Done

I got a call yesterday just as I was preparing for the gym.  It was my cousin.  My mother had fallen again on her walk around the block.  She called a neighbor to come and help her up off the ground.  My cousin said my mother wanted to go to some doc-in-the-box.  

"I'll be over," I said.  

Last time she fell, she went to the nearest hospital.  It was a disaster.  They didn't have orthopedic doctors there.  No orthopedics.  None.  

When I got to my mother's house, she was sitting in a chair holding her swollen and bruised wrist.  The other one, not the one she just broke.  

"What happened?"

"There was no tree or anything to grab hold of, so I grabbed a bush, but that didn't help."

I loaded my mother into the car and took her to the main hospital on the other side of town from her house.  I dropped my mother off at the E.R. entrance.  

"Where can I park?" I asked the valet.  

"I can park your car or you can park in the garage over there above the second floor."

I now was confronted with my sad life.  I couldn't give my car to the valet.  The power steering is gone and the little guy would never be able to turn the wheel.  Plus. . . the hinges on the driver's side door are bent and you have to work to get the door to close.  My life is ramshackle.  

"I'll be right back," I told my mother.  It wasn't true, though.  I drove the six stories plus the rooftop parking over and over and over again without finding a space.  WTF?  This was a nightmare.  I had been driving in the parking garage at least half an hour when I decided to just park illegally in front of the ER.  Fuck it.  

When I exited the garage, however, I saw a spot of street parking.  

When I walked into the ER, my mother was sitting in a chair in the main lobby.  

"Did you check in?"

"No. . . let's get out of here."

"Why didn't you check in?"

She was staring at me with blank eyes.  

"Are you lost?"

"Yes."

Shit was getting bad.  I walked her over to the check in station.  All they needed was her phone number to look her up in the system.  I guess my mother couldn't remember it.  

Then we sat.  And waited.  And waited until her name was called.  They asked her some questions, took her temperature, and led her back into a room.  I started to follow but the guard called me back.  

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going with my mother."

"Wait.  I need to check you in."

He scanned my driver's license and took my photo, then gave me a sticker with my photo on it.  

"Where am I going?" I asked.  

"S1."  

I started to go through the door they had taken my mother through, but was directed toward another set of doors.  I wandered through a maze of hallways and rooms looking for S1.  When I got there, I pulled back the curtain, but it wasn't my mother.  I looked around.  A woman in those sort of scrubs everyone from the doc to the janitor wears asked me if I needed help.  I showed her my sticker that said "S1."  She told me this was H and sent me through another set of doors.  I was back in the lobby.  

"Where in the hell is S1?"

A woman at the desk, not the guard, said, "She's not in S1.  She's in S20."

I just looked around, shook my head, and started to go back through the doors they had taken my mother.  A man came over and said, "Here. . . let me. . . . " and he took a pass key and let me in, then walked me back.  My mother was sitting in a chair behind a curtain.  The room was tiny and there was no other chair.  A woman in hospital attire walked by.  

"Is there a chair?" I asked.  

She looked around.  "I don't see any."

I stood with my back against a pole for about five minutes, then the lady showed up with a chair.  

"I got this from another room."

I sat.  And we waited.  The woman in the unit next to us kept crying out for things.  She wasn't comfortable.  She wasn't happy.  She needed crackers, a drink.  She coughed and moaned and farted and burped.  

And we waited.  

Eventually someone came to take my mother to X-ray.  She was gone quite awhile.  

When she came back, we waited.  Eventually a woman in a white lab coat came in with a "scribe."  She said she was a P.A.  She asked my mother some questions that she couldn't hear.  I answered some for her.  My mother stared through her glasses and breathed through an open mouth, befuddled.  

"I'm going to take a look at those X-rays and then I'll be right back."

But she never came back.  Maybe an hour went by.  My mother stood up and walked to a nurses station.  

"Am I free to go?"

"We need to get you checked out first.  Just hold on."

And we held on for quite a long time.  The nurses hung around the nurses' station chatting about their lives.  A fellow in a uniform and badge walked in with a dog.  K-9, it said.  All the nurses came over to pet it.  Dog hair and dander in the air.  WTF?  I took a phone pic.

And we waited.  

Some hours later, we left with the knowledge that my mother had not broken any bones.  

Somewhere in this time, I'd asked my mother if she had considered assisted living facilities.  I just can't do this anymore.  She can't take care of herself any longer.  She's had 24/7 care for three months now and still falls and hurts herself.  

"They cost $100,000 a year," she said.  

"Well. . . you could stay a year."

When we got back to her house, my cousin wanted to know how it went.  The first thing out of my mother's mouth was, "He wants to put me away."  

That, my friends, has put the nail in the emotional coffin.  I tried to have the most difficult conversation with my mother.  It is not a conversation I want to have.  I've spent the last five years sticking around so that I could keep an eye on my mother.  I've been out of town a total of six days since 2020.  But now I'm the bad guy who needs to be rebuffed as she cries out for help to a relative.  

I'd not eaten all day, nor had a sip of anything but the morning coffee.  After spending the day sitting in a chair in the ER, I was out of gas.  It was too early to eat, or, perhaps, too late.  I poured a drink and lit a cheroot.  A 5th of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes, I thought.  I sat in the late afternoon air and thought through the conversation with my mother.  I was angry.  I was lost in my own way.  I was sure I didn't know what to do.  Mostly I was riddled with anxiety about the future, both hers and mine.  

What pleasure are there in life anymore?  I wondered.  I couldn't think of any.  I don't want to simply endure.  It has no appeal for me.  I'm at the bottom of a great hole.  Things look perilous.  

You all can have it.  This world.  

I think I am done.