heart string's part two (Emily)

As Emily lay in her hospital bed, tubes and machines everywhere, she looked back on her life and was happy. She wasn’t a very religious woman, but she knew that if she died right then and there, that she would be reunited with here mother who sadly passed from breast cancer when Emily was thirteen.

Emily’s father, John, wasn’t allowed into the hospital to be with her. He was allowed visit, but they mostly spoke on facetime. He was a very attentive man who loved his kids, but had an extra soft side when it came to his Emily.

John loved to recount how Emily came to be. Emily had heard the story hundreds of times. As she was so sick, every time he saw the hint of a person, no matter their profession, he would instruct them to pick up the phone and he did the speech. Today it was the cleaner, Vicky, who got the talk.  It always started with: ‘Emily’s mother and I decided on our honeymoon to have three kids. We were overjoyed when our three beautiful boys entered our life. Just when the youngest of the three, Richard, started school, we decided that because we were financially stable, we would go again to try a girl. We were overjoyed when our fourth son, David, was born. We decided we were destined to have boys and were overjoyed that everyone was happy and healthy. The same week David began secondary school, Emily’s mom, Teresa, was convinced she was going through the change and went to the doctor for some HRT. She nearly fainted when she was told that she was in the opposite direction of the menopause…she was pregnant. Finally, six months later we had the daughter we knew would complete our family.’

‘That good news.’ Vicky handed Emily back the phone before pulling her bed out to clean underneath it.

‘Did I not tell it right?’ her father asked her after such a curt response.

‘No dad. I just think she’s heard it before…. possibly more than once.’

Vicky was eavesdropping and said ‘three times I hear!’ in a sarcastic tone. She was a good soul was Vicky, but the lady in the bed opposite Emily died earlier that day and Vicky was the type of woman who invested on the patients way to wellness.

Emily herself got a shock when Patricia died. It brought home the magnitude that was heart failure.

Emily was diagnosed with having endocarditis which she contracted after a root canal….at least that’s what the doctors say caused it. Endocarditis is an infection that effects the inner lining of your heart chambers and heart valves.

At first, they thought it to be covid. She had the lot; aches and pains, chest pain when she breathed, fatigue, a fever and chills and shortness of breath. After her negative PCR test, the GP sent her into Beaumont to present herself at A&E. There were only twenty minutes between her sitting in the triage room to laying on a trolley with leads coming out of everywhere. She had a lot of tests done in quick succession and was assured that it definitely was not covid.

The doctors kept Emily in and gave her every drug under the sun to battle the infection that was eating away at her heart…but none worked. Emily was said to be in heart failure a week later and was told she needed a heart transplant, and soon.

There were days she found it hard to hold up the phone to see her father, but he understood. Due to shortness of breath, Emily had to have the fluid build up on her lungs taken out with a large syringe and an even bigger needle. They were doing it almost every second day, a procedure that wasn’t pleasant, but she did get relief from it. Today was a day that her breathing became crackly so she knew they were going to take an Xray and drain the fluid that continued to build up on her lungs.

True enough, as the doctor did his round, he ordered the Xray and was going to proceed with tapping her lungs later that day to make her more comfortable. A litre and a half came out of her right lung and a litre from her left. Almost immediately the crackling stopped and she could breathe freely again. The doctor however, had a concerned look about him as he was talking to her. He wanted to send her for more tests to see how weak her heart actually was.

Not long after the doctor left, she was whisked off in her bed to get an echocardiogram which is a type of ultrasound scan of your heart and the vessels around it. When the scan was over, she was transported back to her spot on the ward. She felt weak but a health care assistant kindly propped the phone up against a jug so Emily could speak with her dad.

She told him about the tests she had and how she had more fluid on her lungs today. As she was talking to him, her eyes were closing. She was exhausted, and all she did all day was lay there. The machine behind her began to beep. She felt lightheaded and dizzy all the while hearing her father telling her to close her eyes and have a nap and that he will hang up when she fell asleep. Emily just nodded her head, the fatigue taking over.

The first thing she noticed when she woke up was that there was a mask over her face. She tried to remove it countless times but a HCA reassured her that it was helping her and the effort it took to raise her hand to remove it left her exhausted. She lost the battle but prayed to God to win the war. As she dipped in and out of consciousness, she can recall the doctor coming into her room and telling her that they had a heart for her. She couldn’t distinguish whether she heard him right or not but kept telling herself that no matter what, her mother’s hand would guide her.

 

Emily doesn’t remember much about her mother when she was well. She just remembers the hushed discussions that she wasn’t privy to. The day her parents sat all five kids down, her brothers all knowing what was coming as they were already told, and telling them that mammy had cancer. It felt like Emily had the wind knocked out of her. She was only twelve and on the cusp of womanhood. She knew from her brothers red eyes that the prognosis wasn’t good.

