Twenty-One and Invincible

I’d woken up for the second time that day in a bed that I didn’t recognize. Everyone talks about how blindingly white everything in hospitals are, but the room I was in wasn’t. The walls had a light yellow wallpaper that had tiny flower detailing in it and the sheets they gave me were tinted a baby blue.

I shifted to sit up and felt an immediate stinging in my feet. I threw the blankets away and looked down. They were bandaged pretty heavily and I could see the faintest dots of coagulated blood seeping through.

A nurse came in with some food.

“Oh, you’re awake,” she smiled.’’

I nodded. “What happened?”

The nurse looked at my charts. “You don’t remember anything?”

I bit my lip. “I remember my grandpa collapsing on the ground and a lot of blood and broken glass. But everything else is a blur.”

She nodded and let a tiny sigh escape her lips, then gave me a soft smile. “Yeah. That sounds about right.”

I started to tremble again. “Is he okay?”

The nurse didn’t say anything. “Do you want to go see him?”

I gave a faint nod. She left the room briefly and came back with a wheelchair. “You need to stay off your feet,” she reminded me when I looked confused. “This will help with the recovery.”

I nodded again and she helped me get out of bed and into the chair. She wheeled me out of my room and took me to a room in a different part of the hospital. The hallways confused me, winding in all sorts of directions with people in different coloured scrubs filtering in and out.

We finally stopped at one of the rooms and the nurse opened the door and held it open, allowing me to wheel myself in. Grandma was slouched in a chair in the corner of the room, sleeping, still in her nightgown with her coat abandoned on the seat next to her. Grandpa was lying in bed, his eyes closed with an oxygen tube attached to his nose and an IV stuck in his arm.

I looked up at the nurse. “Is he okay?”

“He has pulmonary edema,” she told me quietly. “He’s been sick for a very long time. Did he not tell you?”

I felt my eyes well with tears. “N-No,” I mumbled, trying to keep myself composed. “He never said anything.”

“We’re going to do everything we can to get him better,” she promised. “You have my word on that.”

I smiled a little. “Thank you.”

She returned it, her hand placed on my shoulder. “Do you want some privacy with your grandparents?”

I nodded. “Yes please.”

The nurse moved my chair a little closer to Grandpa’s bed and then quietly left the room, closing the door behind her. I wheeled myself right next to Grandpa’s bed and let the tears slip from my eyes and fall down my face and onto my lap. I reached out and held onto his large, wrinkled hand. He was still warm.

It kept everything in me not to have a mental breakdown right inside that hospital room. My grandpa, the man I’d looked up to as my father figure for seventeen years, the one who was known for being proud and strong and indestructible, was lying in a hospital bed looking frail, beaten and weak.

Grandma shifted in her seat, slowly waking up. She smiled at me and stretched her arms in the air. “How are you feeling, sweetie?”

“Did you know?” I asked quietly. “Did you know about him being so sick?”

Grandma sighed. “Carmen...”

“Did you know about this?” I demanded in a hissed whisper. “Yes or no.”

She hesitated. “Yes.”

My head went limp and I was overcome with sobs. “How could you not tell me?” I managed to say through the tears. “How?”

Grandma came over to me and placed her hands on my shoulders, kneeling beside me. I didn’t fight it. I was just exhausted.

“Honey, how could I? After what happened to your mother and father...you’ve had to deal with loss since you were born. Your grandfather and I didn’t want to scare you. But we’re not exactly young anymore, Carmen. He’s been sick for a long time. It’s just gotten worse over the last couple of years. It’s not something we wanted to hide from you, but you were always so busy and stressed, we didn’t want to add on to that.”

I shook my head and lifted my head to look at Grandma. “You should have told me. This isn’t something trivial that you can just overlook, this is Grandpa’s health! He has pulmonary edema! He could die! If you had told me I could have helped him get better...now he could die at any second! How could you do this to me? You two are the only family I have left!”

Grandma wrapped her arms around my shoulders in a hug and let me cry.

“I can’t lose you guys too,” I sniffled once I’d managed to calm myself down.

Grandma lifted my chin and gave me a sad smile. “When it’s our time, Carmen, it’s our time.”

“But what if it’s not Grandpa’s time?”

Still smiling, a tear rolled down her cheek. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

* * * *

After a few hours, I was sent back to my hospital room to rest some more. Visiting hours were almost over and so they sent Grandma home even though she wanted to stay. She decided it would be best to clean up after what had happened in the kitchen and get some of my things from the house to make me more comfortable.

I was trying to get some rest, lying in bed starting up at the ceiling tiles. Physically, I was exhausted, but my mind wouldn’t stop racing. I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to know if Grandpa was okay.

There was a sudden knock at my door and I turned to see who it was. My mouth opened slightly as Patrick walked in looking like a mess. He just looked completely disheveled. His hair was wet, as if he had just taken a shower. He must have just had practice.

“Hi,” he said with a small smile. “Are you okay?”

I stared back up at the ceiling and let out a shaky breath. “No.”

I didn’t want Patrick to see me cry so I turned away from him and covered my face with my hands as I wept. I thought I’d gotten rid of all the tears, but evidently I was wrong. I heard the door close and his feet shuffling across the floor to my bed.

I could feel the right side of the bed sinking slightly and a pair of arms wrap themselves around me.

“It’s alright,” he said in a quiet voice, his grip on me tightening every time a choked sob would escape my lips. “Everything will work out in the end.”

I turned to face him, my eyes and nose red. He lifted a hand and wiped away the tears from my eyes.

“How do you know that?” I asked. “How do you know everything is going to be okay?”

Patrick kissed me on the forehead. “I said everything would work out,” he repeated, sadness laced in his voice. “I never said it would be okay.”