Falling, Pt. I

"Your Father fell down and is at the hospital."

Falling is nothing new for my Dad. Mom says that he only uses the cane when he can't hold onto something like a shopping cart to steady himself. This past Christmas, he asked for -- and received -- a collapsible cane, which I finally saw him use in public last week. And yet he still manages to tumble while shuffling to the bathroom or, as he confided to me (but my Mom already knew about it), in the garage, scraping his arm against the car.

His legs aren't as stable as they once were. He complains of movement in his legs while standing still, a feeling like standing on the deck of a ship on the ocean. Since the hip replacement a few years ago, he struggles lifting his right leg to step up or to merely walk, most of the time preferring a hobble-shuffle-step.

I asked if she needed me to come down. "Not right now. They're taking him in for a CT scan." She sounded angry so I wisely didn't ask for details. "I thought they were taking him to our hospital and sat in the waiting room over there for half an hour. But we're here now because it was trauma. We'll wait and see what the doctor says." I decided to head down anyway after work.

An hour later....

"They're wheeling him in for emergency brain surgery." After she hung up, I closed the office in a daze, forwarding the phones to another office, shutting down computers. My voice almost broke when I called my Manager to tell her I was leaving for the hospital. I pictured my Dad -- 76 years old, laying on an operating table with scalpels cutting into his head. Too dangerous. Too risky. What would my Mom do if he didn't make it through? What would my Brother and I do?

I locked the office door and made it to my car. I decided to stay away from the freeway and stick to the surface streets. The drive to the hospital would take longer, but I doubted I could handle being stuck in heavy southbound traffic on the 405. And to keep my thoughts from drifting back to visions of my Dad, I paid attention to the flowers along the road: seas of green-yellow mustard plants covering the hillsides and crashing into the streets in a spray of bright orange California poppies and the soft purple lupine. The sharp, crisp greens of the trees against the clearest sky I'd seen in days.

By the time I reached the hospital, I'd calmed enough to speak calmly to the volunteer at the desk. She said that she'd just walked my Brother and his Wife to the surgical waiting room. She would take me there, too, as soon as the Security Guard created my visitor's badge. The Guard asked for my license, scanned it into the hospital system and in a few moments, handed me both the license and a badge with my name and photo on it.

I followed the volunteer through a maze of hallways, past nurses and other medical techs, listening to some soft instrumental music playing from hidden speakers. As we approached the waiting room, the song abruptly changed to Brahm's Lullaby. "Sounds like another baby was just delivered. That song always played when baby's born." A nice touch, I thought. "Here we are." I spotted my Mom from the hallway and ran over to hug her.