ICU, bed 20

I can only now describe to you the terrifying hours of this past weekend, now that he is safe, now that he is found, now that my little brother is alive and recovering.

Spencer’s girlfriend contacted me around 1:30 on Saturday afternoon, inquiring as to whether I had heard from Spencer yet that day. I hardly considered it a cause to worry, until I called his phone myself and a friend of his answered, also wondering if I knew where Spencer might be. His friend informed me that he had already checked on couches, called hospitals, and even visited the jail looking for him. My immediate contradictory desire to both punch Spencer in the mouth if I found him sleeping in his own bed past noon unaccessible and desire to just locate him safe and intact and not incarcerated or hospitalized almost made my stomach flip. I looked over at Ben with fear in my eyes.

We got in the car and started driving. We didn’t know what else to do and I could not bear to just sit around and wait. We searched up and down the streets where he was last seen, and my tears only really began to overwhelm my controlling mind when he turned the car around the last time to head home. I must have realized at that moment most poignantly that I could not fix this on my own. I called my mom (probably should have done that sooner) and called HPD immediately after.

While waiting for the police to arrive to take our statement for a missing persons report, my mom called me frantically saying something about a message left on our home phone from Ben Taub Hospital. Ben Taub, where you go if you get stabbed or shot, that Ben Taub kept flashing through my brain as I sped to the hospital, picking up a friend along the way as I was a little too frantic to drive safely and be alone in this moment (and husBen had to wait at the house for the police to arrive).

About a block from the hospital, my mom calls me back with more information: he is in the ICU, bed 20. Really losing it now. I practically lunged at his hospital bed when I burst through the doors of the ICU. And there he was, breathing. Alive. My unidentified little brother. Collar. Intubated. In full restraints. Pale with dried blood caked in his hair.

His eyes locked mine wildly and he tried to sit up. I could see his blood pressure start to spike on the monitor so I tried to remain calm and just hold his hand, tell him I was here now and that everything would be okay. The kind nurse let me untie his hands so that we could communicate through writing.

What happened?

You got stabbed in the neck.

Did I hurt anyone?

You arrived alone.

Can I walk?

You are going to be fine.

Is this a shitty hospital?

The best one for you right now.

Don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.

I am so sorry I wasn’t here sooner Spencer.

Just please don’t leave me…

My friend made it up to the ICU and we stood by his side til all my other family members arrived, each needing to see for them selves that he was alive and not facing long term consequences of this terrifying incident. No one was allowed to stay overnight in the ICU, so we eventually went home to spend a sleepless night apart from him, waking constantly to call his sweet nurse and ask how he was doing.

The doctors finally discharged Spencer late Monday evening to go home to Victoria under my parents’ watch, leaving the rest of us in position to recover emotionally from the shock of the weekend.

Part of my moving on involves me forgiving myself for those hours between 6 am Saturday morning (after Spencer got through surgery and was admitted to the ICU) and 4 pm when I first saw him. My mind keeps forcing the image of him waking up, cloudy minded on sedation, tied to a hospital bed with a tube down his throat, unable to reach us. Unable to ask what happened or if he still had legs or if he would be okay (you see how my time working in the ICU affects my imagination).

Spencer is going to be fine, probably a little wiser even, and he certainly aged our dear mother about 5 years. I am not sure what I learned from this, except what it feels like to be on the other side, to be the family crammed in a hospital room patiently hanging on the doctor’s orders. And from that first moment of seeing Spencer helpless in a hospital bed, the patient forever became a person; the patients of my future became someone’s little brother.  So go hug your family and keep them close by your side, because it should not take the terrifying potential of losing someone to acknowledge how deeply they can affect you.