Hello, my spooky friends!
Our friends at The Family Plot podcast sent me a tale that I had to share with you all. You may think it is fiction, but it’s not. All names have been changed for privacy purposes. Enjoy!
A Ripple Effect by Nieah James
An excerpt from a larger work:
N: Tara J Edwards A: PCN A/G/R: 15FC
I stared down at the words on the red bracelet, trying to focus on them to ground myself. I shook my head slightly. A dizzy, all-consuming buzzing filled my ears. The world seemed to be moving too quickly as I was rushed from the 5th floor General Medicine wing of the Hospital. I had been admitted due to a severe case of pneumonia about 10 hours ago. This was the third time they’d moved me since I arrived in the hospital, though. When we arrived, we had sat in the emergency room for nearly an hour. Finally, after that, we were moved to the room on the 5th floor. Now everything was going wrong, so I was being moved to the ICU. The crazy part was that this wasn’t even the first hospital we had been to.
First had been the trip from St. Mary’s Blue Springs, another hospital, which was covered under my HMO network for emergency visits. My mother had complained the entire trip to the emergency room about going out of town, away from all of the more urgent treatment centres. When the decision was made to admit me though I guess I wasn’t allowed to be admitted into that hospital to be cared for. After making something of a scene, my mother Dianne Edwards had told the staff at St. Mary’s that the insurance company were a bunch of bureaucratic assholes before we left for the drive across the Metro Area, after something of a trek we reached the Hospital, we were in now.
Research Medical Center, which was located in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, was a huge hospital and more than a little daunting. I kind of thought it was funny, this is where I’d have to go since this is where my mom, Dianne, had attended nursing school at 19 years old. At the time, she was just a few years older than I was now. It had also only been a few short years after she had lost her mom in a car accident. She had been only 16 years old then, a few months older than I was now.
I glanced up, looking for my mom; she was nearby, of course. I found her on my right side, hovering observantly. My mom, who was always so strong, had a strange look in her eyes. I blinked as I watched her looking nervously from my face, where she tried to smile down at me, to the medium acuity monitor machine, I think that’s what she called it. The machine was consistently taking my blood pressure as well as alarming about my oxygen saturation. The damn numbers were still steadily declining.
She was worried a lot more than she had been during our drive to the hospital. The trip, which would have been a 30 to 40-minute drive in good weather, had been long and drawn out in the wintry mix that was drizzling around us. While we weren’t having an ice storm, it had been snowing earlier in the day. A week before Christmas, the weather wasn’t unexpected, just inconvenient. The late evening roads could have been hazardous, not too bad for my mom, the nurse, though. Dianne Edwards had been my hero for my whole life, the only one who never left me.
My biological dad had never cared to be around. He walked away while she was pregnant with me and had never seen me except for once when I was a baby. I had been told, I guess, there was an ex-stepfather who had been part of my early life. I had always heard he loved me, but I had no clear memories of him from my youth. The pair had divorced before I was old enough to remember much of anything about my life. I guess he had mental health and anger issues. I was three at the time. I had wondered a few times, but never did anything with those questions.
Then there was Paul and the twins. My mother had met and fallen in love with one of her little brother’s best friends. Not only did I get a stepdad, but I also had a whole stepfamily and half-siblings, the twins Paula and Preston. Even with a full family, I always felt out of place. The older I became I understood that the family just barely tolerated me. I had started as just a big disappointment, but I turned into the fat stepfamily joke that they let me be around as long as the twins, Paula and Preston, were around.
I always felt so out of place everywhere, well, not quite everywhere. That’s when my dreams came into focus because someday, I was going to write for Marvel comic books. If that didn’t work out, maybe for Disney, or maybe even for Anime, though I think most anime comes from Japan. I was starting to get more interested in new types of art and music. There were things in the world I wanted to learn more about and explore. Last year, we had gone to the Renaissance festival and that had started an interest in some Shakespeare as well.
I tried to focus on what people were asking of me. It was hard to understand with the buzzing in my ears, which had escalated along with the pounding of my heart. The pounding almost seemed to be echoing with the buzzing. The radiology nurses were rushing around speaking in quiet voices; they all seemed so far away. Everyone was kind as they were asking me to turn this way and that. I did my best to follow the directions, but everything seemed so rushed, so loud, but outlined in a haze that made me feel far away.
