the first 24 hours

I remember leaving home, the decision made in a hearbeat. No turning back. A rush, mad. Quickly before the emotion of leaving was able to enter our hearts. I told David to put his shoes on, he hesitated, sitting perched on the second to last stair, looked up and whispered, "What if I never see this place again?" "You will" was my strong answer. "Let’s go, we need to go now." From the car we waved goodbye to Mins, our cat in the window, and David whispered "I don’t want to leave."

Ten minutes later I had located a hospital I had never seen before, in a town I was just starting to accept as my own. I dropped David at emergency. "Go in and sit down. I’ll just be a minute." I blindly pulled my car into the emergency parking, parked effortlessly in the first empty stall, got out, glanced at the Staff Only sign, cursed under my breath for not paying more attention, got back in, reparked, and analysed whether I should pay for parking for pay or risk a ticket. I stood for a moment in the middle of the parking lot trying to decide. My gaze shifting between my car, the emergency room door, my car, and back again. Shivering slightly and wishing I had brought a warmer sweater, a jacket maybe. My parking ticket decision was made for me as I located, in the distance, the parking ticket guy making his way down the line. Great, I thought, now he’s going to think I saw him, he’ll make his way to my car while I’m at the machine and I’ll have to try and fight my way out of a ticket. I don’t need this right now. I rushed to the machine, tried desperately to will it into accepting my card, thanked it when it did and half walked, half ran back to the car to place the ticket on the dash. I made it there before ticket guy, and diligently display my ticket face up. He took no notice of my presence. I made a mental note to re-pay for parking if we were still here in two hours and headed back towards the hospital wondering why it was necessary to make people try to decipher parking machines in the midst of an emergency.

When I entered emergency David was sitting slumped over in the last of a row of shopping cart style interlocking blue emergency wheelchairs, only just inside the door. "It’s busy", I said trying to find a seat and opting instead to stand awkwardly in the hallway across from the entry. The sliding emergency doors opened and closed and opened and closed as David sat blankly. A woman toting a clipboard took his name and proceeded to walk through the crowded waiting room asking if there was anyone else that was not on her list. I immediately doubted that we would be seen by anyone soon. It felt like we’d just put our name on a list for a table for dinner in an overcrowded restaurant – by the time they call you’re so tired of waiting that you’re not even sure if you are going to enjoy eating dinner anymore. I imagined waiting for hours wondering when someone would remember us. 'Cindy and David? Table for two? Right this way please.' I saw a nurse glance up from the admitting desk and lay her eyes on David. "You’re not well", she said. "No", he whispered. She told him to come and sit down at the admitting cubical, and started asking questions. "What is your address? Do you have a care card? Why are you here?" I was standing beside David, my hand on his shoulder when he whispered his response: "I might have leukemia." "We’ll find you a bed", she said. And with her response I felt a weight larger than life lift from around me.

David was whisked immediately through a second set of sliding doors and into a maze of nurses, doctors, patients and medical equipment. I retreated to my earlier post and continued to stand, even more awkwardly now against the wall, under a TV that was set to repeat meaningless news indefinitely. Every time the sliding doors opened I craned my neck to try and catch a glimpse of David. He had disappeared. And so I waited. I had no idea at the time, that this would be the first of a seemingly endless series of waiting sessions.

After David was admitted a young male RN emerged from behind the oh-so-secret sliding doors and told me I could wait with David. It wasn’t standard, but considering, he would make an exception. Considering… great I thought we’re a special case. But deep down inside, I already knew that. My intense desire to catch a glimpse of David, to sit near him, to see him, to watch him, overshadowed any thought of the circumstance we had entered.

