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We all drove from different states,
To see, to see…
We didn’t know what we were
Going to see when we got to the hospital.
We knew you had been in a car accident:
At least two broken ribs and possible pneumonia;
We called on the cell phone on our way out of town
Just like we always do, but we caught Bonnie listening
To the nurse say you had pneumonia. They hung up,
And Jackie lost it. Grief set in. Fear set in. Doubt set in.
We talked about what would happen if you died.
What where our responsibilities? The kind of stuff
You never want to think about until it’s too late.
It was a long drive. Not distance, but emotional.
Jackie was miserable. She didn’t know if this was
it.
She started thinking back about the good times;
no more of that. And the horse you had adopted from
the animal shelter, Jackie named him Nugget. Should
we take him, and how? We had already talked about
the aged parrots—they would go with us, too.
We’d need a moving van for all this stuff, but whatever.
Then we got there. You were helpless, drugged out on
Painkiller. Always asleep or on the verge of sleep until
they stopped the drugs. You started talking out of your
head, nonsense.
Some glimpses of experience, people, but not able to put it all
Together. You could never figure out where you
were. “At the old house”, you’d say, or “the house on Weoka Road”.
Never “hospital” or Baptist East Medical Center.
But each day, with plenty of prayers, in baby steps, you made progress.
With Bonnie, who had never left your side since the accident, never left
The hospital for anything, taking care of every little need of yours. With
Family and friends coming to see you, praying for you, even back in Florida, New York, and California, they were praying.
And the very next day, your mind starts coming back, and you sit in a chair, your first time out of bed. You have gone back and forth with pneumonia, but the staff have been on top of it, doing tests, moving you around, giving you oxygen.
And then you do the unthinkable. You walk down the hall.
You are home now because many others were strong when you could not be strong for yourself. And God was strong for us all.
