19- Leaving the ego behind

Leslie was watching TV in the living room and my grandfather was sleeping in his room. I walked up to him, lying in his bed, and leaned over to give him his "good afternoon" kiss on the forehead. Nothing scared me more than seeing thick, shiny blood running through the catheter. My grandfather seemed not to have noticed, as he slept calmly. I left the room in shock. It was not the blood, it was my grandfather bleeding that almost threw me into a crisis.

Three hours later, we were at the New York hospital. I tried to stay grounded every time I looked at my grandfather's blood-filled bag. We all told him that it was just a routine exam, maintaining a non-existent calm in front of him. My grandfather was the treasure of my family, a precious pearl that everyone cared for as an inheritance left by my grandmother with her death. I smoked a Marlboro Light cigarette and talked with Virginia and Cecilia outside the hospital. Visiting hours would soon be over, and the girls had brought blankets and pillows for Leslie and me. I had never spent the night in a hospital, and I had the silly idea that I could sleep that night.

Biting my lip, while watching my grandfather secretly complain about the pain, trying to lean on the bed rail to gather strength and stand up, is one of those cruel actions I have taken that have no relation to what is right and what is not. My grandfather screamed and said he wanted to go home. Leslie gently explained to him that we had to wait for the test results, but he dismissed it angrily and with desperation for the pain trembling in his thin, wrinkled fingers. "But why are they going to keep me here against my will?" he complained, wanting to go to the bathroom to pee, and there was no way to explain to him that he was catheterized and had to pee through it; simply because the catheter had been clogged with one of the blood clots. My grandfather seemed to be having a hemorrhage, and after endless blood clots and cries of despair, my instincts began to cloud my mind. I couldn't stand to hear him scream and give me those looks of hate and betrayal, as if retaining him there against his will was causing him that pain. He kicked me in the stomach with every scream as they performed the fifth catheter change of the night, I looked at Leslie for strength, but she was already broken in tears. During his last catheter change, which they were doing every fifteen minutes due to the intense bleeding that prevented him from urinating, I went outside to call one of my uncles to replace me. Leslie looked at me with pleading eyes, begging me not to leave her, but I told her that someone else would come soon. Someone who could keep my grandfather standing without collapsing first, and I, seeing how he had fainted after the last catheter change, was indisposed. In an hour, I had lost the strength to scream and say that he wanted to go home, now I just cried and complained while we prayed for the bleeding to stop and that this would be the last catheter change of the night, not to mention that I wished it would be the last one of his life. I wished he wouldn't feel this torture ever again.

When my uncle, Leslie's father, entered the emergency room, I went to the bathroom tied to the logic and the mistake of trying to release the anger I felt when I saw my grandfather screaming and groaning in pure pain. I remember the tears finally coming when I closed the bathroom door. The next thing I did was swing my arms with clenched fists, remembering Leslie's tears and her silent sobs as she finally saw my grandfather sedated. I watched in the old, cracked mirror in the hospital as I became a version of myself with a furrowed forehead and small eyes, a red and soaked face, and a burning throat with stifled screams. I kicked the trash can and knocked it to the ground, but that wasn't enough for me, and I let out a muffled scream with my hair stuck to my cheeks by tears. Then I started hitting the wall with anger, trying to free myself from frustration, but it weighed me down with increasing force. I cursed and blamed God, because I had no one else to do it to, and because I had no real person who could take away my pain and make it lighter. Leslie was not well, neither was my whole family, my mother would arrive on the 4 AM flight. But no one could truly understand what I felt when I remembered the squeak of the medical equipment wheels along with the nurses running down the hallway in search of the doctor because they had to change the catheter again. My grandfather's bleeding weighed heavily on my mind and seemed never to stop. I thought of Patrick and realized that I was alone. I felt lonely and more pathetic than I've ever felt, desiring to share my pain with someone who had vanished from my life. When I ran out of tears and my throat started asking for water, I got up from the floor and wiped my face with the sleeve of my knitted sweater. I gathered my wet hair into a simple, messy bun and went in search of my purse. The last thing I wanted was for my family to know that I had been crying, me, the cold woman who never felt like attending family gatherings, who never seemed to enjoy other people's company for more than three hours - if it was even that long - and was always distracted, that woman, me, was crying.