When I am in ICU, I am strapped into a bed that softly purrs and rocks me slowly like a baby. A circular metal device is screwed into my head, and it is connected to a mess of cables behind me that hold me in traction. I can only strain my eyes downward to see what is going on with my body. I try not to move my arms too much; when I do, the clusters of IVs shift under my skin. When my bed turns to the right, I can see the white bag holding my nourishment that is being fed into my arm. With each rotation I can see the bag getting lower and lower. I can see various machines, white plastic boxes with numerical readouts. My life is measured in soft, rhythmic beeps. I am dimly aware that I am only half a person; where’s the rest of me? There is a fuzzy, humming numbness starting at my waist, and then nothing.
I can hear the droning of traffic outside. Once in a while the sunlight reflects off the windshields and creates light shows on my walls. The intensity of traffic sound rises early in the morning, tapers off in the afternoon, and then becomes louder once more during the early evening.
There is a television positioned high up on the wall so I can see it. It is on constantly, a never ending stream of garbled sound and image. There is a news story on. It’s about the Russian sailors that are trapped hundreds of feet below the surface of the sea, unable to be rescued from their broken submarine, the Kursk. When I hear that Russia has refused all offers of help from the United States, I cry silently.
My father is sitting next to my bed as I mumble something incoherent about the submarine. He looks at me, a confused expression on his face. He looks across the room for help. I know my mother is there, in the room, but I can’t see her. I start to drift away again, keeping my mouth shut.
My brother quietly comes up to my bed. Once again he puts a little Vaseline on his fingertip and very gently applies it to my cracked, parched lips.
“Is that good?” he whispers. I try to nod my head slightly, but I am held fast by my equipment. Instead I reply with a raspy, “Yes”. He has tired, baggy circles under his eyes. So does my father. The skin on their faces looks as if it might crack and fall into pieces at any moment.
A few nurses come into the room. In their perpetually brisk manner, they inform my family that it’s time for me to be bathed, and that they must leave the room. They file out quickly, looking relieved that someone has asked them to do something simple.
The rotation on my bed is stopped. The stillness and the silence pound in my body and ears. I am stuck facing the wall, my body held to the paused bed by numerous straps. I feel gravity trying to do its job, my body weight sagging towards the hard linoleum floor. I hear Velcro ripping, and suddenly entire panels are taken off the bed and the humid skin on my back becomes exposed. My skin breathes in the cool air with gasp after gasp, my eyelids drooping as a deep sigh escapes my lips. I hear water splashing in a plastic tub behind me and my body tenses up and tries to pull away but of course it is no use, and then the washcloths are there, on my back. My teeth grind and clench as the washcloths sweep over my long incision. They wash me swiftly but gently, using as little pressure as possible but still cleaning me efficiently. When they are done washing me they dry my skin, and my face falls as they replace the panels.
My bed is started again. I have a little button in my hand that when pressed delivers doses of morphine. My body becomes limp as hours of gentle rocking and button pushing pass. I become sleepy but my eyes never close fully, they just become blank and unseeing, half lidded and drowsy. Infinite time passes. Then my family is there again. I feel in my body that it is nighttime. The television still yaks, plays music, shows the same events happening over and over again. I watch them watching TV. My bed turns one way, I watch my brother. It turns the other way, I watch my father and mother. Back and forth I observe. There is one time that I turn away from the door, and when I turn back, my boyfriend Matt is there, leaning over me. I break into a wide grin. His face opens into a small, soft smile, and tears spring up in his eyes.
“How ya doin’, babe?” he asks quietly with a tremor in his voice as I slowly begin turning away.
“Oh, I’m okay. Whoops, here I go again,” I say as he slips out of my line of sight. He laughs quietly, waiting for me to come back.
“John’s here with me,” he says when I am facing him again. “Can he come in?”
I try to nod again, then I say, “Yeah, sure.”
He brings John into the room. I try to act like a good hostess.
“Hi John, how are you? Wow, I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, but the words don’t come out. His face turns red and the tears come to his eyes, too. He closes his mouth, and simply nods.
“We brought you something, do you wanna see it?” Matt asks.
“Sure,” I say.
Matt pulls a large piece of paper out of a bag. He opens it up, and I see it is a half finished collage of mine that all my friends have completed for me. I see my friends names randomly throughout it; Jake, Carli, Tracy, Ari, but I can’t see the rest of it very well, my eyes are sideways to it, and I am turning away again.
“Can you guys stand on either side of me and hold it above me so I can see it?” I ask. John rushes to the other side of my bed and takes a hold of the other edge of the collage. It is now suspended over me, right side up. I bring my arm up weakly to point to this picture or that name. I haltingly read aloud the different phrases my friends have glued to it. My own eyes fill with tears as I read the messages of love and strength, and my voice begins to crack. I don’t stop tracing over the pictures with my fingers until I am too weak to hold my arm up anymore. Then Matt and John take the collage away, and soon I fall into a deep sleep.