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But she wasn’t just fine. Which I found out twenty minutes later when I was led back to a little room.
“Mr. Hooch?” the doctor said as she came to the little room. “Will you come with me?”
I saw my father unfold his tall frame out of the uncomfortable looking leather seat and stand to his full height. He looked so lost and confused that I couldn’t help rushing to him and wrapping my arms around his waist.
“Come on, baby. Let’s go,” Dad said.
I swallowed hard and decided to do as told, turning around and starting out of the room with my hand in my father’s.
I was stunned to see Castiel leaning against the wall talking to the doctor.
I felt a shiver run through me at the expression on his face.
“Y’all, please follow me,” she said.
So we did, and I looked at Castiel again for any indication as to what we were about to walk in to. However, his face was no longer what it was before. It was now blank. His cop face. The same one that had given me a ticket what felt like forever ago.
I felt a shiver of fear roll down my spine.
“I just want you to know that we’re about to go into the trauma room,” the doctor said, drawing my attention once again to her. “When the ambulance arrived at your RV, Mr. Hooch, it was in response to her shortness of breath, correct?”
“Yes,” Dad said.
“Well, when she got into the ambulance, her heart stopped three times on the way to the hospital,” the doctor explained. “Each time it stopped, they were able to get it started again. But as she was arriving, it stopped again. When she got here, we were able to get it started.” She opened the door and that was when I saw my mother with a sheet covering her. She had a man at the head of the bed that was blowing oxygen into her lungs through a mask that was covering my beautiful mother’s face. “However, every time we get it started and working again, it stops.”
I swallowed hard and felt nausea roll through my belly.
There was a man at her side with a metal instrument holding it to her side.
“That’s a doppler. We’re searching for her heartbeat,” the doctor explained when she saw my attention was focused elsewhere.
I nodded once in understanding.
“We believe that your wife has suffered a pulmonary embolism,” the doctor said. “But unfortunately, we’re not able to…”
“No more heartbeat,” the man said with the metal instrument.
Then right in front of our eyes, he started to do chest compressions on my mother.
Her body flopped around uselessly, and the man at her head tried in vain to get her head to stay still as he continued to breathe for her.
“We’ve maxed out every medication that modern medicine has to offer that’ll help in this situation,” the doctor said, seemingly unfazed by my mother receiving CPR right next to her.
I closed my eyes and shook my head, unable to think.
“Can we take this outside?” Castiel asked from behind us.
Dad nodded, and I felt relief pour through me.
I didn’t want to be here anymore.
I could see things now that a daughter should never see. My mother’s sheet had slipped off of her, and there was quite a bit of her exposed to the air.
“Yes, yes,” the doctor said. “We can go back to the room.”
We made it into the hall before I could no longer help it anymore.
“You’re saying that you want to stop chest compressions?” I blurted.
The doctor turned, as did Castiel.
My dad froze beside me.
The doctor didn’t beat around the bush as she replied.
“I can keep her alive through machines, most likely.” She looked me straight into the eye.
“What about her quality of life?” I asked. “What are her chances of getting better?”
The doctor looked sad as she said, “Slim to none. She probably would never be the same woman that you once knew.”
I looked down at my feet.
“Stop compressions.”
I felt my heart stop.
My breathing stalled in my lungs, too.
My dad’s voice had sounded like it was being strangled on the way out of him.
Swallowing hard, I nodded. “She wouldn’t want to be kept alive by machines,” I confirmed.
Castiel’s hand swallowed mine, and I felt the tears start up anew.
“I’ll go stop them,” the doctor said.
“You can all follow me back to the room,” another woman said, startling me.
“Pru,” I heard Castiel say.
Pru. Why was that name so familiar?
I looked up through watery eyes to see a beautiful blonde woman staring at me with sympathy. But the why or how I knew her wasn’t computing at that point in time.
I turned and watched as the doctor walked back into the room. Then I watched further as she spoke with each and every person that was working on my mother. As one, each of them stopped what they were doing.
