I See You / ICU

Of all the beds in the ER at the community hospital—the hospital where they hooked my father up to an oxygen tank for eight hours before realizing the oxygen tank was empty, which would explain why his oxygen saturation wasn't improving—they had to place him in a bed directly across from the bed where my mother took her last breath one year ago. How could they have known this would, in fact, cause his already taxed heart to break a little more, pump a little less? As I witnessed his limbs swollen with fluid, his eyes filled with tears, I sat sentinel, facing her death bed. On this night—last night—her bed was occupied by an older gentleman, who, from my vantage, was largely unattended. At one point he sat up, disoriented, tearing away at the tape on his hand, yanking at his hep-lock. I yelled out to a nurse, who jumped in to prevent what would have indubitably ended badly. 

With blood. 

Too much to bear, I snatched the curtain closed. 

Several more hours would pass before they transferred my father to the ICU, as they had transferred her, same hall, maybe even same gurney, a dozen times. A day later—today—he would be moved to a standard room. Crisis averted. For now. As he knows all too well.