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

Poem — The Days Before

The Days Before

My mother danced at my sister’s wedding
Probably the first time
In a long time
We aren’t a family of dancers
Someone took a picture
And it stuck around
In her hospital room
For a long time
They put off the surgery
Until after the wedding
On purpose
And I don’t know
If that was good or bad planning
Considering what came after
I went by the house the day before
She went into the hospital
We sat around and didn’t talk much
Like most of my visits
I gave her a hug
And took off
I had to work in Phoenix the next day
I tried not to think too much about it
When you have a bad feeling
Ignoring it sometimes seems best
I carried on
Worked
Stared at the hotel walls
Thought about other things
And when I called
My dad said everything was fine
He lied but I understand

– J.C. Hewitt

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