Loving Large by Patti M. Hall

Author:Patti M. Hall [Hall, Patti M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Medical (incl. Patients)
ISBN: 9781459746381
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2020-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

13

SENTRY

Not knowing what the day would be like, how we would hold our emotions together, what Aaron would look like or feel like after the transsphenoidal surgery, or what calls to action the aftermath might require, I forced my attention onto the minutiae I could control. I went sock shopping. I didn’t want to overinflate the importance of what I was doing. I knew I would always remember what I’d bought that day and thought perhaps I should purchase something significant. Like art? A car? Something for Aaron? But then, what if things went horribly wrong? What would anything matter?

I didn’t need socks. And in early May, I wouldn’t be wearing them. I bought six pairs of bright royal-blue socks — the colour people who know me call “Patti-blue” — and two pairs of shoes and then I dragged a full knapsack and shopping bags for blocks across two downtown university districts. If it had been later in the day, I might have holed up with my notebook in a pub.

I was a boiling cauldron, grateful to the unknowing passersby who gave me fodder for resentment. I feel a little ashamed now of how I was hating on every person whose life was still going on unabated, untouched by the horror my son was enduring as instruments bored into his head, but it made the time easier to bide. Like I said, I’m ashamed now. I walked by self-absorbed students with phones in one hand and lattes from Starbucks in the other. People just kept on hurrying to the places they told themselves mattered. I was a curled lip, snarling dog, glaring at them all in their busyness, hurling whispered obscenities under my breath. I wanted the world to stop turning, to halt mid-stride and hold its collective breath until my son came out alive. My boy was on a surgeon’s table, and why did the world not get that?

Rick preferred being productive and doing; he needed a task for distraction. While I preferred to stay nearby the hospital and endure the waiting. He drove the hour north of Toronto to pick Justin up from school. We’d been told to expect it would be many hours before we could see Aaron. I texted updates to my sister, Kelly, so I could avoid answering queries from too many people, then resumed walking the city, storm cloud over my head and an anvil on my shoulders. Rick and I had agreed that no family members should come because our families had never interacted comfortably, and we didn’t need to be refereeing that day. We didn’t know what we’d be in for and having an audience was not something we could stand if we were going to fall apart.

I hadn’t wanted anyone in the family, not even Val or Dana, to be with me that day. I knew I’d have no emotional bandwidth to attend to someone’s questions, listen to their small talk, or be concerned if I was being polite. I couldn’t be a good friend on a day when I didn’t even know how to be comforted by one.

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