The Never Normal

I felt like doing the title in my poor Spanish.  It’s supposed to say “attack of the heart and the boy.”  I like it better in Spanish, even if the Spanish is wrong.

I promised pictures.  

Here are birds sitting on the iron fence outside Albany Medical Center at 8am this morning, undisturbed by my close proximity. 

I like to count birds on wires and fences, but I was too tired and too freaked to count them this time. 

M was woken up at 6:45am this morning with bad chest pains.  I urged him to go to the hospital and he only resisted briefly (he must, I suppose, as he is a man) before capitulating and letting me drive him to the ER.  He could walk but was a little short of breath and still in pain, like a hard push on his sternum, he said.  I sat with him as they gave him an EEG, which looked normal, and a blood test.  He wanted me to go see Jonah anyway and since he wasn’t in crisis, I left my car there for him and my mom picked me up to drive to Rhinebeck.  I had only had time to roll out of bed and pull on clothes, so I looked like hell and was tired and worried.  (They are discharging M as I type so he will be home soon).

So my mom drove her car down, and she waited in the car when Andy & I walked to Jonah’s cottage house.  He was happy and smiling when we arrived.  I waved to him through the window and he waved back.  He wanted my hand, my hugs.  It felt good.  We gathered his things.  Andy and I spoke briefly to a few of his careworkers and then walked out the door, Jonah grinning wide and holding my hand.  “Hug?” he asked sweetly.  I leaned down and hugged him, and the next second my face was on fire with pain. 

He’d let go of the hug and taken one hand, starfish-wide, and gone lightning-fast for my face..  He wasn’t letting go, either, and he’d managed to dig in tight.  When Andy got him off me, one nail raked a good scratch just below my eye.  I have no idea why I’m sharing this mugshot picture – I mean, I don’t know when I’ve ever looked this bad.  It actually looks like one of those “after” pictures when they show what crystal meth does to a human.  What a long, strange, stressful, hurt-y, crappy day I’d had by noon.

                 Mama’s Mugshot

It makes no sense.  Why do I need it to make sense?  I could understand if he was told to do something he didn’t want to do, or to go somewhere he didn’t want to go, but he wasn’t.  He was happy.  Lovey.  It just doesn’t make any sense.  Maybe when he saw me he got mad because he was simultaneously happy to see me and also thinking why the hell do you come get me once a week and then leave me here!?  I hope to God it’s not that.  Would he forgive us if he could understand what we did, and why? 

Eventually Jonah calmed down.  I still think he’s a little under the weather.  He wanted bath and had tune-fish sandwich and car ride to the transfer station and he got all of those things.  He was surprisingly uninterested in train or park or anything else especially fun.

. 

M is home now and his kids were supposed to come visit this weekend but now that’s out of the question.  They wanted him to stay overnight at the hospital and he wouldn’t do that.  They ran a bunch of tests and say he’s okay. 

I’m tired and am going to take a nap.