As I followed behind the Ambulance I began to freak out. Watching the red lights spin as the snow pelted the Ambulance put me in a trance.
The blizzard was raging and I was able to go about 45 km/h with the Ambulance in my sight. The whole incident crushed me like a sledgehammer. I was terrified. The seizure replayed in my head millions of times a second.
After the hellride, the Ambulance pulled into Emergency in Dauphin. The Paramedics unloaded Heather and whisked her into the Hospital with me right behind.
Emergency staff began to strip her down. I remember her Magrudergrinder T Shirt being cut off with a pair of scissors and thinking how fucking mad Heather will be when she wakes up that they destroyed the Magrudergrinder Shirt. Other Medical staff were busy looking for veins to tap and getting machines hooked up to her.
I began to talk to the staff. I began to tell them the whole story, about how I had taken her here weeks before, the swollen neck, the migraines. The Nurse cut me off in mid sentence and asked me to go to the Admissions area to check in..."What the fuck?" I said. "Are you fucking kidding me? Go to Admissions while Heather is dying?"
My mind was racing a million miles an hour. "You must pick your battles" I told myself. "Not here....not now."
I ran to Admitting and rattled of Heather's details and then ran straight back to the Emergency Room. I arrived and things seemed to have escalated even further. I studied the faces of the staff. The look of total horror on their faces was hard for them to hide. A Doctor, I think it was Dr. Penrose, came up to me and told me that Heather was being prepped for a CT Scan and that they would be wheeling her away momentarily. I looked over the Doctors shoulder and saw Heather unconscious, several Nurses scrambling with hoses and needles.
The Doctor took me down the hall to a room I hadn't seen before. I had a few Hospital stays there as did Heather and her Mom, christ I've worked many shifts with Corrections there, I knew my way around the place. I have never seen this room before. The door was totally invisible to me when closed.
The Doctor opened the door. Inside the room was a couch and a chair. I sat down and the Doctor said he would be back in a minute with the results of the scan.
I sat there completely beside myself. I was totally terrified. I knew that this was serious...life and death serious. Alison arrived not long after. I remember how momentarily comforting it was to see her there.
The Doctor came back and stood at the doorway, his face at this particular moment in time, the expression of it, the colour a pasty white. His eyes seemed to try and avoid mine.
Alison asked the Doctor "So...whats happened?" The Doctor just came out with it. " Heather has a massive bleed in her brain. She has a ruptured aneurysm of the worst kind...Grade 5." "How do you know for sure?" Alison asked. "Because we cant see her brain, on the CT its totally black."
-more to follow-
PUTRESCENCE @ HEATHERFEST