After the fastest series of X-rays I thought I had ever gotten in my life, they rushed us down another set of hallways. We took a large elevator down to one of the lower floors. “Mom… I’m sorry,” I tried to tell her over the mask that was on my face. I wasn’t sure if she could hear me over the blast of pure O2 that was blowing into my sinuses from the nasal cannula. The Respiratory therapist who had given me the last breathing treatment had said they were trying to get my oxygen saturation up. As a last-ditch effort, they were attempting to use both the non-rebreather mask along the nasal cannula. I caught sight of the monitor as it continued to complain loudly, and someone silenced the alarm, looking over their shoulder.
My mom leaned in next to me, gently she brushed a kiss over my forehead and smoothed my hair before shushing me quietly, “Tara, shhh, save your breath baby,” she instructed. My mother looked up just as a doctor came in with two Respiratory therapists. I sank back into my pillows, and I looked up at my mom again. I watched her straighten before squaring her shoulders. She just pressed her lips together into a thin line, waiting for what I almost felt she knew was coming.
I kind of could hear the conversation. The buzzing in my ears was louder than it had been this entire time, now had started to mingle with the frantic beating of my heart. When I heard the term ‘intubate,’ I was officially scared. I was raised by a nurse and knew enough to know this was bad… Like really bad. My mother only nodded as the doctor left the room, more nurses came a noisy dance filled the space the doctor had left. If I hadn’t been starting to panic before, I was certainly feeling panicked then. I tried to suck in a deep breath but everything around me seemed so tight that even my lungs couldn’t pull anything in.
“Mommy… “I looked up at her as a nurse pulled the mask away, and she tilted her head at me. “Am I going to die?” That’s what I felt like just yesterday morning when I woke up. That was the thought that made me choose to have Christmas with Paula and Preston, right? I thought if anything happens, we’ll have this one last time together. Just the three of us, and it will be the closest I will ever get to being a mom to my kids on almost a perfect Christmas morning.
My mother shook her head and a few tears spilled from her light blue eyes, “Don’t be silly, Tara, the doctors are going to get you well. Just do what your told, it’s going to be ok. “My mother kissed my forehead again and the closest nurse gently led her away as two more came up to take their place.
“Hey, sweetheart, I need you to just open your mouth wide for me, I’m going to put some spray in the back of your throat… There… great job that is just going to numb it, ok?” a pretty nurse with deep honey brown skin and eyes the colour of the darkest chocolate ever.
I nodded and smiled weakly past my tears, “Ok… You’re pretty… “I told her just before opening my mouth and trying to draw in a breath, but it was weak. The spray she had sprayed in my mouth and down my throat tasted like chemicals, not the sickly-sweet cherry that you get at the drug store or even the bubble gum that they use at the dentist. I felt like I was choking, but that only lasted a moment as the doctor returned to me, and the alarms that had been continuously alarming blared again.
“We are going to do everything we can to take care of you, Tara! I’m so sorry, but we cannot wait any longer.” The older doctor smoothed my hair back gently, “We have you ok…” And a cold, hard plastic spacer was placed between my lips as a thick tube was positioned in my eyeline. My bed was laid back flat as raised voices above me began whatever process they were performing. Panic flared in my already struggling chest, causing me to respond weakly to the fight or flight that tried to take root. I struggled, flailing my arms, kicking my legs as any teen might. The group of at least four nurses, one or more doctors, and another Respiratory therapist surrounded gently restraining my weak panic. I caught sight of those chocolate brown eyes of the pretty nurse one last time as my world finally faded. Everything around me faded from a buzzing cloud of colours and sounds into a soft mist of greys and blacks.
‘Hey punky doodle, it’s ok.’ The laughing voice said. It was the first thing to melt through the darkness. I felt a warmth spread over my cheek where tears had recently fallen as if someone were wiping them away. I blinked my eyes open, then looked up into beautiful blue eyes, but they seemed softer than what I would normally see. The woman looking down at me must have been close to my own mother's age, and her hair, while longer than what my mom wore anymore, fell in lovely curls around her face. Her hair was a dark Auburn colour. She was one of the most beautiful people I had ever seen.
“Am I dead now?” I asked.
“You don’t ask easy questions, do you?” She laughed tapping a slender finger on her slightly pointed chin then continued, “No, I wouldn’t imagine you would. Tara you are not dead we…” she gestured, with that same finger that reminded me of my mother’s, between her and I, “We have to make sure of that because I need you to do me a favour ok?”
