Wake Up

My husband didn’t know me. Or, maybe he did, deep down, but he just wheezes, “Huh?” like a squeak toy that has all but lost its oomph.

“Huh?”

Although he was fluent in two languages before he went to bed three days ago. His huge brown eyes, always so intense, full of play or projects or plans — always something — are vacant, terrified, startled; more nervous-rabbit than human eyes. Although he moved in fluid strides on the volleyball court 72 hours ago, he can’t even sit up in the hospital bed, let alone walk.

A wife should say something comforting at a time like this, right? At 29 years old, I hadn’t been a wife long enough to know.

“Huh?”

“You were in a coma — “

“Huh?”

“You had meningitis.”

“Huh?”

“It’s going to be ok.”

Whatever ok is. When I became a wife, in sickness and in health, I imagined challenges like diabetes, middle-aged spread, or baldness. Never, ever did I think of in-losing-your-memory at 29. Nor did I think a headache could cause it.

He woke up in the middle of that night, like midnight or 2am, with a headache. And I repeat, a headache, not a heart attack, not a stroke, not doubled over, grabbing his stomach with some raging — anything. Who makes a big deal about a random headache? I certainly didn’t.

Anyway, he couldn’t get comfortable. He rolled around in bed, moaning about his head hurting.

I wanted to be sympathetic. I really did, but six month old son Josh might or might not sleep through the entire night. And since I always got up with Josh but Diego was still off for the holidays the next day, it just seemed like he could go to the guest room if he couldn’t just get some sleep. But after a while, I got tired of listening to his moaning.

So, I left. Not happily, but I went up to the guest room.

I woke up the next day with the sun warm through the window, and the sounds of little Josh babbling away in his crib. Ah, he slept straight through the night — a gift! I didn’t want to rouse Diego if he had been up too long with his headache, so I carried Josh quietly past our bedroom and got busy with the day in the kitchen.

Sometime before lunch, still no Diego yet, so I went to see if he needed anything. He was curled up on the bed, facing the door when I went in. All of the covers, even the top sheet had been pushed off the bed. Odd, the winter night had been cold. His eyes were squinted shut, as if something hurt his eyes, even with the lids closed.

“Diego?”

Nothing.

“Hey, are you ok?”

Again, nothing, but that was more normal for him than all the complaining he’d done the night before.

“Can I get you anything?” I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. He promptly grunted and rolled to his other side and away from me. I figured that was caveman for “leave me alone, I want to get some sleep,” so I considerately pulled the blinds down and left, glad to leave the grump to himself.

I went back in at 4pm when he still hadn’t emerged.

At this point, I needed to know how sick he was, or what kind of sick he was, because if he needed anything — chicken soup, NyQuil, ginger ale — I didn’t want to go out after dinner. The late December evening was already collecting shadows, so if I had to go out with a 6-month-old, I wanted to know now. Time to talk, whether he wanted to or not.

But he wasn’t there. When I opened the door to the darkened room, the bed was empty and Diego was on the floor, curled into a fetal position, his back against our dresser.

Completely creeped out, I set Josh down back out in the hallway before going over to Diego. I leaned towards him, unsure if I should touch him.

“Diego?” I whispered gently.

Nothing.

“Diego!” A more urgent whisper now, “What’s going on?”

I kneeled to get closer to him, heard ragged breathing through a throat full of phlegm and smelled the strong odor of urine.

“What the — ?” I lightly reached out for his shoulder.

Still nothing, so I gave a bit of a nudge. This flopped his right arm out a little from his side, revealing his hand curled into what I can only describe as a claw, fingers clutched towards his forearm, the usual warm olive-colored skin faded to a disturbing celery-green.

My hand on his shoulder again, I leaned him back a little to reveal his face in the fading light. What I saw turned my stomach. His lips were frozen back off his teeth in a grimace, spittle dried on the edges of his mouth. Each breath he took rasped through the remaining moisture of his open mouth. His eyes were still tightly shut, as if intense pain racked his body, but clearly, he was unaware of me.

“Oh, God, help us!” I whimpered, afraid to raise my voice. I wanted to panic. Truly, everything in me wanted to yell to wake him up, as if I could. I knew better, but I remember looking desperately around the room. For what? I can’t imagine, but my frenzied glance crossed the doorway, where Josh was happily scooching his way to the bedroom, smiling and babbling away, as usual.

“No! Josh, no!” I almost screamed those words, wild with the urge to protect my son from whatever invisible menace had gotten in that room with Diego.

Josh’s little face, his round eyes even darker than his daddy’s, registered complete, unhappy surprise at my outburst, but he stopped his efforts before entering the room, sitting back at the same time his little mouth started to crumple into tears.

What had I done? Disappointed in myself, I left Diego and rushed to Josh, trying not to crumple myself on the way. I consoled both of us by hugging him.

Green color, green color… What is that? Food poisoning? I’ll call Poison Control… Where’s the phone book… Poison Control… P-o-i-son…

“Hello, um, yeah, um, I think my husband may have food poison or something…? He’s, um, green and, um, unconscious… No?… Ok. Yes. I’ll call 911 right away…

“Um, 13-O-7 Oak Street… Well, my husband is unconscious… No, I don’t know why… NO, he doesn’t do drugs… Yes, I’m SURE. He woke up with a headache last night and now he’s GREEN. He didn’t move when I tried to wake him, but he crawled onto the floor and peed in his pajamas and –I. Don’t. KNOW.”

