37 At least at the Cleveland Clinic, when they mercifully turned off the stark fluorescence of the lights into the stale grey, she was there. But she never went home to Dad, to fetch a change of clothes and sleep in her own bed next to him. She breathed the same antiseptic that I did. Maybe she didn’t taste the bile in her own throat ebbing and flowing with each swallow, but she felt the convulsing of my throat every time I threw up in the spasms on all her heartstrings. There were babies—weeks, months, I don’t know how old—infants—in those hospital rooms all alone. At Fairview, I was the only real shakeup: longest stay, eighteen years old, still throwing up every time they tried to feed me, dependent on my daily injection of Pepcid because I can’t even swallow that. My mom prayed for all of the children on the roster at the nurse’s station on the pediatric floor. When we’d take our semi-hourly walks, me leaning on the IV pole and her arm around my waist, I could tell she was praying over them, even with her eyes open. When she wasn’t casting her petition up to God on my behalf, it was for them. When I transferred to the main campus in Cleveland, we didn’t know my young neighbors as well—they changed too frequently. I, at eighteen, was the only child in the pediatric ward with parental supervision. There was one father who went around to all of the children and gave out toys to play with, but he couldn’t stay the whole time. He gave me a lottery themed Rubik’s cube. She went home once during the whole stay, and only for an afternoon. My aunt sat with me while she went to pack her own clothes and shower. I don’t remember anything from our conversation. People came to visit, but I only remember what they left; I inventoried them and she arranged them in their gift wrappings on the far shelf, too afraid to keep them close in case I threw up again. The night they put in my nasogastric tube was the most wretched. I had guests that evening, but they left as soon as we had to start the procedure. I assume it was night because I was told so, but it could have been afternoon for all I remember. The doctor said putting it in was the worst part, but it would be fine after that. The nurse said they needed to suck the bile out of my stomach to give my intestines space to recover. I had to swallow continuously as they fed a rubber tube up my nasal cavity. They gave me a cup of water that I drank too quickly, and I had to force myself to dry swallow. It couldn’t have been more than a half-centimeter in diameter, but I could feel it, like a metal rod I was convinced dissected my esophagus. I couldn’t swallow. If I’d let my mouth hang open, I could breathe against the pole I imagined bisecting my throat. But the reflex to swallow would overcome every few minutes, forcing down my spit and gagging up rubber, choking, crying, and her hand was there, in mine, squeezing it back so I knew she was there as I pressed the cloth to my mouth and tried to stop my convulsing. She stayed like that the whole night, hand gripped in mine, arm stiff over the bed rail, plastic-threaded chair as close as she could get it. I couldn’t speak, didn’t know else how to communicate.
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