I nodded a little, not sure I could talk again, everything felt so strange and fuzzy right now. “I need you to take care of your mom for me, can you do that? I know you always kind of have, so I think you are the perfect person if you are ok with it?” she said. Hearing her words, I felt a warm embrace deeper than just a hug. Like I was making a real-life long promise. Kind of like when a wizard grants a magic spell or when an angel asks you for a favour.
“I will! I love her, she’s never left me, how could I not?” I said, echoing the thoughts I had pondered what felt like a few minutes before, when my mom had to step away from me at the hospital.
“Thank you, Tara, I’m glad she’ll have you. “And with that, a smiling image floated before my mind’s eyes one final time before I sank back into the dark.
Hospitals are weird.
Drugs are even weirder.
I spent the next two weeks in that bed, in and out of that dark Misty place. I remembered bits and pieces of different people. There were family, friends, and church members coming to pray for me. Hospital staff even came to hug me and talk to me. The kindness of others didn’t make me feel that much better, though. I think December is just a hard time for anyone to be stuck in a hospital, especially a young teenage girl. Being stuck in a bed on Christmas Eve instead of sitting at home listening to Christmas carols on the radio is awful. Days, nights, and everything in between blurred into one confusing mess. I was better-just not enough.
Also, as if it wasn’t bad enough, I couldn’t talk or eat; the experiences just kept getting better. Guess who gets to be a teenage girl, who starts menstruating while in the hospital on a ventilator, so you have to use a bedpan because you are unable to get up and go to the bathroom? *Ding* If you guessed me, you are right me because such is my life.
At least I still had one. I had been so close to death. Everyone who walked in said it. My family, who never really seemed to care one way or the other, all seemed to show up. I heard over and over how prayers saved me, how I should be so grateful to God and the Angels. People called it a Christmas miracle that I had lived through that first night.
My brain was clouded and muddled. I wondered if the woman I half remembered was maybe a nurse, or maybe she had been an angel; if I’m honest, I kept expecting her to walk into the room. Maybe she had been the answer to all the prayers that had been said on my behalf. The cards that came in every day. People had mailed to the hospital in my name made me feel cared about. It was almost like I was a little bit special, for that moment, at least.
For Christmas, people came to see me, but it was short-lived, and an insane parade during the visiting hours that day. It was a whirl of family mostly people bringing presents, but only for a moment. People came in smelling like cookies and cakes, smelling like ham, and I could smell food wafting off of people who visited other people in the glassed-in private rooms of the ICU during the visiting hours. For a 15-year-old foodie, it was kind of a special kind of hell, like maybe Scrooge was involved, there might be a lifetime movie in there somewhere.
A special package came on Christmas Day from Grandma Clara. She was a family member on my dad’s side of the family that my mom had reached out to to find out more about my dad’s family. Grandma Clara had heard I was sick and wanted to send me something, so she sent me a beautiful long-eared, long-eared rag doll rabbit. I named Clara after Grandma Clara.
When I felt like I couldn’t stand one more tube cleaning or round of heparin shots in my hips and thighs, I would look to the corner. There was a tiny tree that my family had put up, and I knew that I’d always want a tree every year from now until always. In honour of the Christmas, I almost never saw. That being said, while I full-on embraced the reality of being lucky to be alive, I was also a downright impatient teen who just wanted to get the heck up out of this bed and run down hallways.
Almost dying takes a lot out of you, though. The RTT (Respiratory Therapy Technicians) explained how the bottom lobes of my lungs had completely shut down in something called atelectasis, the general idea being that the balloons were full of mucus and couldn’t take in oxygen. The upper lobes had been headed in the same direction, so they had to slowly make sure everything was opening back up before they could just take me back off the machines they had put me on. I had been suffering from severe Hypoxemia, and my oxygen levels had been down in the mid-50s before they were able to get me turned around in the right direction using the ventilator.
It took nearly a week of weaning me off machines and lowering oxygen levels. Finally, on December 30th, I was extubated. Then on the 31st, I was well enough to move back to a room on the 5th floor. The nurses were so sweet and made sure I got to participate in the New Year's Eve celebration. The sweet RN Anastasia, who was taking care of me, brought me Multi Grain Harvest cheddar chips, caramel popcorn, and sparkling grape juice. After being on a ventilator for almost 2 weeks with no food, it was the best food I had ever eaten.
