“Someone get me a stand to hang this saline bag!”
“This is going to pinch.”
“Can you rate your pain for me on a scale of one to ten?”
All around me is a flurry of activity and urgency, but I stare at the steadydrip, drip, dripof the saline into the thin tube that snakes down to the needle that has been placed into my vein. I watch those drops of saline and think of rain.
The rain I danced in seven years ago.
The rain that Talia got left in.
“Whereisshe? Where’s my daughter?”
I hear my mom’s frantic voice seconds before she rounds the corner into the trauma bay.
When she sees me lying on the gurney, attached to all the things, but my eyes open, she crumples, her shoulders shaking.
“Mom,” I say, but my voice is muffled by the oxygen mask. “I’m sorry.”
“Whathappened?” Now that she’s ascertained I’m awake and alert, she turns on the medical staff, practically yelling.
“She’s experiencing significant arrhythmias, including runs of PVCs, along with chest pain and intermittent loss of consciousness,” the doctor tells my mom, his voice calm but serious. “We’re running every test we can to find the cause. We’re just waiting on lab results and an echocardiogram room to become available. Once it is, we’ll take her straight up.”
He gestures toward a chair in the corner. “If you don’t mind waiting there, we’ll update you as soon as we know more.”
My mom’s face is bloodless as she reluctantly does as he asks.
Another PVC hits, making me gasp.
“Olivia, is it? We’re going to give you some morphine for the pain, okay? It should start to help right away.”
They push the morphine through my IV. My mouth fills with the strange metallic taste that always accompanies anything injected straight into my veins. The drug begins to take immediate effect, and as I’m falling into it, there’s another commotion out in the hallway.
“She’s oursister. Haven’t you ever heard of adoption?” Talia’s shout is accompanied by the click of Lou’s heels, and suddenly, they’re both there, pale and terrified and shaky and furious.
A CNA trots behind them, feebly protesting that only immediate family can be in the trauma bay.
“These are my daughters!” my mom immediately declares, jumping to her feet. “Are you keeping them from theirsister?” She glares icily at the man, daring him to question her.
He stutters something about “not knowing for sure,” and, “I’m so sorry,” and then he’s gone.
Talia rushes to one side of my bed while Lou hurries to the other—but not before grabbing my mom in a swift hug and thanking her profusely.
Then they both have one of my hands, talking over each other.
“Talia called me. She said you collapsed—”
“You can’t keep doing this!”
“She said it felt like forever before the ambulance got there—”
“Are you okay? What’s happening?”
“Is it your heart?”
“Girls!” My mom’s voice lifts over theirs, and they finally—mercifully, for my headache—go quiet. “We don’t know much yet. They’ve given her some morphine while we’re waiting on labs, and they’re going to take her up for an echocardiogram as soon as the room is available.”
Talia nods, all too familiar with all the medical jargon, while Lou’s forehead scrunches.
