The Balance of Life ("final" version)

The Balance of Life
By: AnnaBeth Fish

We walked through the hospital together without speaking. I held my dad’s hand, feeling younger than the eighteen years I was, but at the same time, the immensity of the situation flooded me, and I knew I could no longer be the young girl I wanted to be. My older brother, Dan, lagged a few paces behind my dad and me. Dan’s long hair hung loosely around his face, and his black t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of his favorite band Breaking Benjamin, was perfectly in tune with our bleak moods. Slowly, we made our way through the bustle of the hospital to elevator H. Elevator H really only went to two floors, the maternity unit, floor five, and the Intensive Care Unit, floor four. The furthest ends of the spectrum--a floor where life begins, and a floor where many, many lives come to an end.

Our feet dragged as we got off the elevator and walked down the cold, sterile corridor. We were tired; none of us got much sleep that night. In twelve hours, the entirety of our lives had mutated. The walk down the hallway was at the same time endless and all too short. We reached the dreaded door and waited. It was 9:58. As the seconds ticked by, none of us spoke to each other or to the other small huddles of people who stood nearby. The sun shone through the large windows, the rays of light dancing and causing the tears on my face to gleam like diamonds. The vivaciousness of the sun could not combat my despair.

Tension choked the air, choked all of us. 10:00. A nurse opened the door; visiting hours had begun. I closed my eyes and reminded myself to breathe as I followed my brother and dad into the intensive care unit. I ignored the others around me. Normally, I would want to know their stories, I would want to help them. But on that day, I could barely help myself and my family, let alone carry the burden of someone else’s sorrow. My dad, his fair, almost delicate features contorted with alarm, anxiety, and anger as he led our procession, taking long, purposeful strides toward bed seven. Dan marched behind him obediently, like a soldier headed for war, with grace and courage on the outside, fear and turmoil on the inside. I followed behind, silently telling myself that I could do this, I could handle this. As I reached the foot of the bed, I stopped and stared. I was afraid to move any closer.

On the bed lay the framework of a human, reduced to merely being a vessel that contained all the elements of a living creature. The lungs still drawing in oxygen and forcing out carbon dioxide. The heart still beating, pumping blood throughout the body. Under the alabaster skin, all the vital organs still functioning, still performing their jobs. Like Frankenstein’s Modern Prometheus, it was “alive!”, at least in the most basic sense of the word.

“Hi Mom,” I whispered, tears streaming down my face. All around me, quiet chaos swarmed. Nurses moved between patients, checking IVs, taking vitals and scribbling notes. The intercom of the hospital sounded every now and then, muted, muffled, austere and unforgiving. Beside the bed, monitors beeped in steady, consoling rhythms as lines squiggled soothingly across the screen. The smell of disinfectant seared my nostrils; the stench of human excrement was the only scent powerful enough to rise above the disinfectant. In front of me, lay the body of my mother. The soft hiss of the ventilator forced a comforting rise and fall of her chest. All around me, people, including my mom, hovered between life and death.

“You can move closer dear. Go ahead, touch her hand, she might be able to tell that you’re here,” the nurse urged me quietly. Bile and stomach acid surged from the depths of my stomach, lingering bitterly in my throat and mouth. How I wanted to run, to escape, but my legs carried my unwilling body forward, as if controlled by unseen strings manipulated by a cruel, uncaring puppeteer.

Someone, somewhere, for some inexplicable reason, had put me in this situation. Angrily, I began cursing fate for thrusting me out of my comfort zone into this pit of anguish. Surrounded by people, I felt more alone than I ever thought possible.

I was suddenly overwhelmed. Every person lying in the beds around me were fighting for his or her life. Death was near, lurking in every crevice and shadow, behind every curtain and under every bed, silent and persistent. I stumbled backwards, and started to hyperventilate. Cool hands touched my arms and pulled me away from the bed, out of the feverish fervor of the ICU and into the icy hallway. I slumped to the floor, hands on my face, head on my knees. Again, the cool hands were there, rubbing my back in a soothing way, just like my mom always did. The tears came harder, faster, more furiously.

