A Rough Day

   After waiting for the defroster to clear a good layer of ice from the windshield before leaving the hospital emergency parking, I drove home that crisp morning at 04:30 through frozen quiet streets and I began to weep.  They were just tears in the corner of my eyes at first but then soon became uncontrolled run down your cheeks and splatter in your lap tears.  I had just spent the last seven hours by MeMa's bed side while Dr and nurses fussed around her hooking her up to monitors asking questions and coming up with no answers.  She had come home from working a full day at the school and was complaining of nausea, light chest pain and upper back pain.  I took her blood pressure and it was off the chart high.  We then called the advice nurse who quickly passed us to a Doctor, who then told us to get right over to Emergency.
  After getting admitted and hooked up to the monitors they gave her morphine for the pain and nitroglycerin.  They tried three rounds of meds for the nausea and said that as soon as it settled then they would take her up for a stress test.  It was decided then that I should go home and see to the dogs and get a little sleep before returning at 10:00 a.m. for her stress test.
  I took the back roads home instead of the freeway because teary vision for a fellow with only one good eye is not a smart way to travel.  It was that long damn hallway leaving the treatment rooms, knowing MeMa lay in that bed still not having any answers that got me thinking of the "what if".  I am normally a very positive person but with being tired and still not having any answers got me thinking those horrible thoughts.  We spend all our younger years working hard to achieve our goals and to create the beauty and comfort we live in.  "We" is all it has ever been about and I cringed at the thought of going home, opening the door and stepping into an empty house.  I don't ever want to say "this is mine" I only want it to be "ours".  I'm guilty of just assuming that this is the way it always be.  So this little awakening kind of hit me in the face hard.  Don't take things for granted because when you do is when things could change.  Miss Betty and little Sophie looked at me confused as to why their beloved MeMa was not with me and went back to the door and fussed, sniffing at the closed door.  I crawled into bed rolling over and looking at her pillow and pushed those ugly thoughts out of my head and thought about all the good things that happened in our life and will happen in our future.  I eventually fell asleep, waking at ten till ten I leaped out of bed a drove straight back to the hospital cursing at myself for missing the stress test.  When I dashed into her room she was sitting up and I just made it in time to put a basin under her as she got sick. She said they took her for the stress test but she was so sick that they postponed it.  The nurse came in and gave her an injection of another drug to settle the nausea, five minutes later she was sleeping soundly, so sound that when the Dr. came in it didn't wake her.  I put my finger to my lips and he whispered that when she woke they would do the stress test.
  At around five in the evening the discharge nurse could not talk fast enough as we prepared to leave the hospital.  The result of the whole event?   Was (besides the inconclusive tests)  two very tired people drove home in their car, stepped into their house and were greeted very enthusiastically by their dogs, just the way it was always meant to be and the way it always should be.  MeMa is doing well, she passed the stress test and the Dr. said she has a good strong heart and so it is still a mystery why her blood pressure was so high.  I'm thinking it is not too late for me to get out there and shop for Valentine's Day.