Poem: The Shifts

The Shifts

The rule was that we would not leave her alone
Someone would always be there
My mother would not
Could not
Die unless she was alone
So we took shifts
Sitting with her sleeping shell
Listening to the respirator
Inflate
And deflate her chest
Listening to the alarms
When her breath
Or her heart
Failed to make the next cycle
At the right time
The room was alternately too hot or too cold
And my intense
Driving
Fear of hospitals
Left me with a persistent dread
I could not have escaped
Even in better circumstances
As the days carried forward
And we worked harder and harder
To fit our lives
Back into the schedule
Most of the shifts
Were spent alone
I got to know the nurses and the techs
And the Spanish only cleaning woman
Who communicated hope
As best she could
The shifts would continue
For days
Then weeks
Then months
As we kept in motion
To keep our word

Poem: Minor Delusions

Minor Delusions

At some point
My mother started to confuse
The hospital with home
Thinking the view from the window
Was the backyard
And not the parking lot
I would gently remind her
That we were in the hospital
And the nurses were not in the next room
But patrolling an overcrowded hall
Which is why they took so long
To respond to her pressing
The button
Sometimes the Xanax
And other drugs fogged her mind
And she would forget who people were
But only in conversation
Not in person
She always knew who I was
And that was somewhat comforting

– J.C. Hewitt

Poem: The Second Hospital

The Second Hospital

The first hospital was inadequate
Was ill-equipped
Was too specialized
And so we had to move
To the big mega-hospitalopolis
Designed to care for any
And every problem
With equal disdain
For each and every person
Who walked through its doors
The new hospital was not designed for family
Or for visitors
Or for anything besides
Treating the body
The spirit is an issue
Of little or no concern
Outside of the chapel
We were not put off that easily though
It is amazing what you can get
If you just never stop pushing
And so we persevered
In hard plastic chairs
Continuing our shifts
Onward and onward
We wore gloves and gowns
And sat behind sliding glass doors
We fought security
And a general feeling
That we were just in the way
I was always making up for lost time
Time spent in Phoenix
In hotel rooms
In cubicles
Removed from the action
My sisters
On town
Took the nights
And my father took the days
And I added what I could
My mother would improve
Then fall back
At first we hoped to have her home by Christmas
But the days just kept passing
They were supposed to get her off the respirator
They were supposed to get her physical therapy
They were supposed to offer the care
She couldn’t get before
But all of that was as illusory as it gets
At best they were able
To fight of the MRSA
And keep up her dialysis
But as December moved into January
The only thing helping her
Was time
Her body started the slow path towards correction
Fevers came and went
Chills came and went
Some days she was yellow
When her liver couldn’t keep up
Some days she was bloated
Because she couldn’t digest the food
All progress was incremental
But we progressed toward something
Toward some point of recovery
She began to talk
Forcing her voice around the trachea
And that was almost more frustrating
Because we couldn’t understand her
And she so wanted to be heard

– J.C. Hewitt

Poem: Snow Together

Snow Together

One night at the hospital
I watched it snow
Which in Tucson is a next to never event
I felt bad because my mother
Couldn’t see it through the reflection
Of the lights in the room
And I had to describe it for her
Falling down and collecting on the windshield
Of my
And every other
Car out there
Light snowfall
Are natural attractions
But in the room it only made
My mother grow restless
And I eventually returned to the television
Because that was something she could see
And feel somewhat comforted by

– J.C. Hewitt

Poem: Awake and Paralyzed

Awake and Paralyzed

Her brain awoke in advance of her body
I don’t know how long she was awake
Before she could open he eyes
But that was the extent of it
For quite a wile
That and a small curl of the toes
A nervous twitch for the feet
She was trapped
Awake in her unmoving body
She stared at me and I
Stared back
Smiled as much as I could
And held her hand
I sat with my head on the bed
Feeling a kind of relief
Filled with the tension of knowing
That the first steps
Of a very hard climb
Had been taken
I tried to think of things to say
Conversations to have
Without her talking
I gave the sports report
And read a little from the paper
But in the end I had
Very little to say
And felt the frustration
Of ineffectiveness
I would ask what she thought about
During those times
But I don’t want to touch that feeling
That fear
Too deeply
Whatever she felt at the time
Is probably long gone now
As the brain washes away
What it cannot handle

– J.C. Hewitt

Poem: Friday Night in ICU

Friday Night in ICU

 