When I saw him, he was curled into a fetal position, insignificant on an undersized hospital stretcher. He smiled weakly, sweat was careening down his face. Any effort to speak was too much to consider. I held his hand. I don’t remember crying. Hours passed and folks were wheeled in and out. The RN’s were busy. It was Friday night. They drew blood, they took a chest x-ray. We waited for a doctor to see David and hypothesized that the chest x-ray must be for lung cancer, which lead to us agonize over the possibility of such a result. I retrieved a bag of groceries from the car that I had forgotten to unload earlier. Updated my parking and continued to wait. David’s pain level skyrocketed since he had now missed a dose of Robaxacet or Tylenol or whatever he was taking to calm the pain at home. I munched on baby cookies and Gatorade that I had purchased earlier in hopes that David would be able to stomach one or the other. They would have only joined the unopened packages of cookies, granola bars, cerals, puddings, and soups that I had tried to get him to eat over the past week.

I tried to read, but I wasn’t really reading anyway. We watched a family across from us with a teenager. The on-call doctor was called in and the boy, healthy until recently, was admitted. Diabetes maybe. He was moved out of the emergency room and upstairs to a ward. That quickly – one minute your life is normal, hopelessly boring if you’re lucky, and the next you’re in the hospital.

Three hours after we walked through the emergency doors, David saw a doctor and two minutes after that David had his first experience with IV medication. Morphine. Direct injection. I saw it move through his body replacing pain with relief and comfort. He commented with a giggle that it was the best high he’d had in a long time. He could talk again.

I left in search for a payphone promising to be back momentarily. I wandered in a daze through the halls of the hospital hitting dead end after dead end, and not wanting to stray too far. An RN asked me if he could help me. "Pay phone?" I squeaked out. "Oh, no, not around here – everyone’s got cell phones these days." "Oh." I replied. "Here come with me, use this one." "Thanks, oh no, I can’t, it’s long distance." "Yeah, you can. Don’t worry about it." "Oh, ok, thanks. There’s no one I can call here. Thanks." I pulled a crumpled piece of paper from the front pocket of my jeans, uncurled the warm edges and smoothed in out on the counter by the phone. It took me three tries to dial the entire number correctly. "Mom? Is that you? Mom, we’re at the hospital. It’s not good. David got too sick I had to take him. Yes, we’re in emergency. In Nanaimo. I don’t know what they’re going to do. We might be here all night. No, he’s not going home. I might go home, I don’t know. It might be late. Don’t leave the cabin now, stay there. There’s nothing you can do. Try to call me later. Ok. It’ll be ok. I’ll be ok."

On the way back through the emergency room I caught the RN’s eye and told him, "Thanks for the phone. It meant a lot." "No worries" he replied, and meant it. "They’re doing amazing things these days with leukemia." Word of David’s case had spread quickly. "I wish you the best." "Oh, um, thanks." Leukemia. Right.

Still making my way back to David I passed the nurses station and overheard our young doctor on the phone speaking with someone about a high white blood count and Vancouver General Hospital. I did everything I could to keep walking, to accept not being able to hear every word, even though I wanted to. I returned to a much calmer David, stretched out on his back in a semi-seated position. "They’re talking about you on the phone. I hear them say Vancouver. If they give us a choice between Vancouver and Victoria, we have to ask for Vancouver. We have friends, family. I’ll have somewhere to stay. There’s no one in Victoria."

A few minutes (an eternity?) later the doctor from the phone, Dr. Cooper approached David. She pulled the curtain around the bed to give a semblance of privacy and leaned on the siderail of the bed bending over to be as close to eye contact with David as possible. She was upfront. Direct. "We’re not sure what you have. It’s very likely a lymphoma, possibly similar to Hodgkins. It’s rare, I’ve only seen it in textbooks. I don’t have the expertise to explain it in detail. You had blood tests at a clinic on Monday, is that correct?" "Yes." David replied. I squeezed David’s hand. He squeezed harder in return. "The white blood count was elevated." "Yes.", he said, "They think it could be leukemia." "Yes", she sighed, "the counts have doubled. This is progressing quickly. I paged the Victoria cancer agency and no one returned my call. It’s Friday evening. They might be gone for the weekend. I paged Vancouver as well. A hematologist" (a what? I thought) "called me back immediately. There’s no time to wait. They’re going to find you a bed. It might be in a few days. They’re hoping for tomorrow." "Ok", I said. "It’s ok, Vancouver is good. We have family there." "You’ll need the support" she said. "Vancouver has the best facility to treat you. It’s Friday night. I spoke with the specialist within minutes. It’s the best place. We’re going to move you out of emergency, maybe upstairs if we can find you a bed for tonight. It’s late already, you need as much rest as you can get."

