Saturday (March 17, 2018) was VCU orientation visit; lunch at Ramen Spot LLC – a Japanese noodle place where D orders the seafood bowl. By 3ish when we are driving back he complains about feeling very weird – wonders if the food had MSG in it. I offer to drive but D says he’s ok. We reach home 5:15 – dropping Rohit off @ Mall en route. The Hives waits (until we are home) to kick in & then attacks with pent-up vengeance. Familiar red welts start appearing on his neck & back. D immediately pops an Allegra – the Hives breakout has become almost a standard routine -like my mom’s hypoglycemic episodes. We believe we’re old hands at dealing with it. D’s in the bedroom watching TV & sipping chai giving the rash a chance to get flushed out.
I drag myself unwillingly to walk Sunny & am back sevenish. I head straight to the kitchen to continue with my bananagram – a word game I play obsessively. At about 7:30 – I hear the unmistakable thud of a falling body. My mother has kept me in good practice with the sound of body meeting floor & I push my chair back violently to dash to my mother-in-law’s rescue. However she is ok & I dash next into our bedroom – find the bed vacant & run on to the bathroom – and then start screaming OH MY GOD…OH MY GOD…OH MY GOD…like some maniacal banshee stuck in an endless loop.
D is lying face down on the bathroom floor – there’s a small pool of blood gathering beside his head – and he’s making loud choking suffocating sounds. I try to turn him so I can see his face but his body is an unbudging rock solid mass continuing to emit horrific grunting sounds in an effort to breathe.
By now I’m screaming continuously – I see Mamma & I scream “PLEASE CALL 911” & then promptly pick up the phone to call them myself. I hardly know what I’m doing and functioning fully on auto-pilot. Sunny has picked up on my panic & is barking furiously running back and forth with me as I’m racing through the house with the phone glued to my ear. I have no idea why I’m running around but that’s what I’m doing. I manage to shut Sunny in the office even as I hear my voice from far far away giving the operator our address, my name & in the high pitch that my vocal chords have seemingly adopted as constant – “send somebody – SEND SOMEBODY – SEND SOMEBODY RIGHT NOW”.
The operator wants to know if I know what led to this & I give her a brief summary of D’s Hives history in my new hysterical voice. Then she wants to know how old he is & that’s when my hysteria reaches a new pitch. “STOP ASKING ME SO MANY FUCKING DUMB QUESTIONS – AND FUCKING SEND SOMEONE FUCKING RIGHT NOW”. Through all that ranting & raging I hear her quiet voice tell me that help was already on the way – that unless I calm down & tell her if D is responding to me or not she will not be able to guide me appropriately. OH MY GOD – I have no idea how D is because I find myself in the kitchen where I’ve apparently been the entire time I have been busy abusing the operator! I dash back to the bathroom & somehow D is sitting up – but barely;
Mamma is holding on to him – his eyes are glazed and turned upwards in a spooky way – he’s still struggling for breath & making gurgling sounds. I hear the operator’s voice faintly through the pounding of my heart ask me if D is conscious & able to respond. I ask D – “can you hear me” & believe he inclines his head slightly in a nod – but really can’t tell. I think he tries to open his mouth to talk but instead throws up gloriously and spectacularly – like a furiously gushing tap – every single bit of the toxic sea-food bowl that had been out to get him. Just then – to the combined relief of both the operator & myself, she tells me that the ambulance is at the door & that she is now hanging up.
There are a troop of EMTs – 7-8-9 I can’t tell!! My hysteria is still sound & strong & I am hyperventilating.
A little later when I am able to think without getting frantically distracted I self-diagnose my crazy-distraught-woman impersonation. It has barely been a year since I lost ma. In her case I thought she had sunk into hypoglycemic decline & therefore wasn’t waking up. In D’s case it was the shock of finding him arranged on the tiles like a body in a murder mystery – looking at his glazed eyes that I’d seen a million times on ma but never on D – and the horror of seeing him struggle so visibly for breath. Somewhere in the depths of my panicked mind was the thought that D was on his way out and it was a harsh thought to contain in a head that is still coming to terms with losing ma.
One of the EMTs urges me to sit down for I myself am pretty short of breath – but my body cannot/will not sit still. I dash into the kitchen to get the meds that D is on (for high BP) & hand it to the EMT who’s asked me for them. At some point I call Bannu & tell him what’s happening. Another recollection is talking to my kind neighbors who’ve come to see if they can help and I assure them I’ll call if I need anything. I try to call/text Rohit but cannot reach him. Any time I walk into the bedroom to see what’s going on, I’m expelled immediately – though I do hear someone say that D is being treated for low – like super dangerously low – BP – and that he is starting to slowly come around.
Before long they’re wheeling him out on a stretcher and I ask them where they’re taking him. “Where would you like us to take him – Reston or Fairfax” they ask as if I have been expecting just such an event and have put careful thought and planning into the choice of hospitals D can be taken to. I shrug my shoulders helplessly and they tell me that Reston is closer. “So why the FUCK don’t you just take him there instead of asking me dumbfool questions” runs the thought through my head but I’m careful about holding my tongue. They are already looking at me warily and I’m sure the 911 operator has told them to watch out for the crazy screaming batty wife. I manage to ask D how he’s feeling as he’s being wheeled out of sight and he says “better” in a hoarse gaspy whisper and that must do for now.
Soon Mamma & I are scrambling to put together D’s clothes to take to the hospital. I’m flapping and flailing and not at all calm and collected as I’d always fancied myself to be in situations of high crises. Nippy calls asking about the ambulance and I tell her the story that repetition has rendered easy to blurt out quickly and without pause for thought. It’s a good one hour later that we drive to the hospital.
I have such a strong sense of deja vu. The last time we scurried to the Reston Hospital Emergency Center was with ma – on December 2nd 2016 – when her doctor called and asked me to rush her to ER immediately as her sodium level had dropped dangerously low. This was a day after Scotty passed away and a day before my ex-boss’s holiday party when ma was so loathe to let me go that I had to sneak out. So many memories come flooding back. As if to add completeness and complete bizarreness to the day, I find that D has been assigned the exact same room as ma all those many many moons ago.
Several IV-bags, EKG, lab work, eleven sutures, BP & pulse monitoring later, we drive back home. It is exactly 1 am when we stumble back in. I know with complete conviction that had it not been for the (timely) shot of epinephrine that was stabbed into D on his way to the hospital, my narrative would be a grim one. I also think of other turns the event could’ve taken – if D had fallen while I was walking Sunny he may have been undiscovered for at least a couple of hours – when it would’ve been much too late. If his extreme dizzy spell had overtaken him while we were driving back, it could’ve led to a very serious accident. However – all’s well that ends well!
I think of all the sappy soppy whatsapp messages that advise you to tell your near and dear ones how near and dear they are to you; such saccharine sweetness is not that easy to spout – but I do vow to let go of most issues big & small – for in the grand scheme of things they matter naught. In the spirit of living each day as if it’s the last I urge D to break open our carefully preserved tea – clonal tips from Gopaldhara Tea Estates. D has been saving them for a special occasion but heck man – each day here on earth is now a special occasion – a very very special one.I also persuade D to take Monday off and accompany me to DC to take care of some embassy work – and the workaholic D agrees readily. Obviously his head wound has gone deeper than skin.