The scabs in the corner of her mouth

Are staring to heal

Underneath the thick white topical cream

When her eyes focus she sees me

I smile and she raises her eyebrows

The trachea tube in her neck

Moves slightly with each breath

And condensation collects inside

Her heart rate hovers at seventy

Her blood pressure is high but steady

No major peaks or valleys tonight

Her kidneys are back at work now

I watch her Foley bag fill

Calculating the difference over the past hour

She is fifty pounds of water lighter

Than just two weeks ago

When she looked like a pale Samoan

Her eyes too swollen for the nurse to force open

Now she looks something like herself

As she stares at me staring at her

Until she tires and closes her eyes

Sleeping for the rest of my time here

I keep watching

 

– J.C. Hewitt

Poem: Nurse Sunshine and the Drama Queen

Nurse Sunshine and the Drama Queen

We called her Nurse Sunshine
She had all the skills
And the thorough immersion
In her job
That you look for
But she didn’t have a single
Positive
Thing to say

Between her and my idiot
Drama queen
Busybody
Cousin
My own heart was starting to pound
False optimism
Is all I needed
And they weren’t even willing to give that
As my mother’s weight rose
With each passing hour

Nurse Sunshine panicked
Over every bad sign
And took pains to remind us
That brain damage was
Most definitely
A possibility

My cousin hung on every word
Repeated it roundly
Flush with the energy of a crisis
She was only tangentially involved in
Keeping up her constant
Dissonant conversation
Wanting me to feed her gossipy hysteria

I have never
Ever
Wanted to strangle a person
As much as I did that day
As we tried to cling
To every positive sign
The two of them tag teamed
To remind us
That she had no chance
Or at least
Practically no chance

Poem — Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

My wife and I spent Thanksgiving
In the kitchen with my Dad
Snacking on the food her family had provided
Talking about options
And the inevitable
Threatened
She needed to go to a new hospital
The original was ill equipped
For this long and intense a stay
Between MRSA
And a tracheotomy
And the dangers
Of a slow awakening
From a long coma
She was going to have to move
And we dreaded it
The new hospital
With its higher level of care
And pool of specialists
Could get her out of the woods
But it wasn’t made for families
And promises
Access would be strictly controlled
The issue now
Was time
How long would it take
To get her stable enough
To move
The issues did not
Make the turkey go down easy
And the afternoon was long and blank
With the sadness
Of the empty holiday
My mother was not awake for

– J.C. Hewitt

Poem — The First Day

The First Day

The waiting room was crowded
With relative of all kinds
The ones I liked
The ones I didn’t
And we sat there together
Waiting for word
She was in surgery again
The third time in three days I was told
They were taking out her left colon
Sitting there
Things didn’t seem quite as bad
Surgery was better
Than nothing to do but wait
And the doctor nicely explained
That as long as the bowel was intact
She was still worth saving
But without that there was no quality
Left to her life
And no reason to go
Any further
She came out of the surgery
And the report was
Relatively good
Relatively positive
I went back with my father
To see her
Feeling as if maybe
I had overreacted
To all the thoughts of tragedy going through my mind
As we stood next to her unconscious body
We watched as her heart
Beat slower and slower
Until she crashed
We weren’t in the room five minutes
Before her heart stopped beating
And we were sent out
As seven doctors and nurses
Went to work to keep her alive
We went back to the waiting room
And in broad
Hesitant strokes
Discussed where she should be buried
Who should be called
What could be done
It was the first time we had had
To talk about these things
For my Mother
Since it was my father
Who had born the brunt of so many operations
And so many expectations
That he would not make it
This time
But my father had always pulled through
In short order
And had never come this close
Relatives shuffled in and out
Food shuffled in and out
Every few hours the doctor came
And told us not to lose hope
But I didn’t see her again that day

When I went home to sleep
Sometime past midnight
I did not expect her to be alive
When I got back

– J.C. Hewitt

Poem — Driving Down

Driving Down

I wasn’t sure if it was the phone
Cutting in and out
Or my father
Unable to complete a sentence
But I knew
It took me three minutes
To get out of the building
Into my car
And onto I-10
For the long blank space
Between Phoenix and Tucson
It my mind it was already over
She would be gone before I got there
I felt it
I expected it
And I tried to tell myself
That I could deal with it
That these things happen
And people die

It was still hot
The first days of November
And my car had no air conditioning
So I drove with the wind
Blowing at my sweat
Through the rolled down windows
I was hungry
You are supposed to lose your appetite
In a crisis but I wanted food
And felt guilty about wanting it
But I needed gas anyway
So I got a corn dog at the Flying J
Staring at the people around me
Moving through their day
Without any crisis in mind
It scared me a little
That I was still functioning
I hadn’t fallen apart
I called my wife from the road
She asked how things were and I said
Bad

– J.C. Hewitt

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