Part Two

I sensed the nurses come in and out of my room. I knew it was serious by the way the acted, their silent manner. I even knew one of them from church. There was nothing they could do. I would be taken to the near-by clinic to see the doctor, the only one on the island, and he would decide what to do.

One friend stayed with the kids, they were still unaware, and the other picked me up and carried me to his van while one of the nurses sat beside me with an oxygen tank. It was old, like she had been dragging that sucker around to emergencies for years. It was part of her job detail surely, but it looked like it had never been used, just all banged up, like they bought it from the MASH prop house.

A few years before a very good friend had died on the island from an asthma attack. The consensus about her death was that the medication they had in the island clinic was old, and while she waited for a nighttime emergency flight to be arranged, she tragically died. I had actually held a fundraiser in her name to equip the island ambulance sufficiently.

My mind was lucid, while I thought of these things. I lay in the fluorescent light of the empty clinic, a converted house, and tried to respond to the doctor. He was Indian and I had trouble understanding him, I thought it was his accent, but now I’m not sure. I began to throw up.

They informed me that a flight was coming to take me to the hospital in Nassau. It would arrive in an hour. There was nothing they could do for me there. I made that plane and tried to feel relieved about that. The interior was gutted and they lay the stretcher directly on the metal floor. I felt really out of it. My friend and that same oxygen tank nurse came with me.

When we landed in Nassau and the ambulance was waiting there. It was the first moment I was aware of time, sunrise, the sky was so beautiful. They rushed me into the waiting vehicle, but I remember thinking I just wanted to look at that gorgeous, streaked sky a bit longer.

When I got to the hospital it was a rush of tests. I was slid in and out of machines, I was poked and prodded, made to swallow horrid tasting things. I really didn’t care, I just felt numb. I was told my mother was on her way from Toronto. I thought, “So quickly? But it can’t be that serious for her to come all this way.” It was serious and she was there by 11AM.