Benny Jay: A Day At The Hospital

I’m sitting with my wife, father, and sister in the visitor’s room at the hospital waiting for the surgeon to emerge from the operating room and tell us about my mom.

She’s having a heart operation. Coincidentally, the same procedure Milo went through six months ago. You know, where they cracked him open like a lobster, as he so delicately put it.

My sister’s doing a crossword puzzle. She employs a strategy I can only describe as free association – whatever pops into her mind, she writes. In pen, no less. If it’s wrong, scratch it out. What the hell – it’s only a puzzle. I’m just the opposite. Cautious. Careful. Write in pencil in case of mistake. Like I’m taking a test.

So you can see, it’s probably not a good idea that we do these puzzles together….

“What’s a play by Ibsen?” she asks me.

“How many letters?”

“Eleven….”

“Ugh….”

“Hedda Gabler,” she says.

“Sounds good — but make sure it fits before you….”

Too late, she writes it in.

Seconds pass. “Uh-oh,” she says. “I think it’s A Doll’s House….”

“I told you to wait….”

“Shut up….”

Like I was telling you….

She returns to the puzzle. My wife knits. My father reads. I look at a plant. I think it’s plastic….

I must have drifted off, cause I wake to see the doctor telling my father the operation’s a success. He’s kind of cocky, this doctor – he’s got the swagger of a jet-fighter pilot. Like – yeah, I cracked her open and sewed her up, no big deal….

Hours pass. We move to a new room on another floor in a different wing of the hospital and sit around a fish tank. My wife knits. My father reads. My sister does her puzzle. I watch a yellow fish swim from one end of the tank to the other.

A group of people emerges from the back room. They’re crying.

“Someone died,” my sister whispers to me.

I don’t want to have a conversation about these people while they’re standing a few feet away, so I pretend I don’t hear her.

“They said he went fast,” she says.

“Stop eavesdropping on their conversation….”

“There’s nothing else to do….”

We watch them comfort each other.

“Do you think she’s going to be all right?” asks my sister.

“Milo said that if she gets off the operating table, the worst is over….”

“Milo said that?”

“Yeah, and he went through the same thing….”

More hours pass….

My dad reminisces about the time over forty years ago when he was recuperating in a hospital and my mom smuggled him martinis in a glass jar. “We drank them in the hospital,” he says.

He pauses. “I can’t remember why I was in the hospital,” he says with a slight smile. “But I remember the martinis….”

A nurse emerges to lead us to the room where my mom’s in a bed hooked to tubes and breathing through an oxygen mask. The nurse sees the shock in our eyes. “She’s okay,” she reassures us. “She’s doing great.”

We stand in silence, almost afraid to talk….

The next day we return to the hospital. My mom’s in a different room. Sunshine streaming through the window. She’s sitting up in a chair. Got color in her face. No oxygen mask, no tubes. Looks like a million bucks.

She says she has no memory of yesterday, as if the day never existed. It was Monday and now it’s Wednesday – that’s all she knows.

“Let’s test the rest of your memory,” I say. “When I was in sixth grade, I used to walk home from school with a kid who ate Suzie Qs. What was that kid’s name?”

“Oh,” my mom says. “Uh….”

“Alan Brandeis,” says my sister.

“Okay,” I say. “We know you know his name….”

“Oh, yeah,” says my mom, “Alan Brandeis.”

“All right, mom, how `bout this one,” I say. “In high school, there was a kid who made phony tickets for Northwestern football games and then sold them to other kids What was his name?”

“Ted Ross,” says my sister.

“Okay,” I say. “What part of this game are we not getting?”

“Oh, yeah,” says my mom. “Ted Ross….”

“All right, one last question. And this time no help from the peanut gallery,” I say as I look at my sister. “In the last presidential election, Barack Obama ran against which Republican candidate?”

“Ugh, that son of a bitch,” says my mom, who was, is and will always be a New Deal Democrat.

“Close enough,” I say. “The judges will count it!”

Call it a small step on a long road to a remarkable recovery….

P.S. On a personal note, thanks to everyone who looked out for me over the last few days, particularly: Daddy Dee, J Dub, Johnny Reaves, Milo, Norm, and cousin Robert. My mom’s out of the hospital and getting stronger day by day….