Page 88 of A Really Bad Idea

“I work there. Why not just tell me?”

“Because you worry too much,” she explains.

“Hi, pot. Meet kettle. And, yes, I worry. You’re my mom. I love you. And, if you are going into heart failure, then that’s something I need to know.”

“Heart failure?” Dad jumps in surprise.

“Grandma’s heart is failing?” Aiden drops his apple in devastation. It rolls off the counter and falls to the floor.

“No. That’s just a term for when your heart isn’t working well. Why don’t you and I go set the table?” Beth takes Aiden off the stool and escorts him into the dining room with her comforting hands on his shoulders. She curves her brows inward as she looks back at us.

Mom flinches for a moment. Whatever she’s working through in her body right now is not going away.

I keep my voice calm yet firm. “Go to the hospital.”

“They will make me stay, and I’m not ready to be poked and prodded.” Her tone is obstinate.

She has mentioned that she’s tired, and if Dad is saying she’s had these episodes a lot, it means I’ve been lax on monitoring my mother’s health. I’ve been so consumed with Christian and having his baby that I selfishly ignored the signs.

A pang of inner guilt swells inside of me, but I brush it aside. Now is not about me. I have to get my mom to the hospital.

“What’s going on?” Brian bellows as he walks into the room, picking the apple off the floor. “Beth just told me to come in here.”

I give my mom a stern look. She knows damn well that, if she thinks I’m a pain in the ass, Brian can be an even bigger one.

She closes her eyes and concedes, “Fine. I’ll go after dinner. If they’re going to keep me in the hospital, I will have a good meal first. Now, get me the salt because Beth’s sauce is tasteless.”

St. Xavier’s emergency room is busy for a Sunday. We check Mom in and sit in triage for an hour while we wait for a bed to open. The only one they have is in a hallway, but it’s enough to get her started on an IV.

“Why do you keep saying Mom’s in heart failure? She looks fine,” Brian asks when we step out of the way as a nurse takes her vitals.

“It doesn’t mean her ticker’s stopped beating. Because of her valve, her heart can’t pump blood as well as it should, so it’s working overtime, getting weaker. The kidneys react by causing the body to hold on to water,” I explain. “It’s common with valve disease.”

With his mouth pinched, he takes in the information and doesn’t say or ask anything else. I know it’s killing him to rely on other people for their expertise. If this were a finance issue, he’d have the facts and figures laid out for the next year. Because he knows little about the human body, he has to just take what information he’s given. I bet he spends the rest of the evening on the web, doing research.

“What is taking so long to get her a room?” he asks, looking at his watch with clenched teeth. “Can’t Thomas or Christian get her upstairs faster than this?”

I agree; it’s frustrating as hell. But I know the criteria for admittance in this hospital. “She’s not in immediate distress. They’re going to take someone having a heart attack in first, and they won’t kick a critical patient out of bed just to get Mom up there. Don’t worry. A bed will open, and she’ll be more comfortable.”

It’s two more hours until Thomas arrives, saying he secured Mom a room upstairs in the coronary care unit. Thank God because, with Brian pacing and the lack of oxygen and windows in this place, I was getting motion sickness.

“We’ll keep you on an IV of a diuretic called Lasix to get the water out. In the morning, we’ll run tests and see what’s going on,” Thomas says from the foot of Mom’s bed.

She just nods as he talks to her about her symptoms over the last few days and explains what she can expect in the ones ahead.

Brian seems annoyed that we went through all this trouble to get Mom up here, only to have her sit and wait. He wants action and answers. I kind of understand and am grateful that he just stands here and grunts instead of saying anything rude to Thomas or the nurses on staff.

When Thomas leaves, Dad unpacks Mom’s hospital bag, putting her books and magazines in the top drawer and slipping a bag of candy in the second.

Brian and I are sitting on the heating vent with our backs against the window, being nothing but flies on the wall, watching and worrying. As much as I hate to say it, being a nurse leaves me unprepared for the emotional toll of my mother being in the cardiac care unit of a heart institute.

I’m chewing on my thumbnail when Christian walks in. My nerves vary when he appears—a little more relaxed because I know he’ll take care of my mom and heightened as I remember what we did the last time we were together.

I might never look at my kitchen counter the same way again.

He’s in slacks and a button-down. You’d only know he was a doctor from the hospital ID badge he’s wearing around his neck.

“I heard we had a new patient up here,” he says with a broad smile, not showing a lick of concern.