On New Year's Day, after coming home from the hospital, my mom and stepdad took a nap, then in the afternoon, took Paula, Preston, and me to see Aladdin in the Theatres as a celebration of me getting released and doing so much better. I was still weak, but the world seemed so brittle now. Everything seemed sharp-edged and so easily breakable. I felt easily breakable, and I stayed so close to my mom every moment, I wasn’t sure I ever would feel comfortable being more than a few steps away from her.
That feeling, of course, ebbed over the weeks after coming home from the hospital. I guess even with everything I had been told, I didn’t understand how sick I had been. I stayed out of school that first quarter after the holiday break. Physically, I had lost some control of my balance as well as strength in my legs and hands. Lainey and our other friends just understood that I had been sick, but my already outcast feelings only grew when I finally returned to school.
Things just went downhill from there. The outcast feelings had grown over the next several months so when I went to school in the fall, I didn’t hold out much hope it would feel different or better. I tried to get myself into High School and the groove of this next part of my life, part of me already knew that it wasn’t for me. I ended up getting my GED a few weeks after I turned 16 years old ready to move forward with my life.
That was the last thing I did for myself, though. After that, every time I tried something new, my fears seemed to compound daily. Things were harder now than they had ever been. It was hard to retain things. Hard to understand why things were the way they were, hard to understand how items fit into spaces, and why my brain didn’t seem to understand that correlation the way it once had. I could learn something, then lose it just as quickly. I tried using known learning methods. Sometimes it seemed like the only thing that would work was just repetition and notes. Even then, whether it was my broken brain or my self-doubt, oftentimes I would fight to achieve those steps forward, only to feel like I was still only taking steps back.
I tried cosmetology school. I had always been artistic and loved pretty things, but I kept getting sick, sick enough to cause multiple trips back to the hospital. I came close to death again a couple of times before a doctor asked what I did. When he found out about cosmetology school, he told me I would probably have to quit. About 6 months later, I dropped out when I ended up back in the hospital, which was when they diagnosed me with Cor Pulmonate.
It was about 6 weeks later when I found the picture of Norma June…
I was on the floor going through a box of pictures that my mother had brought out from her closet. I had been on in-home oxygen for several weeks now so at least it was something new to keep me busy. I was half way through the box when something caught my attention, I pulled a photo out of the box and held it close to my face.
I froze. My heart skipped a beat as I stared at the photo in my hands. That face—I had seen it before. Not in real life, but in that strange, misty place when I was so close to dying. “It’s HER,” I exclaimed suddenly, my fingers running over the face that stared back at me from an 8x10 professional photograph.
My mom turned around, looking at me,” It’s who? I mean, you probably have seen most of those people. It was mostly family pictures.” My mom responded.
“I have seen her! I don’t know her from the family. This is HER! The woman I saw when I was so sick in the hospital mom. She is the one I told you about.” I lifted the photo I had come across and showed it to my mother.
I watched as the colour drained from my mother’s face, “Tara… That’s a picture of my mother.” She replied.
I nodded slightly, but this was the first time I had ever been able to look at a picture and know for sure. The two had argued and had gotten in a huge fight because my grandmother Norma hadn’t felt confident with my mom driving a vehicle down to the Lake of the Ozarks. My mother was 16 years old, but grandma didn’t feel confident in her driving the hazardous roads in the southern part of the state so soon after she had gotten her license. My mom had told her mom she hated her because my grandma Norma had refused to let her drive.
That was the last time she had seen her mother because a few short hours later, Grandma had been killed in a terrible car accident with a drunk driver on those very roads. They had been lucky, though, because grandma was the only one who was killed in a car full of people, including my uncle, who was only 12 at the time, as well as my mom’s stepdad and another child. It’s hard to try to guess or second-guess what might have been or what might not have been had my mom been the one behind the wheel that day.
However, the facts of history remained unchanged, and Norma June Bayler died that day in September, leaving 3 minor children without a mother and with a whole host of other problems they would live through. The Moral of the story, though, was that Dianne Edwards did not die that day; she grew up to have three children of her own… and Norma June had sent me back to make sure she was going to be ok.
Thanks again to The Family Plot Podcast for telling us this tale. What are your thoughts? Be sure to give their show a listen at: