(please note: this is not directed at anyone on E2. Typically, I would not use fuck in a title, but am trying to fill nodeshells for Iron Noder.)


That moment occurred yesterday at precisely 2:23 EST, if the hospital clock can be trusted. My mother told me when I arrived at 1:00, that they were discharging her and had notified Pine Acres. She was still hooked up to telemetry and whiter than the rumpled hospital sheets on her undulating bed.


Of course, none of her care team were on the floor, so I calmly approached the desk and asked why neither I nor my sister (driving up from Virginia), her health care advocates, had been contacted at all. The woman at the desk offered to page one of the doctors.


The last I heard was that her kidneys were shutting down. Sent a terse email to the golden son telling him to get on a plane. Took over an hour for a doctor to come to the room, the nephrologist who had made my head explode the night before. She was joined by the house physician, so it was two against one as they both said I was misinformed and confused, that they both had told me she was being released. I started to object about the failure to communicate.


They played good cop/bad cop, covering their butts and lying. It was so unreal that outwardly I gave up. "Oh, yes, must have been my mistake, my misunderstanding, blah, blah, blah." Anything to get them to leave the room so I could call my sister. She got angry, as she had called in the morning and was told certain test results were not back and my mother was NOT being released.


My sister arrived an hour later, as my mother was confusedly eating her last meal. We went to get tea in the Family Waiting Room, trading information. She wanted to see the labs, the doctors' notes and I had tried to get them previously but was given some song and dance instead. My sister tried, also no luck.


In the midst of this, younger brother who did not get on a plane, called. I had advised my mother earlier that she was the only one who had the power to get him to come before she died. I used something she taught me re: dealing with men. She has always said, "You need to give them a script, because they don't think like we do."


I told her the next time he calls, tell him you no longer want to talk over the phone; you want to talk in person, then hang up. Repeat until he gets the message. She agreed and so did my sister. However, when the phone rang, my mother did the same old thing, then MY SISTER got on too.


And that is when my inner voice said, "Fuck you. Fuck you all," and I walked out of the room, even as my mother asked when she would see me again but I didn't answer and kept walking. My satisfyingly loud black leather boots and black leather coat clacking and flapping helped because that's how dark I felt inside.

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