I cannot tell you what I felt at the time. Shock is shock, after all, and she and I were in our own intense states of it. Time has passed. Shock shakes memory more than it solidifies it. What I do remember clearly is that I was not alone in my shock, nor would I ever be. Each day, for all the days my mother was in the first area to which serious emergencies are transferred, a new group of friends and family would arrive. Each day! No matter what time I visited, a new clan had arrived. Some were small. A Mexican family filled the waiting area one night when I arrived, and their large numbers lasted all the time we shared that space—I remember being rather jealous as I was usually alone. Big concern/small concern? Certainly a wonderful measure of family involvement and concern—and in relation a sense of how much smaller my mother’s circle was.

Each day the conveyor belt delivered a new crew. Life pushed along like a factory, bringing enough tragedy to keep a hospital afloat. As there will always be a need for undertakers, there will also be a need for hospitals. It was hard enough to visit this end of the world—I cannot imagine working there.

And some people should not. When my mother left Stanford two months later, having moved in first with roommates, then down to another wing, she had one bedsore that measured 10 centimeters across and exposed bone. I have no means nor inkling to blame anyone. I know that most of the attendants who helped my mother were immigrants and surely overworked and underpaid. The point is only that in a location that houses medical trauma and is forced to make a production line of it to a certain degree, the industrial feel is there right down to the sense of apathy. How much or how long could anyone keep caring at the proper levels to satisfy each new victim and their close ones? That some do is heroism. That some don’t even stay near the lowest leve
ls one might wish for is a shame.
The months that followed taught me that some people are below caring—apathy or distance that borders on evil. Others were splendid, giving, and provided nourishing levels of warmth.

Somehow both ends of the spectrum caught me off guard. A woman assigned to help me get Medicare coverage (and I am referred to her as she is supposed to be exceptionally helpful) turns out to want to harass me with never-ending paperwork and a gruff tone. Only when I call her superior and leave a message on her voice mail telling her I intend to record all future phone conversations with her and replay any offending ones to this superior do I get anything bordering on service. And remember, I have a mother in a coma. I think it the tale that will inspire politeness if nothing else, but I turn out to be wrong several more times before my mother’s life ends. On the other hand a couple who my mother sometimes babysat for lend me their car on nothing more than the fact that I am my mother’s son. I had never met them before this incident.


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