David was wheeled out almost immediately and into a dark room, packed full of other patients. I could only stand at the foot of the bed. I was forced to go home. David made me promise to be careful on the road and the hill near our house. The night was icy cold and the air was crisp enough to take your breathe away for just a moment when you stepped outside. The last of the most recent snowfall was crunchy underfoot, clinging to road edges and shadowy nooks. Making the nights just a bit sparkly around the edges.

I walked outside into a world coated in a thick layer of sparkling crystals, like overdue ice cream left in the freezer for too long. A thick fog held itself precariously close to the surface threatening to engulf me in a wet blanket of greyness. I navigated my car down the hill sliding slightly into the driveway. I was home. And it was shockingly empty. I made kraft dinner, watched tv, paced, checked the phone messages. And slumped into the desk chair with defeat. I can’t even check messages on the best of days, but somehow I managed to and retrieve two messages from the my parents at the cabin and one from my sister. She and Don would be on the first ferry in the morning, I should call if I didn’t want them to come. I didn’t call.

I slept, I think, but not in our room. The sick odour emanating from David was still clinging to the sheets. When I had walked in earlier after an afternoon of shopping for random things we really didn’t need, trying to distract myself from the boy in the bed that refused to eat drink or walk for days I knew we needed to leave. That we were dealing with something that soup and tea and Gatorade just couldn’t fix. He was at the hospital. It was the right decision. Right? Wasn’t it? He wasn’t my responsibility anymore. My relief overshadowed by the fear of what may lie ahead. I was up and out by 8 wondering if I should wait for Tammy and Don or if I should go to the hospital. I taped to the door a sign: 'At hospital'.

The morning was crisp and the frost thick. I lost control of the car on our hill and slid headlong down the road on a picture perfect winter morning. My heatbeat crept up into my throat, threatening to pound out of my neck. I stopped dead in the middle of the road, slightly askew from the sliding action. Told myself to not be such an idiot. Of course it’s icy. And proceeded at a steady crawl down the remainder of the hill. Onto Westwood, over the overpass, left at the green H sign and back into the emergency parking. Ticket face up. Check.

I retraced my steps back though emergency and to the coat closet I had last seen David in. When I asked the closet nurse if he was still there she looked at me blankly. "G-A-U-M-O-N-T hypen G-U-A-Y." I spelled it and repeated "Gaumont-Guay". Thinking to myself come on people it’s not like I’m looking for John Doe here. She clued in. "Upstairs. He was taken upstairs last night." "Oh, where, how do I get there?" "4th floor, elevators around the corner." "Oh, ok, Thanks." I retreated from emergency like a ghost, invisible in the madness.

At the nurses station on the fourth floor I inquired as to David’s whereabouts. There was a bit of confusion over whether I could see him or not. But in I went. "Wash your hands please first." Ok. Fine. Washed. He was sharing a room with an older man. He seemed relieved when he saw me told me they moved him in the night. "Yeah, I know. I had to find you, I’m not supposed to be in here. Tammy and Don are coming." "What? Why?" "It’s ok" I said. "We need them. There going to be here soon. I’m going to go see if they’re here yet."

I walked with purpose and intention back through the hospital and out again through emergency, looking to my left as I exited. Tammy and Don were there, about 200 meters away. Walking towards me. Their faces were long, and I realized suddenly how much David meant to them. How much he meant to me. Even though I tried not to, I thought of Spence, Don’s friend. He had leukemia and passed away a few years ago. I gave them both a hug because it seemed like the right thing to do and blurted out that it was cancer and it was everywhere in his body. "It's in his lymph nodes and his blood. They’re going to take him to Vancouver. There’s nothing they can do for him here except give him pain medication." I wasn’t sure what else to say. We were all quiet. In shock maybe, our heads trying to decipher these foreign words, definitely.

A fog.