Chronicles of Chaos

February 21, 2007 | Print

Michael hits a tree skiing

Michael’s a great skier. Saturday morning he walks out the door to take a few runs on the mountain with a few friends, one is a ski instructor.

An hour or so later, my cell phone rings.

“Kelly, Michael had an accident. He hit a tree, they’re taking him to the hospital. He’s ok. You need to meet him at the hospital right away.”

I hang up, stunned as in life has instantly become surreal. The phone rings again. Different caller, same news, “I don’t know how bad it is, I just know he hit a tree.”

I turn to the kids and tell them to get dressed, we’re going to the hospital to meet daddy. He hurt himself skiing. But he’s going to be fine.

I feel like I’ve been dumped into a jar of molasses. I can’t get my feet to move fast enough. I sense that I’ve started a journey and provisions are necessary. I pack a few jars of fruit baby food–because this is all I have and it seems vital.

I get the kids in their carseats and peel out of the garage. I know the “He’s ok” isn’t true.

I realize that I forgot the babyfood.

Somehow I end up following the ambulance to the ER. The lights blink, but no sirens. I stare into the dark ambulance windows and see a guy sitting there. He could be Michael.

Then the ambulance doors open and the sitting man turns out to be ski patrol and Michael’s on a stretcher with a back board. He’s wearing an oxygen mask, his forehead is caked with blood. He’s not really ok, though his eyes are open. He says “hi” to me in a drugged out way.

I have one minute by his bed/gurney before a nurse takes me to another room to answer lame insurance questions. I want to tell her that if Michael dies while I’m giving her my home address I’m going to kill her too. But later I may need her help.

The kids aren’t frightened, though they huddle beside me in our new florescent environment. We’re like a pod on mars.

I go back to Michael. A fireman appears and offers to take the kids to watch a video in the quiet room. He’s so gentle and kind that the kids go with him immediately. I hang a bit on the words quiet room, it seems like a place where medical care dips into mortuary.

I’m holding Oliver, standing by Michael’s bed. The nurses and doctor roll his body this way and that. He’s white from shock and shaking. His clothes are shredded on the floor, they cover him with blankets. He can move his feet on command which I decide is a good sign.

They seem to remain concerned–about his head. They relay the information to one another that he was unconscious for 15 minutes. Being the wife I’m supposed to already know this bit of evidence. Instead I feel like someone dropped me into an ER reality show.

I’m waiting for them to say “Ma’am (that’s my hospital name), we’re gonna helicopter him to Boise.” That’s what they do for severe head trauma, Ketchum is a level 1 hospital, as in basic.

I don’t want to ask so instead I debate whether to take the kids on the helicopter with me, or find someone to drive the kids or I don’t know what.

I’m trying on scenarios like–if Michael has only a few hours to live, the kids should be with him.

They take Michael to get a CT and x-rays. I call Lyndsey and ask her to pray and call everyone else she knows who prays.

I find Michael’s friends from skiing in the waiting room. They are stoically calm, as in eyes popping out of their heads scared but we’re not going to tell Michael’s wife. They describe how he went off the trail and hit a tree and was unconscious for a long time, how they thought he wasn’t going to wake up.

I retreat to my family only section of the ER. I find the quiet room. The kids are watching a cartoon video from the late 80’s. Michael’s mom calls me on a hospital line. I’m not sure what we talk about, I bet I mention that he can move his feet.

I restart the kids’ video and hang out at the nurses’ station. When I ask for the fifth time when Michael will return, the nurse at the phones takes pity on me.

“I had the helicopter coming in, but they just told me to cancel it.”

This is good news. He’s going to be fine.

Then I realize that I have no idea what fine means. I just have this sense from my brief time in hospital world that the distance between fine and not fine is uncomfortably short.

I know that even if Michael walks out of here in three hours (which he does) that things are different. It’s what makes me choke down a dry heave when the ER doctor shows me Michael’s cracked vertebrae on the x-rays. It’s what keeps my voice steady for the next two days when Michael asks me the same questions over and over and tells me that George Clinton is president.

The difference is that I’m alone and out of my league.

I’ve got to figure out what to do–whether we need a second opinion, how to get an appointment with the local neurologist over a holiday weekend, whether to take Michael back to the ER for another CT when he doesn’t get out of bed and barely talks the third day after the accident.

The phone rings constantly with people offering to help. And they are helpful. I’m thankful for them, but it’s still me without Michael trying to figure out what to do with Michael and not knowing whether to trust what he tells me because he’s high on vicodin or amnesia.

Amelia keeps asking me why Daddy needs so much help. He’s an adult.

I understand why, but the sensation of being with him and also without him, and in charge of him, is unlike anything I’ve experienced.

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