PENdemic Word Crochet

INTINCTURE

“Healing is a creative act, calling for all the hard work and dedication needed for other forms of creativity.
Bernard Siegel, Love, Medicine, Miracles


Should your colon rupture from a fishbone swallow, avoid flu season concurrent with an
Ice storm, elements of ER triage disaster in my case.
Combative drunks from rollover car accidents commanded the X-ray machines
Till the most combative one was held down by five nurses and security,
His alcohol-anesthetized skull feels pain and I,
On a plane past pain writhe waiting for him to settle, awaiting last turn.

They allow my husband to use an illegal wrestling hold to calm him for mere seconds
To stop his thrashing long enough to X-ray Mr. Wiggle who goes to ICU so that after hours
I, too, can be X-rayed and told hastily, “Airaboveyourdiaphragm: YOU NEED SURGERY!”
These happy tidings come with an offer I can’t refuse: painkillers 10 hours since lancing pain began,
Creating for me five hours earlier a ride to hospital on hands and knees in back seat. I initialed consents:
“Up to and including colostomy”—I laughed when Word-Nerd I understood what that meant.

Earlier that week 16 strangers extended their arms, lay on cots till released to waiting cookies,
Abundant liquids to restore them and prevent dizziness after donating a unit of blood.
Each then spent mandatory down-time paging through ruffled magazines or books they brought,
Chatting with regular donors so that this day my life is saved:
Their garnet gifts given when, hours after surgery, my husband is forced away
As PA speakers confide melodically, “CODE RED. CODE RED.”

He protests and at his height and strength cannot be budged by short head nurse’s words.
She propels his mid-section saying, “There will be 30 people here in 30 seconds:
We need the room to save your wife.”

I look past my feet, see his stricken gaze at me from the hall,
His massive ham hands hang as worn ribbons, his shock is burned into my mind’s eye
Sepsis Sedation Scrub Scrape Sterilize Salvage Suture
Have brought me to this point where 60 hands strive to keep blood within me.
Several masked mouths repeat the questions,
“Do you know your name? Do you know where you are? Do you know what day it is?

Asked so often by such sober inflections, I opt to inject humor into their gravity:
“You act like I’m dying…same-o questions…don’t you know others?”
Heads turn in unison, pitying eyes signal, “She knows,” but only for a millisecond, then work resumes:
Needles jab into any spaghetti vein that will hold them: arms, legs, wrists, toes.
I listen to numbers called out again and again: 50 over 18.
Can this low number be my blood pressure? I never knew it could be so low and one could live.
Neither did my childhood friend, a hospital chaplain, who later said, “Only you, Vick, only you!”

Six weeks later I enter my church’s hushed, darkened sanctuary.
It is Ash Wednesday. I walk forward for communion by intinction.
The garnet droplets seep into the consecrated body.
A miracle: I live!