In the Hospital.

Life is unpredictable. Oh, we try to break it down and plan things. We have our calendars, digital or otherwise, and we make lists. Some things we anticipate; other things we fear. Most of the time fear is an err on the side of caution, but odds are that sooner or later, the very thing we're worried about will happen.

My father is in his late ‘70s; my mom is in her late ‘60s. He has a heart condition; she has asthma. There have been times in my life when our trio has been reduced to a duo while one of us spent time in the hospital. Often when I come home to find one or both of their cars missing, there's a concern that they're in the hospital. If they've left a note, it usually says they went shopping. When they don't, it's usually because they expected to get home before I did, and as I'm lecturing them on courtesy I get the strangest sense of role reversal, and understand what it must have been like for them in the wilder years of my youth. Probably even now they worry about their “fragile” only child.

So, Thursday night I come home to find one car missing. I come in the house, and a note is waiting for me. The concern that I dismissed fromthe experience of dozens of similar situations returns when I see what my dad wrote. My mom is in the hospital with pneumonia, and they expect to keep her for one or two nights.

She had been sick earlier this week with aches and chills. I myself have had a bit of a cold and was slightly feverish over the weekend. Right now all I have is an annoying dry cough. When I left for work Thursday morning, she seemed better than she had been the day before, and was planning to go work at one of the gardens where she volunteers. My dad discouraged this wisely, and at the very least was able to convince her to let him drive her. We all knew it was a mistake, but we're all stubborn.

I fed the cats as the note instructed, and quickly changed out of my gym clothes and showered. The phone rang, and it was my mom. It was a relief to hear her voice and she sounded fine, but couldn't talk long because she was still in the emergency room and was sneaking a call on her cell phone. When the doctor came in, she quickly hung up on me.

I raced to the hospital, and ran right past the woman at the front desk. “Sir? Sir! Can I help you?” I backed up and explained that my mother was there, giving her name. Her tone changed and she led me to a locked door which would lead more directly to my mom's room. I could see her at the end of the hall, a frail 4' 11” Italian woman with a concerned old man standing by her bedside.

She seemed fine, and explained to me how she had felt dizzy at work and couldn't even climb stairs. After checking her blood pressure with her machine at home, she finally decided to go to the hospital. She should have gone days ago. We sat for an hour, and finally they came to bring her to a room. While we waited, she started getting chills again and my dad got her another blanket, still warm from the dryer. Upstairs, the nurse paused before bringing her in to her room. She went in and drew the curtain on the old man in the next bed, then went to find someone. My dad questioned if it was a man and my mom said he better stay if it was. I kind of thought it might be an elderly woman. I heard the nurse ask her colleagues something in a whisper, to which they responded “Helen.” She smiled, and came past my mom's wheelchair. She leaned in as my mom expressed her concern about her roommate’s gender, and assured her that she had just checked precisely that. She must have relayed the tale to someone at the end of the hall because I heard another nurse joke that they “hadn't gone coed yet.”

Inside, my mom expressed surprise when the digital scale built in to her bed marked her at 134 pounds, 10 over what our scale at home says. The attendant joked that our scale must not be very accurate, and said her digital scale was off but not by that much. None of us pointed out that this rusted metal scale with a wheel and an adjustable gear with teeth was older than me. She mentioned her chills, so the woman took her temperature. It was still 104 degrees, so the Tylenol must have worn off, but enough time had passed that they would get her more. With her settled in and resting, my dad and I came home for dinner. My dad was especially hungry after being in the hospital for so long, and we live five minutes away.

There was a message from one of our band leaders, and I told my dad I'd return the call since he was exhausted. It was a pleasant conversation that yielded another four gigs with an associated band between now and September, and a new one for our group that would take us out of state. He expressed concern when I told him where we were when he called, but then the conversation took a turn that kind of pissed me off. Earlier in the week he spoke to my dad and learned we were playing for his ex-partner. About two years ago he stopped calling this guy, and made his son his new partner. Then he wondered why the other guy would hang up when he called. Now he's really childish when he hears the other guy still gets work.

“OK....you got a few minutes? I dunno how to say dis...Is everyting ok? Wit me an da band?”

“Uh, sure Tony....why?”

He then went on a rant about how we always have certain dates, and my dad asked him about August the fifth, and even though he hadn't given us details this year, we should know that there's always a job on that day. He scoffed at my dad's comment that this other guy is battling cancer and showed no sympathy. I had to cut him off.

“His job is after your job. We're done playing at 2:30. If it was at the same time as your job, we'd go with you first and honor that. But when we're done with you, we can do whatever we want.”

At that point he got flustered, unprepared, and changed the subject to train times. He's in his fifties, but having spent most of his life in Brooklyn, he never learned how to drive. So on several of the jobs we're doing, we're going out of our way to meet him at a train station. We make most of his gigs, do favors for him, and he still has to whine about us playing for someone else. We actually play for about five different bands, but because of his personal and frankly childish beef with this other leader, it bothers him. The final insult when our conversation ended fifteen minutes later was his after thought of “Oh, and I hope everyting is ok wit your mudda. I mean dat, ok [MCF]-y? OK?” Yeah, way to tie up our phone line in case the hospital called.

So, it was a long night. Hopefully my mom is resting comfortably, and hopefully will be home sooner rather than later. I'm sure they're erring on the side of caution because of her age and asthma, but even the cats seem to notice a key member of our operation here is missing. I have faith that she'll be back, but some extra prayers and good thoughts couldn't hurt. She joked that I should hold off on buying Mother's Day presents “just in case”, but I'm doing it anyway. Being in the hospital isn't fun, and I hope she's home before Sunday.