CHAPTER FOUR

DOWN FOR THE COUNT


Part 37 Admit one


The hospital, located in north the Houston vicinity, is large, with around 300 beds. Thousands of inpatient and outpatient surgeries are performed here annually. Tens of thousands of people each year visit the emergency rooms. Somehow, I find myself being one of these visitors and lying in one of these beds.

I have read that the facility has been ranked among the nation’s best in some adult specialty areas of service. It is also within easy driving range of my home. So these factors should bring me some comfort. The problem is, though, that I simply feel miserable. I arrived last night in a blur of nausea and fever. It is Saturday morning. The chills and fever are lingering, and I have been waking and throwing up during the night. When I am not sick, I lie here listless, staring at the chart on the wall that welcomes me to this facility, proclaims today’s date, and gives me the name of the nurse who will be caring for me. Most of the day I simply do nothing but grieve and question how this happened. I wish my physicians were here – not the hospital weekend fillers who have dropped by to see me – but the ones who prescribed this medicinal combo of chemo radiation chemo that they thought I was tough enough to handle. I’d like to give them a few choice words right now. But that is only if I can gather the energy to do so.

I have a book on the table called “When We Get to Surf City”, about a journalist who covered a tour of Jan and Dean and wound up playing gigs with the band. It sits atop several magazines and beside a few inspirational books. A remote for the TV lies next to these. But I just lie in bed, feeling too bad to engage in anything.

Very early Sunday morning I awake. 2:30 a.m. I have been enduring distressing dreams of Becah cheating on me, then spending huge amounts of money redecorating the house. I don’t know which one upsets me most. I flip on TV, ESPN, and watch a boxing special on ex-champion Riddick Bowe. I am afraid to go back asleep, where more strange dreams will grab me. After my 3:30 shot I drift off again as I feel my fever weaken. But when I awake, I experience a sensation of burning bile in my mouth along with incredible mucous. After a long morning of wall staring, Becah and the kids come by and temporarily break me out of my morbidity.