(excerpt)
Admissions
I had never been hospitalized before, so walking into Admissions felt surreal. It was now 10 a.m. and the large room was packed. I ignored the other waiting people and rushed to the nearest of five small offices adjoining the main room. A well-dressed, older black woman wearing a lot of bright gold jewelry sat behind the desk. She was speaking to a young pregnant Latina and her husband.
�Excuse me, Ma�am,� I put on my most ingratiating face. �I�m sorry to interrupt, but my doctor told me I needed to be admitted right away. She said she already called to rush the paperwork through.�
The woman did not look impressed. Instead, she merely glanced at me over her large, gold-rimmed glasses.
�Did you see the clipboard in the waiting room?�
When I shook my head no, she continued.
�It�s on the table by the front door. Put your name on it and we will get to you as soon as we can.�
Shocked, I couldn�t believe I would have to wait. My doctor had been adamant that I be admitted immediately. Before I had a chance to formulate a response, the woman resumed speaking to the couple. I backed out of the office, incredulous, and hurried to put my name on the list. I counted the names ahead of me. Fifteen. As I took one of the few seats left in the room, I looked around for a clock, but there wasn�t one. My watch read 10:05 a.m.
I grabbed an old edition of People lying among the pile of ratty, outdated magazines on the end table beside me. Desperately, I thumbed through it, but the distraction didn�t work. I tried to ignore the people surrounding me, some of whom looked dreadfully ill. The elderly white man directly across from me wheezed in gasping spurts as though he couldn�t get enough oxygen and might keel over at any moment.
I remembered visiting Dom at the hospital back in January and seeing the shrunken flesh hang from his large frame, a fever flush of sweat across his brow. On the heels of that memory came a more distant one, an old man, wizened and ravaged by chemotherapy and cancer, little more than a head on a stick poking up from thin hospital blankets. Peter had been my mentor and boss for the three summers during college when I worked in a chemistry lab. He died of cancer in December 1987, the year I graduated. I could still feel the cold, skeletal boniness of his thin hand in mine, everything altered but his eyes, that last day I saw him alive.
�Man, next time I drive over here, I guess I�ll have to bite the garage parking fee.� Marla sat down across from me. �Can you believe it took me almost twenty minutes to find street parking?�
I looked at my watch. It was 10:15 a.m. �At the rate things are going, it looks like we�re going to be here awhile.�
Like me, Marla was indignant that we had to wait.
�I�ve made it this far, so I guess I can survive another couple of hours,� I joked, trying to lighten the mood.
But I have never been any good at waiting. It would have been better if I could have jumped directly into action in order to stave off the fear that was consuming me. As we waited, I also grew increasingly irritated with the hospital admissions process. My world was the snappy, high-efficiency world of Internet business and high tech PR. My specialty was smooth, high-speed productivity. This place seemed the epitome of bureaucratic lethargy.
�Did you call Mom and Bob?� Marla interrupted my thoughts.
�Not yet. I haven�t had time.�
�Do you want me to go and call them? I�m sure they would want to know what�s going on.�
�Good idea. Would you mind? At this rate, there should be plenty of time.�
After Marla left in search of a phone, I stared back down at the magazine in my lap, trying to diagnose my symptoms, the cold yet sweaty sensations, the foamy pee, and the disgusting taste in my mouth that I was at the moment disguising with the strong mint gum. What was wrong with me? I must have kidney cancer, or maybe there was some other kind of cancer interfering with my kidneys.
Where did death fit amidst the infinite energy and possibility of the Internet boom of 1998 in the San Francisco Bay Area? Money poured from the skies, SUVs grew bigger and sped faster on the freeways, semiconductors shrank smaller and computed faster. Nothing died or ended, it simply came out as a newer version, or you just found another venture capitalist to back the idea.
But Dom had died, and what about me? Was I going to die? Tears welled up, but then Marla returned.
�The �Rents are making arrangements to fly out.�
Ever since our teenage years growing up in Los Angeles, we had referred to Mom and our step dad Bob, as �The Rents.� Several years ago, they left the urban turbulence of Los Angeles for the bucolic quiet of New Hampshire, where Mom now taught Electrical Engineering at Dartmouth.
�Did they say when they would get here?�
�Probably Thursday. I�ll call Mom again tonight once we know what�s going on.� Marla took my hands in hers, her blue eyes rimmed with red.
�Lisi, this is so crazy. What�s happening to you?�
We clung to each other, and I recalled the two other times we had been together in hospitals.
�Do you remember when we went to see Mom after her hysterectomy? And, the other time, when Dad was hospitalized?�
�I was too young. But I kind of remember visiting Mom. When was Dad in the hospital?�
�I think I was about six, so you would have been about four, but I don�t remember why he was in the hospital.�
�Are you going to call him?�
�Later, when we know what�s going on with me.�
There were bigger things on my mind at the moment than notifying my father, especially given the minimalist nature of our relationship. My parents had divorced when I was twelve. Though he continued to send Christmas and birthday cards, he had in effect walked out of my life on my fifteenth birthday, when he moved to Pennsylvania with his new family.
Finally, the same older black woman I had spoken with earlier called me into her cubicle and processed my paperwork, obtaining copies of my insurance card, medical history, and emergency contact information. She clamped a plastic bracelet on my wrist with my identity and allergy information on it, handed me my chart, and perfunctorily directed Marla and me to the Oncology Unit.
I hope you enjoyed it.
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-- Lisa (aka "Kidney Wonder")
