The doctor asked my father, "Do you think you still need oxygen?"
My father responded, "No." His face had regained its color, and his fever had broken.
The doctor would have withdrawn the oxygen, had I not said, "Wait a minute." Throughout the previous night, I stayed at my father's bedside, helping him turn over, and repositioning the two plastic prongs that delivered oxygen at the rate of 2 liters per minute into his nostrils. Several times during the night, nurses came in to take vital signs, and noted that his oxygen level had dropped. Each time, they said to him, "Take a deep breath through your nose," and my father would breathe deeply until his O2 saturation increased to a barely acceptable 90.
This morning's doctor did not know that until I told him. "Oh, well, it's better if we keep it on," he said to my father, and I refrained from asking the doctor why he thought my father would be a good judge of whether or not he needed oxygen. The young doctor probably didn't know that my father had been a cardiac patient before this current admission for septicemia. He also didn't know that my father does not always tell the truth about his symptoms.
Later, my father's evening nursing assistant didn't know he was on complete bed rest, unable to walk to the bathroom. She was preparing to walk him to the bathroom when I said, "Wait a minute."
She was not the only caregiver who didn't know that my father's blood pressure plunged when he stood up, and that he was in constant danger of fainting. I counted three nurses who would have obeyed his pleas for help in walking to the bathroom, had I not said, "Wait a minute." After his septicemia responded to multiple intravenous medications, he was transferred to the cardiac floor, because his atrial fibrillation had begun again due to the stress and fluid load of all those IV medications.
His new night nurse brought him some oral meds, and I knew by then to ask, "What are you giving him?"
The nurse replied, "Something for sleep, something for mood, and a blood pressure pill."
"Wait a minute," I said, "He doesn't get a blood pressure pill. He's been withdrawn from all anti-hypertensives, because he now runs a low blood pressure."
"Oh," said the nurse, looking down at the pills in the cup, "I mean, it's an antibiotic. Most patients here run high blood pressures, so I'm used to saying, 'blood pressure pill.' It's an antibiotic."
"And those other two, the ones for sleep and mood, they are Tamazapam and Citalopram?"
"Yes," he said. I kissed my father good night and helped my mother settle in to his bedside recliner for the night shift, then I drove home to our empty house, where I am a daughter, not a medical professional. I am a child who is still afraid of the dark, craving the security of my Papa's arm around my shoulders. I turn on the TV to his political talk shows, which I dislike. If I do not look into the living room, I can pretend that he is sitting in his chair, watching TV, so I sit at the computer, my back to his chair and the TV.
I search the Internet for the words "ejection fraction," "heart failure", "atrial fibrillation", "ventricular tachycardia", "right bundle branch block" and "left axis deviation". Those words lead to other words, and I start to understand exactly how my father's heart is failing. I am filled with a sense of the potential of science. I must understand everything in order to control it. Education will set me free. He — not the university — said that so long ago, and he was right.
As his life now wanes, I fear or maybe want to die with him. With every beat of my heart, his own heart weakens. It will settle into stillness, and mine will explode. A white hot flame infuses my abdomen, and I jump from the computer as if it — not old age and illness — would suck me into the screen and separate my father from me forever.
Alone, I run up and down the stairs with bundles of laundry, trying to outrun something sinister, some alien power far worse than ordinary pain, but it chases me — a laughing dragon, fire breath kissing my heels, taunting me, then wrapping around me like a cobra, an iron band of fate from which I'll never extricate myself. My groaning plea, "Not my Papa," grows into a wail, and then a scream. I scream until I know the neighbors can hear me. "Not my Papa. Not my Papa! NOT MY PAPA! Wait a minute, God! Don't take him now, God, NOT NOW," but even as I beat my fist on the washing machine, wailing and hyper-ventilating until I, myself, am in danger of fainting, I know that sooner, rather than later, I will lose my Papa forever, and I'll never be able to fix anything by saying to anybody, "Wait a minute."
Marie E. LaConte has been writing personal journals and memoir for many years. Her work has been included in the anthology Darkness and Light: Private Writing as Art (2000, iUniverse), and Special Gifts: the Heartache, the Happiness and the Hope of Raising a Special Needs Child (2007, Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing). She is also actively involved with Progoff's Intensive Journal. By profession, she is a medical technologist, but looks forward to retirement so she can write every day.