Second floor, east wing
Seven months. Two-hundred and eleven days. Five-thousand sixty-four hours. That’s how long I spent on the second floor in the east wing of Bayfront Medical Center in Saint Petersburg, Florida.
March 9, 2013, was the day I got the call. That call that would have me spending those seven months at that hospital.
That night, my boyfriend of three years was in an ATV accident, and he wasn’t wearing his helmet.
He sustained a traumatic brain injury and was flown to the hospital by helicopter. He was brought to the second floor in the east wing for surgery.
How could this happen to the guy I called my best friend, my first kiss, my first love?
Every weekday, I woke up for high school at 5 a.m. and left school at 1:30 p.m. to go straight to the hospital which was about 30 minutes away. I would stay there until midnight and then go home and do it all over again the next day.
The week after he was released from the hospital, his mom picked up his whole family and moved Georgia without telling me.
She blocked my number and all of my social media accounts from him and his family. She called after they had arrived in Georgia and explained that she thought I would be a distraction and that it was time for me to move on.
And I haven’t spoken to him since.
This happened almost five years ago, and I still feel broken and betrayed.
I have tried many different things to get over the complete blindside: therapy, yoga, exercising, medications. Nothing ever really helped.
There was always something I thought of doing that I thought may help, but I was always too scared to go back to the hospital where I spent those seven months.
Was I crazy to want to return?
I decided that it might be the closure that I needed.
As I walked through the large sliding doors into the lobby, everything felt fine. It looked like I remembered it, but I never spent too much time in the lobby, so there wasn't much to remember.
I walked over to the all-too-familiar escalator and stepped on. It wasn’t until I made it about two-thirds of the way up when I felt a familiar knot in my gut.
In a matter of seconds, the lighting had changed from fresh, natural daylight in the lobby to harsh, yellow-toned hospital lighting.
I stepped off of the escalator and walked down the long hallway that led to the east wing. I passed the bathroom I used to cry in for hours at a time, and the chapel where I would sit and pray that everything would be OK.
I made it to the end of the hallway to find the waiting room. The blank, stark white walls were now a pastel shade of green with some artwork and a magazine rack.
The chairs were newer, comfier-looking leather. Nothing like the fold-out metal chairs they had when I used to sleep there.
It was empty, which is mostly how I remember it being. It had always seemed that I was the only one in there.
I rounded the corner to find myself looking down the east wing.
This is when it really hit me.
So many things had happened in this hallway. This is where I saw him getting rushed into the ICU that first night covered in blood. This is where I saw him get wheeled off 11 times to the operating room for emergency surgeries. This is where I watched him struggle as he tried to learn how to walk again, failing each time.
Forcing my legs to move, I worked my way down the hallway to the nurse’s station where the entrance of the ICU was located.
On my way, I heard many familiar sounds. The offbeat beeping of the breathing machines that used to wake me up in the middle of the night, and the nurse technicians taking patients’ vitals.
I made it to the end of the hallway and found myself looking through the glass doors of the ICU.
Although I knew I would not be permitted to enter the ICU, I knew my visit would not be complete without visiting this area.
There were six rooms in the ICU. His was the third on the left. He was there for the first four months in an induced coma.
His mom and I took shifts. One of us slept on an extremely uncomfortable cot in the back corner of the room while the other held his hand at his bedside. We made sure someone was holding that hand 24 hours a day.
At the time, I thought his mom and I were bonding. As it turns out, I was completely wrong.
After standing there for a few minutes, I made my way back down the hallway to the waiting room to sit for a while.
A man and a woman sat together holding hands in the corner of the room. Their faces were red and swollen. Although they were not crying, I could tell that they had just finished.
I sat down in the chair closest to the door being sure not to disturb them.
About a minute went by, and then I could feel the woman staring at me.
“You’re a beautiful girl,” she said. “You look very similar to Jessica.”
Before I could say thank you, the man hushed her.
A few minutes went by, and then she asked me a question that caught me off guard.
“Why are you here, if you don’t mind me asking?” she asked.
I didn’t know what to say. Would she think I was crazy for returning to the place where something so horrible happened over four years ago? Would she be offended that I was in her grieving space when I was no longer going through what she was?
I decided I could not lie about my reason for being there, so I briefly explained what had happened, hoping she would not be angry.
“You’re so incredibly strong,” she said. “I hope that I will be able to do the same one day.”
She introduced herself as Lisa and explained that her 23-year-old daughter Jessica had just been in a horrible car accident and was in surgery. She sustained a traumatic brain injury and was in critical condition.
Although our situations weren't the same, I felt her pain. I remember the overwhelming feeling of panic and confusion while he was in surgery that first night. To this day, that was the lowest point of my life, and this woman was going through hers right in front of me.
I remembered how all I wanted that night was someone to talk to and cry to. The least I could do was stay here and be that for this woman, so I told her I’d answer any questions if she had them.
Most of her questions were about how the recovery time was and how long he had been there. When I answered with seven months, she dropped her head.
“They took incredibly great care of him,” I said, “And even though it seemed like we were here for ages, he left this hospital alive.”
She raised her head to look at me and smiled.
Shortly after that, a doctor walked into the room and looked straight at her.
“I’d like to talk about Jessica’s surgery.”
The couple rushed out of the room, and I never saw them again.
After that, I felt much different about the waiting room and the east wing.
My conversation with that woman made me realize that I was not the only one who had had a horrible night in that waiting room.
Different families were in and out of here every day feeling the same feelings I had, except some weren’t as lucky to leave with their loved ones.
As I walked out of the double doors of the lobby and to my car, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted.
I had always been so angry at that hospital because I associated it with being abandoned and left behind, but I now realized that it wasn’t about me.
There was no reason to be mad at the hospital. It did its job and got him out of there alive.
