A.A.A. #3

W.’s wife and A.E., his middle daughter, arrived early the morning after the surgery. They had been there the night before at the memorial hospital. The nurses wheeled W. down the hallway, ruptured artery sputtering, and then urged them to say their goodbyes. She coughed up the words to her father, choking on them as they came from her throat; her childhood had been one of difficulty. She kissed his hand, then held it as long as she could, until the nurses wheeled him too far away and he slipped from her grasp.

When she walked into his hospital room the next morning, she thought he was dead. It was difficult to see him as alive with shut eyes and sallow skin. When he awoke, he begged for water. It was not dehydration—he was hooked up to an I.V. with fluids—but post-surgery his mouth had dried out, and his stomach had been emptied. The nurse handed her a sponge the size of a quarter. “Dip this in, and squeeze out droplets into his mouth.” She did so, and watched as three drops of water fell onto his parched tongue. He begged her for more, and she quietly dipped the sponge and gave him three more drops against the nurse’s wishes. He choked on the drops of water, struggling to swallow them. 

She remembered the chief surgeon warning her that he wasn’t out of the woods yet. If he survived the first 24 to 48 hours, he would likely make it. Even then, survivors of the surgery only had a life expectancy of two years. W. begged her for more water, and she could not give it to him. That’s it, she thought as he coughed up the few droplets of water. Only 48 hours more.