I take note of the name embroidered on her white lab coat. Dr. Tenner Mason. I like her and her smooth sidestep of Ash’s demands.
“Your grandmother probably has a couple of hours remaining here in the ER before a bed opens up upstairs, but we will do our best.”
“My apologies,” Ash backs down. I make a mental note to suggest that after putting Ash in his place, Dr. Mason addbadassbelow her name. “I just want to make sure my grandmother is resting comfortably and is well taken care of.”
Dr. Mason turns to me, I assume done with Ash’s patronization. “I was right there with the stroke team to meet Mrs. Eisenberg when she arrived. We have scanned her head for blood clots, and I am happy to report that there were none present in the brain. We gave her tPA, a clot-busting medication.”
“Why did you give her tPA? I read online that not all stroke victims are given tPA,” Ash cuts in, not allowing himself to be ignored.
“Well, while WebMD is a source concerned families often cite, I can assure you the stroke team is staffed by exceptional doctors, led by me. I believed it was in your grandmother’s best interest to have tPA, so that’s what we did.” Dr. Mason looks back and forth between me and Ash, making sure we are all on the same page. “Because of her age and the weakness presenting on her left side, when a bed opens up in the ICU, we will be taking her up there to be monitored overnight.”
“And if all goes well in the ICU?” It’s my turn to cut in, hoping there is more good news. “Being transferred to the ICU sounds scary.”
“I promise you, admission to the ICU is protocol for all stroke patients, particularly more senior ones. Totally normal given the circumstances.” Ash and I nod in unison to Dr. Badass Mason. “For now, I will be back every hour or so to check on your grandmother up until the moment she’s transferred. This is a teaching hospital, so I will have an eager cadre of residents there to provide optimal care for your grandmother as well.”
Sensing our need for more, Dr. Mason continues, “And, if there is no delayed bleeding overnight, she’s been checked out by theneuro-intensive doctors, has had a round of sessions with the therapy team, and another round of scans comes back clear, Mrs. Eisenberg will be transferred out of the ICU and onto the intensive therapy floor. She may be able to go home sooner than we think, but I would plan on a week or two stay to be on the safe side.”
Ash and I can’t help but grin across Mrs. Eisenberg at one another. That all sounds less doomsday and more standard protocol.
“We are, however, a long way from that determination,” Dr. Mason warns, but with a warmth meant to comfort. “Next step, I will see the two of you within the hour.”
After watching Dr. Mason slip through the curtains, Ash turns to me. “So, what exactly happened?” His smile drops, and his question sounds like an accusation.
“I believe Dr. Mason just laid it out pretty clearly: your grandmother had a stroke,” I restate. “And she’s lucky to be alive, thanks to me,” I finish under my breath. Ash looks at me blankly, like I’m speaking a language he’s never heard. Was he not listening to Dr. Mason’s succinct review of his grandmother? She is one fit woman for her age. A stroke would most likely have been the end for most patients in her peer group. The recovery will be long, but let’s rejoice that Mrs. Eisenberg bought herself another spin around the sun.
The patient on the other side of the thin curtain interrupts our conversation with a loud, slurred announcement to the entire emergency room that his balls are en fuego. His friends, crowded around his bed, can’t get through the retelling of the story without falling into raucous laughter, high fives, and bro-ish backslaps. What I pick up is that it’s the twenty-first birthday of Fiery Ball Boy. When the Stanford basketball game let out, he went to hop a metal bike rack that was in the direct path back to his fraternity and an awaiting tapped keg. As his friends cheered him on, his boozy, blurred mind misread the height of the rack. As a result, the birthday boy’s balls crashed onto a metal bar with a force that now has him begging the doctor, in a feverish pitch, to save his testicles. I can’t tell if the doctor is trying to teach these drunkardsa lesson by scaring the semen out of them or not, but it’s sounding like the birthday boy’s wish may not come true.
Given the conversation next door, I’m too embarrassed to look over at Ash. When I finally sneak a peek in his direction, I spy Ash fighting a chuckle at our neighbor’s expense. I start to crack up too. We look at Mrs. Eisenberg, immobile in bed, wanting her to join in on the absurdity of the situation playing out on the other side of the curtain. I know if she could properly speak, she would have some choice commentary. Probably something along the lines ofstupid is as stupid does.
For something to do until the doctor returns, I reach into my canvas tote to retrieve a jar of my cream to moisten Mrs. Eisenberg’s hands. Ash interrupts my plan. “No. I mean, what happened after the Cracked Cup? Why didn’t you call me?” Ash asks and clears his throat to get his laughter under control. I return the jar of lotion to my bag, giving myself a moment to figure out if Ash is actually hitting on me, however ineptly, just as Zwena suspected.
“People pay a lot of money for my advice when it comes to getting their companies off the ground,” Ash shares with too much self-assurance. “I was offering it to you for free.” Now that I know Ash has a wife, his flirtatious offer of help at the Cracked Cup feels laced with an ulterior motive that he must assume I’ll agree to. “You obviously kept my number.”
I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. It’s true. I have a husband and he has a wife and yet, I did keep his number.
“I’m going to the nurse’s station to find out if they have any more information about when we will be moved. Then I need to make a few calls and grab a Coke. You stay with my grandmother until I get back,” Ash commands, switching from one uncomfortable topic to another, rather than asking kindly for my help.
I’m just about to retort that in exchange for being with his grandmother at the airport when she collapsed, risking being fired from my job to accompany said grandmother to the hospital, and taking notes when Dr. Mason was talking through Mrs. Eisenberg’s diagnosis, his overwhelming gratitude is in order, not his demands. That perhapsAsh should also stop at the gift shop and pick me up some flowers and maybe a teddy bear. But then, not even trying to hide it, I see Ash wipe away tears that are pooling in his eyes as he searches his grandmother’s bedside for tissues.Great, now I feel like the arrogant ass.
“I mean”—he softens—“could you please stay with my grandmother until I get back? I know if she opens her eyes, she will want to see a familiar face.”
I give him ayes, of coursenod.
As Ash fiddles to find the split between the curtains I say to his back, as nonchalantly as I can fake, “Calling your wife to let her know when you’ll be home?” I want to let him know that I know he’s married.
“No,” Ash answers flatly and then turns to look right at me. “I need to call my cousin, Livy. She’ll know what to pack and bring to the hospital. And then I need to let folks in my office know I won’t be coming in for a couple of weeks.”
Leave it to a man to turn the hard work of caretaking over to a woman and beat feet. “Why? Where you going?”
“I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here by my grandmother’s side.”
SUNDAY, MARCH 10
It’s 2:30 a.m., and from the 7-11 parking lot to my front door, I have managed to eat around all the blue M&M’s. That the blue ones have more preservatives than the other M&M’s colors is a falsehood I have lived by since cramming for a physics midterm my sophomore year at UCLA. Or maybe it’s a result of the first time I smoked pot and then raided the campus food truck for snacks. I can’t remember; they both occurred about the same time. Either way, I rank my M&M’s myth up there with the parable of womanhood that if you shave your legs, thicker hair will grow back, or that calories consumed in an airport don’t count. I think Dieting Donna started that urban legend.
“I’ll take the blue ones,” Simon volunteers as he exits the kitchen, surprising the exhaustion right out of me.
“Ack! Simon, what are you doing here?” I accuse, hucking a blue nugget at him.