I know I telephoned my parents next, explaining that I probably had to go to the hospital with Diego, who had a headache and was green and peed in his pajamas and wouldn’t answer me­­, I didn’t know — and, oh, could they get or stay with Josh? I didn’t know…

The EMT’s arrived some minutes later and slammed into our bedroom, dismissing me to the kitchen while they examined him. Then they rushed him out on a stretcher minutes later, and a woman with an overly loud, crass voice and annoying accent, you know the kind, asked if he complained of his neck hurting.

I said, “No, not his neck, but he said his head hurt sometime around midnight.”

I can still see her, standing in our house, my kitchen, her obnoxious face and arrogant eyes, nodding like she knew, but couldn’t say anything more to the little wife. She nodded and left.

Mom and Dad showed up to collect Josh within minutes of the ambulance’s departure and I broke every traffic law on the two miles to the hospital where they promised to take me to Diego in the ER, right after they got his insurance information. My husband of 1 year and 10 months was green and all they wanted was their money. I could have thrown my entire purse at the woman as my hands fumbled to open the wallet, find the insurance card while pressure screamed in my head.

When I finally got to Diego, his body was hooked up to a catheter and a ventilator and an IV, but he wasn’t there. Looking back, I think I had imagined he would just magically wake up and apologize for all the fuss when they actually got him to the ER. So, I stood just inside his curtain-lined bay, dazed, looking at the tubes, wondering what I was supposed to do.

I had gone closer to his gurney a few moments later when dark, brackish liquid began to spew from Diego’s mouth like he’d nearly drowned in murky water and someone had just pushed on his stomach to expel it — only no one had touched him. And he hadn’t almost drowned; he’d had a headache.

We’d been married twenty months.

He was the father of our six-month-old son.

What kind of headache causes spewing?

The air was so, heavy right then. I staggered under the weight of breathing and struggled to push the billowy, white, white divider curtain aside so I could see the help desk on the other side.

“Can… Someone… Help…?” Had I spoken? Why couldn’t I speak? “Something is… Something… Is…” I tried to enunciate, but tears flooded my eyes and everything blurred.

Someone yelled, “He’s going under!”

And I was drowning, too, in the air.

A crazy throbbing had filled my ears. And four maybe five white coats and shoulders pushed past me on either side to get to him, to restrain and push and strap Diego’s body in as it lurched with the force of the expulsions.

I stood less than five feet away, watching until a doctor with kindly freckled pink face and strawberry hair approached me.

“Are you Mrs. Banta?”

I moved my hand away from my mouth, which I guess I had covered to prevent my own screaming as I witnessed Diego’s body convulsing on the gurney, then nodded.

He gently herded me in the direction of a private waiting room to his left, across the hallway, a small, empty room with plain walls where I was trapped with memories of what I’d just seen.

I learned later that I had witnessed Diego’s body shutting completely down from some level of unconsciousness into a coma.

“Completely normal,” someone on the staff told me.

They forgot to add, “…for someone going into a coma.” And for the next three days, I lived in the waiting room outside of the ICU, waiting for my 15 minutes each hour to visit him, to see if there was a change, to scan for any sign of life beyond the blip of the heart monitor, the drip of an IV, and the suck of the ventilator in his mouth.

Each day, my clothes became looser as I lived on the free coffee and hot chocolate in the waiting room. Mom and Dad cared for Josh at our home and brought him to visit me in the lobby. With each visit, we hoped for a change, but there wasn’t much to talk about.

Three days later, he opened his eyes and stared at me blankly for a minute before wheezing, “Huh?” I was elated, but I held back.

“You’re in the hospital, honey,” I told him, gently.

“Huh?”

“We missed you.”

“Huh?”

And three hours later, still, “Huh?” from alien eyes that used to know me. He wasn’t registering anything I said. He didn’t recognize me.

Why doesn’t he know me? I had been so happy, so relieved, he hear he was awake, but now I just wanted scream and cry and beat him out of his body. Do you remember that you have a son? He needs you to know us. I need you to know me.

No response.

He was moved to a regular room soon after he woke up, because he wasn’t critical anymore. So I sat with him, next to his bed in the new room, and we stared at the television on the wall.

When visiting hours ended that evening, I was permitted to stay in his room, but I didn’t. In the car for the first time since driving to the ER three days earlier, I gripped my steering wheel and let the sobs shake my body until they subsided enough that I could see to drive home.

At home, Josh reached chubby little arms up to me and I gratefully hugged him in my arms. I read favorite books to him and sang favorite songs to him and rocked him to sleep because he loves that. And as I laid him in his crib, tears came again because my husband was strangely younger than our son just then.

I called a few loved ones who were shocked to hear the news, and promised to pray. I emailed others, cousins, friends with the same news. Then I searched “meningitis” and “memory loss” and eventually, “nontraumatic brain injury” for a few hours. Looking back, I think I imagined that if I could understand what had happened would somehow fix things…

And eventually, I got it: he may never know me again. Nobody could say.

It was New Year’s Eve, I wondered, “should old acquaintance be forgot”? What about new acquaintance or, better, what about young, newlywed acquaintance?

But there wasn’t any answer. Life held completely still right then. There was no tension, no fear.

So, I crawled onto the couch, pulled a throw around me, and as far as I remember, slept straight through the night for the first time in three days.

Twenty years later, I’m still living the lessons, learning what needs attention when, how to attend to minutia in the middle of a meltdown, and when it’s time to sleep.