Things Happen in Threes: The Psychological Thriller Part 1
Things get spooky. Excerpt from book-in-progress Patient- What to Do When Your Body is Murdering You
I’ve been writing this book for about six months. It’s intended to be both memoir and a practical tool to help folks who might be going through something similar or those caregivers and family supporting someone with a challenging diagnosis. I hope to include excerpts here as I write. NOTE: This is not intended to replace actual medical guidance. Please consult your doctors on your individual challenges and situations. Also names have been changed for my doctors.
February 17 – Room 5238 - Day 24
Nights in the hospital are long. They go on in an unending buzz and beep. It’s rather hard to sleep when you need rest the most. A clinical partner comes into my dim room and takes my vitals. It awakens me but I’m used to it by now. It’s my fourth week here. Valentine’s day and the Super Bowl have long passed.
Then a clinical partner comes in and takes my vitals. Wait, that already happened right? How odd? Perhaps I dreamt it.
Then a clinical partner comes in and takes my vitals.
Stop. THIS JUST HAPPENED. Is this déjà vu? Am I close to death and seeing the future?
I shake and manage to ask, “wwwwwere you jjjjjjust in hhhhhere?”
Words don’t flow easily.
“No,” she says.
“I think I ddddddreamttttt yyyyyyyou. I ssssssaw this alllllllllreaddddddy. Ttttttwice.”
She looks at me gravely. Clearly the superstitious type. She doesn’t inquire more and quickly leaves like she’s seen a ghost. Exhaustion takes over and I float away.
Sometime later I wake with the urge to go to the bathroom. It’s not simple for me to just go even though the bathroom is a few steps away. I can barely walk, but I’ve gotten stronger. Nonetheless, there’s an alarm on my bed to make me behave. Falling in a hospital is serious business and the staff work very hard to make sure you don’t hit the ground.
I hazily call for assistance.
The clinical partner returns. I can tell she’s weirded out by me. She brings over my walker and tries to corral the nest of IV’s running from my arm to my dance partner, the IV pole.
I go to stand and suddenly the weight of me just glides into her arms and onto the floor.
I’ve fallen.
They hate that.
“What’s your name?”
“Ttttttaylor Ccccoffman.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Ceddddarsssss Ssssinai Hhhhhosppppital.”
“What day is it?”
“Fffffridddday.”
“Who’s the president?”
“BBBiden.”
“What’s the capital of Canada?”
Uh oh. Ottawa? Do Americans typically know that?
A delay the size of a Grand Canyon spans from my thoughts to my mouth. This is unusual. And it scares me.
I’ve been through so much physically, but having my brain working normally kept me grounded… but now something else was wrong. Something new.
Plus, I’m twitching. This wasn’t terribly unusual; I’d had a shake since the first week in the hospital. Psyche had checked me and figured it was just my medicine… but now it was so bad I couldn’t hold a fork to eat. My left arm was worse. It was practically useless. My hands shook so much I also couldn’t use my phone well. Your smartphone is a lifeline in the hospital. It was my escape and my connection with Zach and the baby.
Zach is my anchor in this tempest. He’s at home in our apartment taking care of July with my mother. It wasn’t easy for them: small apartment, new baby, my life hanging in the balance, one bathroom. For the last two weeks, I was in and out of the ICU. He’d even gotten “the talk” … sitting down with doctors and social workers discussing how I might not make it home. How I would likely not survive. They didn’t fully know what was wrong with me, except that everything was going wrong with me.
My husband is a fierce protector. We met years ago through a friend who had joined his band. The band wasn’t just a hobby, it was his business. I had always sworn that I wouldn’t date musicians. While they were often captivating and wildly cute, in my experience they were unwieldy, often-late-arriving tumbleweeds. Zach is not like this. Not with me. I knew instantly he was an extremely talented, bearded good egg.
After two weeks of dating, I had a psychic come up to me in a bar and tell me I would marry him. And she was right. On the side of a cliff in Big Sur surrounded by a few friends and family, we married. We liked extraordinary things. For years we’d travel the world together, but no matter where we were, he always felt like home.
This time in the hospital was the longest time we’d slept apart. Longer than his tour of China where he missed me so much he determined I needed to be his wife. I’m sure it must have been a lonely nightmare to go from having a baby with your wife, to driving home after alone. They had kept July for a few days for observation while they hoped I’d wake up.
I had my baby at 1:01 am on a Thursday by c-section. Moments later, I was rushed into another surgery because my vitals started to plummet and my uterus was bleeding. Quickly, I reached for his hand, told him I loved him, and they wheeled me back into the operating room.
I didn’t even get to hold the baby. I heard her beautiful, fresh voiced cries and saw her briefly as a blur of pink across the room. I didn’t get the moment I had been yearning for that every mother has a photo of: exhausted from the fray, full of love, holding that little, exquisite stranger. There was no calm after the storm with skin on skin. There was chaos, concern, and then me, not waking from anesthesia. Even the doctor took a couple days off work after saving me. She wore cute glasses and looked like she belonged in a romantic comedy. Zach even awkwardly mistook her for a nurse. But the minute I saw her, I knew I was in good hands. Female doctors, surgeons in particular, have good stats on saving patients. And she did, I was alive, but barely.
