Field Report

I'm sitting in a designated "Family Waiting Area" at the hospital where Grandpa is staying. Since I am family, and I am waiting, it seems like the appropriate place to be. There's a fireplace in the corner, currently dark, and a small collection of chairs around a cheap-looking coffee table on a greenish carpet, the kind of bland, institutional pattern one only sees in hospital waiting rooms and generic offices.

The Little Black Critter sits on a fake wood end table next to a gold-washed metal lamp. Behind me, smocked employees of indeterminate rank push large, rattling carts full of linens and unlabeled medical supplies. The occasional visitor or white-coated doctor wanders past, but otherwise the waiting area is empty save myself and my sister.

Guess there aren't any other families waiting around in this wing of the hospital.

Down a hallway and to the right, Grandpa sits in his new room. No longer considered a critical care patient, he was upgraded this morning to somewhat more pleasant accomodations, without the oxygen mask and other tangle of monitoring cords tethering him into bed. The man whom we met sitting in the chair looking out the window, however, is not Grandpa.

Not entirely.

He remembers family. He knows he's in a hospital, if prompted to tell a body where he is. But there's a glaze, a vagueness in his eyes, that can no longer be blamed on sedatives. His gaze roves the room, looking over familiar faces, and wanders back to his hands, where he picks at his bracelet, the bandage over an old IV line, the fringe of his gown or his hospital-issue blanket. The effort of thought, of focus, of stringing together meanings from words, tells in the prolonged delays between question and answer, the faint crease of his brow. He'll be better, he says, when he goes home. Is he going home today?

Not just yet, Grandpa.

But already his thoughts and his eyes wander elsewhere. To the past, to some distant cloudy place, where he watches the world float by from a chair, a source of only occasional interest. He still isn't clear on why he's here. At one time, he thought he'd had typhoid (likely connecting the word "heatstroke" to "fever.") At another, he thought his house had almost burned down... which didn't stop him from professing an interest to go back home. The home he wants to go back to, I'm afraid, no longer exists. It's the home of years gone past, a home where he was still the man he used to be, the deviser of ingenious solutions, the tinkerer, the instrument builder and lapidary hobbyist. That home was fading even before his furnace malfunctioned and landed him here. Now, it's gone forever, burned up by a 109 core temperature, total dehydration, and near death.

While he took a nap, we went to the cafeteria to grab some lunch. Thin-cut chicken fried steak with a country gravy full of more pepper than flavor, over a bland white lump of potato with a side of carrots and peas. There was talk about what to do next - where we should put him, how much needs cleaning out if we opt for the in-home care option, what the best source of reliable information would be.

By the time we'd returned to the room, Grandpa had woken. He had pulled out his IV, and was bleeding. Nurses were summoned to deal with the problem. Why had he pulled it out? No answer, save a puzzled glance at the people fluttering about him, for no reason he could readily recall.

And so my sister and I sit in the family waiting area while Mom and Dad sit with Grandpa. He's resting again, I'm told, his IV back in place. The nurses claim it's not uncommon for patients to pull lines out. Nothing to worry about.

Except the Grandpa I used to know wouldn't have done it.

In the corner of the cafe stands a large fountain, an indoor waterfall spilling into a rock pool. Beneath the rippling water, bright coins gleam against the stones, wishes cast in by patients, by family, perhaps even by staff. I should've tossed my own coin in to join them, but what I'm wishing for is beyond a penny's power to buy.