to deal with the fucked up shit I’d been forced to do to survive in a war zone.
The numbness will go away. Eventually.
But right now, it’s here, and I’m grateful.
At the hospital, they unload my still unconscious grandmother, tell me to check in at the ER desk, and rush her inside. Through it all, my blood pressure remains completely stable. When Makena jogs into the waiting room a few minutes later—she had to drive Nana’s station wagon; there wasn’t room in the ambulance for two—tears streak her cheeks.
Her panic and worry for me are written all over her face, but that doesn’t affect me, either.
“Is she okay?” she asks, sliding into the chair beside me. “Areyouokay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, letting her take my hand. “I don’t know anything more about her condition yet. She was still unconscious when they took her back. Stable, but unconscious.”
“Well, stable is good. That’s good,” Makena says, squeezing my palm.
I barely feel that, either.
The minutes continue to drag, the seconds to stab, but I’m more annoyed than devastated. I can’t believe they’re playing the news on the television in the waiting room. Clearly, someone lacks the critical thinking skills to realize that no one going through an emergency in the fucking emergency room needs to hear more bad news.
And the news is always bad, a fact the talking head proves by giving us details on a tsunami headed for Hawaii, a heat wave killing old people in New York City, and a shooting at a bar not far from Oxford. Three people dead because some guy was mad at his boss.
Dead for no reason.
Like we don’t have enough death. Human beings die of old age and disease and disasters every day. Why are we so damned determined to take each other out with random acts of hate and violence?
And whywouldn’ta person want to hold onto the option to go numb when they need it? That therapist I saw for a while in college was great at helping me work through most of my family shit, but she was dead wrong about disassociating.
Dead wrong.
Dead…