Zach talks about wandering the halls after the birth, not knowing where either of us were. Untethered from any celebration of new fatherhood, full of confusion.
He drove in lonely silence in the deep morning to our home close to the beach. I often think about him on this drive down the 10 freeway. The quiet of the road, the city awakening, his child newly in the world, and my life possibly ending.
Delia bursts into my room. She’s my favorite clinical partner. When we first met, this tall grandmother felt like a tornado of force moving with such deliberate focus. I felt determined to slow her down. I told her I loved her nails and she instantly warmed to me. I got the impression she didn’t make friends easily with the other staff. She had that “it’s me against the world” energy. But I adored her. She’d tell me about her grandkids and her son. She was a fierce mother. I felt safe with her. Encouraged and safe.
“Baby girl, what’s going on?”
I can’t answer her well. She looks grave.
Delia bursts into the room. Again.
“Baby girl, what’s going on?”
This just happened. I don’t understand. I cry.
“Didn’t you jjjjjjust ccccccccome in here?” I try to stutter.
She can’t understand me. She looks at my vitals.
I reach for her hand, but she’s not assigned to me today and she can’t stay.
Delia bursts into the room. Again.
“Baby girl, what’s going on?”
Excuse my language folks, but fuuuuuuuck. I don’t know what’s happening, but it’s not good.
It’s 9am, and Dr. Kind arrives promptly. He’s the only doctor that arrives at pretty much the same time every day and that consistency is so comforting amidst the chaos. I like Dr. Kind a lot. He’s probably my age or younger and rather easy on the eyes with a preppy “I’ve made my parents very proud” vibe. He typically enters with a warm smile as if he’s oddly happy to see me in a hospital. Like, fancy meeting you here, I’d love to have the opportunity to save your life.
And frankly, I’m all for it. Please save my life.
I’m so relieved to see him, but I’m also freaking out. My eyes are wide and scared, asking for help because my lips can’t muster the words. My stutter is worse within minutes.
He scans me quickly. He knows instantly this is different. Normally, I’m complaining about hospital breakfast and thrilled to chat with him about anything but being sick and if I’ll die. He doesn’t even speak to me as he turns quickly to the nurse to get more information.
Then Dr. Kind walks in again. And again. He’s handsome. It’s good to see him a few times. Please help me.
Wait, did I die already? Because living through everything multiple times in a hospital is very undeniably hell.
Then the nurse tries to give me my meds, but I can’t hold them. The tablets fall into the sea that is my bed. I’d asked a few days ago to slow down the IV lines in my arms because there’s no good veins left and they all hurt, but I can’t seem to hold the pills. I keep dropping them and then on cue, I spill my water.
They try to bathe me and at this point, it feels like the nurse and clinical partner don’t think I’m “there.” Like how you would treat a dementia or Alzheimer patient. And I can’t talk coherently to change their minds. And the cleaning lasts forever because it all happens over and over again. I groan as they wipe my body. I’ve had four abdominal surgeries in the month and a catheter in 4 weeks. My body hurts and I yearn for tenderness.
I miss bathing myself. I haven’t been in a normal shower since January of 2022 and the one in my hospital room goes unused as clinical partners do their best with my wilted body. I feel more like the baby than the mother. Confined to the bed, unable to walk, crying a lot. Even as I type this six months later, I still haven’t had a normal shower. I certainly didn’t have “sponge bathe with a chair” on my bingo card for my 41st year, but here we are.
Zach arrives as he does most days with eyes wide with worry. He often visits twice, which is exhausting. He hates the hospital. I have my own room on the floor finally. I’d been bouncing around a lot from room to room, from ICU to floor to back to ICU.
On the wall of the room is a copy of Pissaro’s Pont Neuf Bridge in afternoon light. It’s an Impressionist piece showing a busy bridge on the Seine in pale pastels. I hope to one day get back to Paris. Zach has printed photos of me and us from better, less tragic times and taped them to my dry erase board.
The dry erase board tells me the date, the names of my nurse and clinical partner, as well as my pain meds. Keeping the board updated is vital to me. Knowing the date keeps me grounded and anchored.
I see my bright smile below the Eiffel Tower. I was so healthy before. I’d only ever just had my wisdom teeth out and my eyes fixed with a laser. I look at this younger, joyful version of myself. She was clueless and wonderful.
Now I’m clueless and miserable.
Zach arrives again as I anticipated. He has deeply comforting forearms.
“Dddddid yyyyyou cccccccome in alreaddddddy?” I stutter with wildly long gaps in between words.
“No, honey.”
He understands me! Eureka!
“Wwwwwwhat’s hhhhhhhappppppening?”
“I don’t know. But they are sending the psyche team.”
“Mmmmmaybe if I kkkkkkkkkeeppppp ssssssssstaring at you, you won’t dddddddisappear and cccccccome bbbbbback in agggggggain.”
I stare at his face. I try to play that game where I don’t blink. He has no wrinkles. Lucky bastard.
Zach comes in again. I’m not in Kansas anymore.
Or maybe I am? Who knows. If this is Oz, I think the house fell on top of me.
To be continued…
Find part 2 here:
“On the side of a cliff”
I am thinking this could be a possible title for your book. Ii struck me when I read that line of where you hot married. Your experience is like living on the edge of a cliff!
( I am trying to catch up in all the chapters I missed during my busy summer) 🥰