Eventually the tears began to recede and I looked at the person who had rescued me. It was my mom’s doctor, and for a second, our eyes connected. My eyes, red-rimmed and full of fear and sadness, hers filled with compassion, assurance and knowledge. Without saying a word, she handed me a tissue and smiled with warmth and poise. Dr. Prahalad had been our family physician for years. Her tan, creased face was dotted with freckles and her cocoa brown eyes seemed to take up her whole face. Staring into her eyes I saw truth. I knew she did not know what was going to happen but I also saw great faith. She gently tucked my hair behind my ear then offered a hand to help me stand up.

“She’s still your mother. She’s still there, she’ll be back soon. Look past the tubes and machines and you’ll see her. You have to be strong for your father and brother. They need you as much as you need them. And your mom needs all of you more than you can imagine.”
Her words seared my mind. Like a spoiled child, I had been pouting because I felt alone. Ashamed, I remembered that my brother, my dad and everyone else who loved my mom were also in the same position. This wasn’t just my mom; she was my brother’s mom, a wife, a niece, a friend and so much more.

I took the first step back towards the door to the ICU. For a second, I faltered. The doctor quietly put her hand on my elbow, gently urging me to continue. She and I walked back into the ICU together, back to bed seven. My brother and my dad looked at me, noticing for the first time that I had left. They sent questioning looks my way. Before I could begin to speak, the doctor answered for me.

“We needed a little bit of fresh air.”

She continued to talk, updating us on mom’s condition. I tuned her out and turned my gaze to the hospital bed. Everywhere I looked, there were tubes, machines, bags and monitors. Suddenly the bile rose again and I began to waver. I closed my eyes and in my mind I heard my mom reading our favorite book, (“Mama, Do You Love Me?” Barbara LaVallee) “I’ll love you until the umiak flies into the darkness, till the stars turn to fish in the sky and the puffins howl at the moon.” The gentle imagined whisper of my mom’s voice reminded me of the all the love in her heart. This was a woman who helped everyone; from being the one my friends could ask for advice, to nameless vagrant pleading for food on the side of the highway that cold winter afternoon so long ago in Jackson, Mississippi.

As the words echoed in my head, I opened my eyes again and instead of seeing the broken shell of a human, I saw my mom. I saw her chest rise and fall as she breathed, and heard her heart beat. I reached out and touched her hand. Warm. Relief flooded my system. I knew she was alive, the monitors indicted as much. Somewhere in my mind, I had doubts. The gentle warmth was proof that somewhere deep inside, my mom was hiding. She was somewhere in that shell, waiting to come back.

I began to cry again, but instead of tears of sadness and fear, tears of wistful joy streamed down my face. Never again would I take people for granted. In that moment, I learned the value of human life. My childhood played through my mind. The boring afternoons at home, spent waiting for excitement, the adventures at the zoo, where my youthful curiosity flourished, the tears I cried, the laughs we shared. Every step of the way, there was my mom...my confidante, my champion, my sentry, the one person who never let me surrender or gave up on me.
As the montage of memories played through my mind, for the first time in a long, long time, I began to pray. In my mind, I made a bargain with God. I promised that if he would give me my mom back, I would never, ever take her, or anyone else for granted. There was nothing more I could do. There was nothing else the doctors, the nurses or the medicine could do. It became a waiting game.

The days that followed were not easy. I learned who I could lean on (or in some cases, collapse on.) I tumbled from my pedestal and lost my “better than thou” attitude. I began to see that people who I had long discounted in my mind were the people I should have been befriending. The people who I thought were my friends quickly stepped back from the tragedy that had suddenly entered my life. The people that stepped forward surprised me. My real friends, both new and old, are the ones who I will never be able to repay for their kindness.
I groaned and struggled to separate reality from dream, trying to distinguish what that blaring noise coming from my night stand was. “Make it stop, please make it stop,” I thought as I turned on the lamp and scowled at my phone that was cheerfully singing, “And I think to myself…what a wonderful world…”

“Hi Mom. Yeah, I know, I should be up by now…”

Today, my mom is happy and healthy. She’s still behind me, always supporting me, whether she approves of my decisions or not. I almost lost my mom. I made a deal with God that if he gave my mom back to me, that I would never take her (or anyone else) for granted again. That was almost two years ago. Not a day passes that I don’t think about the ICU. Not a day passes that I don’t remind myself about how lucky I am to have her as a mom, as a friend, as a guide through life.

“I’ll be ready to go by the time you guys get here to pick me up. I’ll remember to bring that paper to show you, I promise. By the way Mom, I love you.”