“What?”
“Her urea is much too high. We need to start dialysis.”
“Dialysis? When?” I asked, feeling as if the sky had darkened and fallen in on me without warning. Images from that first on-call night in Eilat flooded my mind. Lily. Dialysis. Eilat. Dialysis. Cardiac arrest. I closed my eyes. I wanted those awful images to vanish forever.
“Today. The boss will come this evening and talk to you,” she said.
“Are you sure?” I pulled myself together.
“Yes. Before he left, we discussed Lily. We’ll start with peritoneal dialysis.”
“I see. So it’s come to dialysis…” I felt like we were spinning out of control, and I tried to swallow a lump in my throat that wasn’t there.
I knew dialysis had already been considered earlier, and I was surprised they hadn’t prepared a shunt, which would have eased the process. I understood that if I even dared raise the subject, the deputy’s cruel reply would be the same: “Be her husband!”
It turned out her condition dictated the pace.
“Only if there’s no improvement with peritoneal dialysis will we try another type. Her condition isn’t good. It’s deteriorating,” the deputy continued.
I didn’t respond. My thoughts were spinning.
As soon as she left, a torrent of tears burst from me, accompanied by uncontrollable sobbing. Just four years earlier I had sat in this room as a young doctor, hoping to be accepted as a resident. Here I met Lily. And now, four years later, she was lying here again as a patient, and I was her husband, sobbing.
“She mustn’t see you like this,” the deputy said, reappearing suddenly and surprising me.
“I know. Who will tell her what’s coming?”
“The boss. They have a special bond, far beyond doctor and patient,” she replied. I knew that, but I couldn’t respond. She left me alone in the room. Only when I had no more tears left did I rise heavily and wash my face. I didn’t want Lily to know I had been crying. As I walked to her room, I thought about the optimism we had lived with and the uncertain future ahead of us. I worried about what Lily was about to go through, but I found no answer. I was utterly confused.
When I entered Lily’s room, the boss was already there. He explained to her what the coming days and nights would look like. He spoke about starting with peritoneal dialysis. Although he knew standard dialysis would help much more, he decided to try peritoneal first. As he spoke, he held both of her hands in his and stroked them. I stared at them, still struggling to absorb the blow.
“Go, eat something – you haven’t eaten all day,” Lily told me when two doctors with special equipment entered her room.
“All right,” I said and closed the door behind me.
Who can eat in such a situation? I wondered sadly.
They locked the door. A short time later, her cries of painreached me, piercing the stone walls and thick wooden door like a drill.
It seemed she was undergoing a procedure far more painful than the burning she had felt with the so-called miracle drug. If only they had prepared her earlier for regular dialysis, this torment could have been avoided.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” one of the doctors said when he opened the lock, trying to calm me.
“You can come in.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, half crying, half laughing. “It hurt so terribly.”
“Is it over?”
“Yes.”
“Look,” she said, lifting the thin blanket to show me the dialysis tubing. “The pain is gone.” She wiped away her tears and smiled a radiant smile.
“Didn’t they anesthetize the area?” I asked angrily, frustrated by her suffering.
“Apparently the anesthesia didn’t take very well.”
“How long will you need to be like this?”
