The Art of Starting Over

Chapter 43 - Dyschronometria

I look out the window and succumb to the white fog infiltrating my skull, letting it numb my brain cells. I don't fight it anymore. It's too strong. I'm too weak. And why should I? It's not like it gets better or easier when my head is clear.

So, I let it swirl in slow circles. I let it diffuse the electrical activity in my brain and blur the room, distort the voices, isolate me from everything going on around me.

Two weeks. Sosa says there are two weeks left for Christmas. So, that means we've been here for... what? Four, five, six days? I don't know and I don't ask. Every day is the same in this Goddamn place anyway.

Millie was right. Sosa came around. She came around in the face of tragedy when Keith called and told her we were taking Millie to the hospital again. She came straight to the emergency room and it was as though our argument never happened. It's funny how fear does that. It makes you forget things, frivolous things, insignificant things compared to the inevitable monster breathing down our necks.

Now she visits every day, I think. Maybe even more than that. I'm not sure. Sometimes she comes on her own, sometimes with Derek, sometimes with Shaun. Jeremy's eyes were deadly the first time Shaun walked into the hospital room but he retreated quickly when he saw his arm around Sosa's shoulders. He looked at me inquisitively but didn't question it. And neither did I. 

I try to remember the actual date when Keith and I woke up, our necks stiff from sleeping on the small couch and heard Nanna vomiting again. Her lips were smudged with blood and bluer than I had ever seen them. Her urine was dark brown in her urine bag. Still, she refused to go to the hospital. 

Keith helped me get her downstairs. I gave her an anti-emetic and after a few breathing exercises and a cup of coffee, she said she felt better. She never went back to her room after that. We set up the couch for her and spent a couple of hours watching soap operas. I wrapped her up in a blanket because she was cold.

I try to think whether days or hours had passed when I walked out of the kitchen with her meal tray and found her unconscious. I couldn't wake her up. Her lips were blue again. And she was so cold. 

I remember Keith trying to pry me away from her as he phoned the ambulance. I remember him lifting and setting her on the floor, putting her in the recovery position. She looked like a child in his arms despite his own slight frame. I remember him rubbing my shoulders as the doctors told us that things didn't look so good. He called Sosa and Carmen and his face turned to stone when I asked him to call Jeremy as well.

The rest is a continuum of bleeping, buzzers, the stench of uneaten take-out meals and the hard back of the armchair in this God-awful room. Nurses come in. I go out while they do what they have to do. I go back in and she's the same, if not worse. Friends come in. I go out to give them some privacy. I go back in and she's the same, if not worse. I nod yes. I shake my head no. I say thank you. I sleep. I wake up. I pray. I stare.

"Ally," Sosa's voice rings in my ear.

I blink my eyes repeatedly to clear my brain just enough for me to focus on what she's saying. "Hmm?"

She's looking at me patiently, the concern covering every inch of her face. "What do you think? Will you come with us?"

"Where?" I ask dazed.

"To the staff party. It would do you good. Keith can come too."

Keith and Jeremy in the same room? I don't think so.

I look over at Millie. Her eyes are closed. Her breathing is slow. I turn to the monitor. Her sats are ninety-two per cent. The nurse increased her oxygen to fifteen litres this morning. Or was that yesterday? Air is blasted to her nose and mouth through a mask that covers most of her tiny face. She's making funny noises when she breathes. Like a low gurgling sound. Her mouth is dry again. I need to ask them for more mouth swabs.