Chapter 16
We now leap from chapters 11, 11.1, 12.2 (what is wrong with me?? and I apologize for being [all together now] AN IDIOT) and 14 .5 (so where's 13??), from 15 (it's there, it's just under 13 for some fucking reason, and it's just short) to Chapter 16 and our fun fun fun times in the filthy, disgusting, loud, incompetent step-down unit.
I could have easily used a broadsword and killed them all. But that's just me.
On our fourth day in this ships hold where the rats dined with us, on moldy cheese and mead with cockroaches, Kimit continued to roar and scream in pain every time anyone so much as breezed by. Moving him? Almost as much entertaining as watching Charlton Heston do "Hamlet" (or one of those other Shakesperean death fests, I can't recall, but he was so bad we left at the act break).
My husband had had a stroke. A massive stroke. Everyone from the Head Doctor, nurses, Clipboard ladies, phlebotomists and one or two housekeepers, told me he was a lost cause. He would never walk again, he would only be a burden, to me, to friends (what friends? As soon as everyone heard about the stroke, skadoosh- gone) and possibly the Pope.
I disagreed. I continued doing the crossword puzzles and talking to him and crawling into the bed with him.
The RN's and CNA (certified nurse assistants) and doctors and everyone else laughed and pointed, thinking I couldn't hear them, not knowing about my bat-hearing ability (I admit, though, that my X-Ray vision was on the fritz so I couldn't see them actually pointing, but I know they did. Just know it), declaiming to all and sundry that the "nutjob in room 14 actually thinks her husband is going to get well and walk! har har har!"
This went on for three days. On the fourth day, a man came to our room. He was very tall and spoke with an East Indian accent and wore no ID badge and did not introduce himself to me but picked up K's chart and began writing an order.
(Remember that I had a neighbor who did medical billing? I had spoken to him about the "rehab facilities" and nursing homes in our area, and he said if I could get him moved to Home Hospital's Physical Therapy floor it would be the best place ANYWHERE, and the very last one, Hertitage Health care, the one he said he would not send his worst enemy to... yep. You're ahead of me.)
I was at that MD's side so fast it could have been tesseracting. I saw that he had written "pt. to be moved to Heritage Health Care in the morning."
I was now going to morph into Eleanor of Aquitaine and The Hulk. Eleanor first: I tried charm: "I've heard such good things about Home Hospital, and I hear from the nurses here that you are very powerful and can send my husband anywhere if you order it, so please, please send him there, you big handsome mayun!!"
He looked down at me as if I had been something he picked up on the bottom of his shoe at a landfill. He continued writing, and was about to sign it, when The Hulk appeared, snatched the pen out of his hand, threw it into another dimension, and roared, "AND IF YOU DO NOT SEND HIM TO HOME HEALTH I WILL LAUNCH YOU INTO THE STRATOSPHERE." Or words to that effect.I was huffing and puffing and purple and really, really, really not a Happy Hulk.
He believed me. He scratched out his order, and wrote a new one, sending Kimit to Home Hospital, fourth floor Physical Therapy.
Effective: now.
And I thought I could tesseract! EMT's were there within 20 minutes, had K packed up like a giant burrito and off they went in their bright shiny ambulance, me following in my car, and we went directly to...
The Chocolate Factory. It was exactly, precisely, like going from living in a Port-A-San to the Taj Mahal (and yes, I do know what the Taj Mahal was built for).
But we'd done it. We were in a clean, professional, compassionate place. He was put into a room of his own (and yes, they didn't have to be told he was a three person lift, they just looked at his 6'4" 340 pound body and called in the three brawniest people in the place to get him comfited in the bed), and I sat down, in a very comfy chair on his left side, and let out a sigh that is still circling the globe.
But.... dammit, that rat brain whispered to me: "But for how long?"
We'd see.