The last chapter ended with Chana attempting suicide and going into an ambulance to go to the hospital on Friday night.
It’s amazing how fast an ambulance can go when the streets are empty.
The sirens were almost not needed, as there were no cars in the way, but rather the sound was to alert everyone walking and playing in the street.
Whenever I am with my kids, and we see an ambulance driving on Shabbos, I would say, “Let’s hope it’s for a mommy going to have a baby. Do you think so? Will it be a girl? Or a boy?” My kids always found this fun, giving the imagined babies funny names. As our neighborhood faded away, I found myself wondering if there were any mommies telling their kids that right now; and what they would think if they knew the truth.
The atmosphere in the back of the ambulance was tense.
One paramedic was taking her blood pressure, oxygen levels and other vital signs. Chana was having a very hard time staying awake. Very hard. The paramedic was shaking and tapping her leg in a desperate attempt to keep her awake.
“Sweetie, what’s your name?”
“How old are you?”
“Where did you go to school?”
“Where do you live?”
Chana’s answers were getting harder and harder to understand. She was more out of it than with it. Then they started asking me all kinds of questions.
“How long has she been on these meds?”
“How much was she taking of what?”
“How many pills did I think were missing?”
My head was spinning. I fumbled my answers. Besides for how long she had been on meds, I really didn’t know many of the other answers. When her meds were in the safe, Chana and I would sit together and I would watch her while she swallowed the pills. Once she no longer needed the safe, I didn’t really keep track of all of her prescriptions. I mean, I knew in general what meds she took, but I didn’t know the dosages. All part of the “stay in your lane” directive. It was too emotional when I got involved with her meds, anyway. My husband handled these things much better.
Looking back, all I remember was thinking about how thirsty I was. Crazy, right? But I was so thirsty, and I remember seeing all of the water bottles that they kept in the back and I was too shy to ask for a drink. I guess it was a good distraction, less upsetting than listening to the discussion the EMT’s were having together.
Would we get to the hospital in time to pump her stomach? Apparently, there is a time limit as to when you can pump someone’s stomach before the meds get absorbed into the blood stream. So, they wanted to know what time I thought everything happened. I told them when she called me into her room. That was really all that I knew.
They called ahead to the ER, and it was decided that they were going to pump her stomach as soon as we got there. Since we were on a time crunch, they sped up a bit more. I held onto the side of Chana’s stretcher. Watching her lay there. Sleeping.
Watching her sleep, all I could think was that for me, watching her sleep wouldn’t help me feel calm anymore. What I once believed was a brief refuge from her sadness, and a way for her brain to rest and heal now became something much scarier. She had crossed the boundary of what she “would never do” into “something she did.” I remember thinking that nothing that she does will ever feel safe again. Showering, going out with friends, even going to school by herself had stopped being normal, everyday nothing-out-of-the-ordinary activities. Now, Chana sleeping in her bed would no longer be normal for me.
Earlier in the week we had been invited out for Shabbos dinner. I was going to say no, but my kids wanted to go, and Chana told me she thought she would also go. And, if not, she was going to go to sleep early. I wasn’t sure, but after discussing it with my husband we decided to accept the invitation.
I began to wonder, was this part of the plan all along for her? Was she planning on doing this when she told me to go out for Shabbos? I found myself on the brink of tears. What if when my husband had come home from shul to pick us up, I had simply checked on Chana, saw her sleeping, and left? Would she have still been alive when we got back from the meal??
What if?
What if?
I found myself so thirsty again. I looked at those water bottles. Was I a bad mother if I asked for one? Could I even take a drink? I guess the EMT saw me looking at the bottles and offered me one. I don’t remember if I ever took a sip, or even opened the bottle, because right after he handed it to me, the ambulance came to a screeching halt in front of the emergency room.
The doors of the ambulance seemed to magically open, and hands reached in to help me out. I remember being struck by how dark it had gotten in the 30 minutes since we had left our neighborhood and how very cold it was. I watched them pull Chana’s stretcher out of the ambulance. She was unarousable, regardless of all of the attempts to keep her awake. I ran after them as she was brought into a bay in the ER.
I found myself standing at the foot of her bed, watching the nurses and doctors rush around getting things set up for her stomach to be pumped. My Hebrew isn’t great under the best of circumstances, and I found myself unable to even begin to understand all of the questions and commands being volleyed at me as I stood frozen.
A tall male nurse pointed his finger down the hall, and in his very heavy accent barked out his instructions. “Giveret! Go! Go to the front desk, achshav! Check her in! Tell them her name! Go! Achshav!”
I turned around. Not quite sure which desk, and the idea of “checking in” didn’t really fit into the situation I found myself in.
I followed the pointed finger down the hall, and I found myself at the end of a very long line of people waiting to “check in.” While I had almost started crying in the ambulance, I had been able to hold myself together. But, standing on the line, holding that stupid water bottle, I wanted to cry, but I wouldn’t let myself, I certainly couldn’t if I had any hope of trying to give the secretary the information she needed about Chana. Eventually, I got to the front of the line, and I got Chana “checked in.”
I went back to the emergency room and pulled back the curtain around Chana’s bed. There were nurses and a doctor surrounding her. She was crying. I won’t go into the details of what it was like to watch your daughter get her stomach pumped, but it is something I will never forget. At this point, Chana was definitely more alert. She was in pain and gagging from the tubes and activated charcoal she needed to get into her system.
That is when I finally lost it. I started sobbing and sobbing. Sobbing over her pain. Sobbing that things had gotten so very bad. Sobbing that I now knew with such clarity that things would never, ever, ever be the same. Chana saw me crying. In between gags she tried to tell me how sorry she was. I kept telling her it was ok. She kept telling me she was sorry. I kept telling her it was okay. Finally, a nurse led me out of the bay, telling me that no mother should have to watch their child go through this.
Finally, it was done. Chana was cleaned up, and fell back to sleep. I sat with her, watching her sleep. Watching her vital signs blink across the screens above her. I was exhausted. I laid my head on the edge of her bed. My mind raced with all kinds of thoughts.
I asked myself again, what if we had gone out for dinner and, I had just assumed Chana just went to sleep for the night?
What happened with the boys after I left?
What happened when my husband came home from shul?
What was my husband thinking?
I was tired, nauseous and needed to eat. It had been a few hours at this point since we had gotten to the ER, and now we were waiting to be admitted upstairs. No one could tell us exactly how long that would take. I wondered how I was going to get through the rest of Shabbos by myself. I sat up, and looked around.
Then as I turned my head, I saw my husband run into the ER.* I don’t know who was more relieved, my husband seeing Chana still alive; or me knowing that I wasn’t going to be alone anymore.
Regardless, we had a very long and emotional Shabbos ahead of us.
*My husband asked a very specific shaila, and was given a very specific psak. This should not be taken as a heter for anyone to drive on Shabbos. If chas v’shalom you are ever in a similar situation, your own Da’as Torah must be consulted.