She remembers her being bald. Her head as smooth as a baby’s backside. Emily wanted to shave her head in solidarity but wanted to get sponsored for the act. She wanted to raise money for cancer research, but her family put a stop to that. What they didn’t know was that Emily was a coding whizz and knew she could make a web page and make the whole thing go viral…. her parents still didn’t budge. She had to back down when she was outnumbered and technically her hair belonged to them for another six years.

After every chemotherapy session, her eldest brother, Steven, took her over to his house for a couple of days to ‘let mammy recover.’ She had read up about chemotherapy and how it kills fast growing cells in your body. She secretly knew Steven just didn’t want her hearing her mother throwing up all night when she had school the next day.

Emily quickly went into a rebellious stage when she entered secondary school and found a group of new friends, friends her parents weren’t all too happy about. She stayed out way past her curfew and refused to do her homework. The hormones in her body were raging and since she found it hard watching her mother slowly expire. She started drinking and smoking down side alleys around the town. She simply needed an outlet, something that even her brothers couldn’t provide.

One Tuesday, she came home at eight o’clock, when she was supposed to be home at six, drunk as a skunk. Her father loved his baby girl but that day he laid into her like there was no tomorrow. She doesn’t remember the whole conversation, but she remembered that that was how she heard that her mother was dying.

‘…. you’re off galivanting and getting drunk and here’s your mother, on her death bed, waiting for you to come home not knowing if you were dead or alive!’

Emily will never forget that part of a very long guilt trip. It sobered her up quickly. She was led into the dining room, where her mother was propped up in her new bed. She ran to her. That was the day the bed arrived and all of the furniture in the dining room was put in the shed. That was the day that it hit Emily that her mother was now in palliative care. She buried her head in her mothers lap and sobbed uncontrollably suddenly seeing the error of her ways. There was more to life than trying to forget the hard to deal with things when you could cherish the moments that you could so easily miss by acting out. A lot of changes happened that day; Emily put her rebellious days behind her, and her mother began to decline rapidly. Three weeks later, she was gone!

Before she died, Emily’s mother told her the story of how she lost her own mother. ‘Nana died after a car wreck,’ she started her breathing becoming more erratic. ‘I found out too late that she had passed and never got to say goodbye to her. I know me being sick is hard for you, but you have to promise me that you’ll look after daddy.’

‘Of course I will!’

‘He really needs you so no more drinking in bushes and definitely no boys or you’d give him a coronary!’

Emily could hear her mother’s breathing become laboured so she placed the nasal cannula on her.

‘Thanks love!’ she said, her icy hand grabbing that of her thirteen-year-old daughters.

‘Right where were we?’ her mother asked.

‘You were telling me how Nana passed.’

‘Oh yeah. Pop had already passed when Nana died, but her death could have been prevented. She was driving home from mass when a lunatic in a pimped-up car tried to overtake her on a bend. Nana knew there was a tractor coming the opposite way, that’s why she was driving so slowly, but this boy racer realised it too late and lost control of his car. The only blessing in the story is that they said Nana died quickly and didn’t suffer. The boy racer survived and was found to be drunk and high on cocaine. The driver of the tractor was lucky and came away with only bumps and bruises. Poor Nana!’ she shook her head and furrowed her brow, breathing in the oxygen that was being pumped through her nasal cannula.

‘Did you sue the driver?’ Emily asked.

‘It went to court and every penny is in your college fund, that’s what Nana would have wanted. The driver received a five-year sentence and was out in three because of overcrowding.’

‘He only did three years?’

‘Yea, but what I’m trying to tell you is that even though ours is a prolonged goodbye, I wouldn’t change it for the world because I get to watch you blossom into a fabulous young woman…even if its from this eyesore of a bed!’ her mother giggled.

Emily looked into her mothers eyes and nodded. She too was grateful for the extra time the chemotherapy had given them and how she got to show her mother how much she loved and cared for her, even if she had a few rebellious moments.

Her mothers eye were sunken and her pale complexion turned a twinge of blue. She heard her breathing to be erratic. One breath would be deep and long, the next shallow. Emily knew in her heart that she was close to death. After recounting the story, her mother was tired and closed her eyes for the last time. She died that night surrounded by her family, the people who she loved most in the world.

 

Emily longed to be with her mother. She could hear her name being called and was searching to find where it was coming from. She felt electricity in her chest a few times and a lot of pressure. Everything was white and looked as though there was a dense fog in front of her. She heard her name again and took a step forward into the fog. She saw an outstretched hand and reached for it. She felt electricity jolt through her whole body once more pushing the hand further away. She began to look for it, the pounding on her chest making it difficult. Finally the hand was visible again. Emily reached out for it and saw the soft features of her mother. She looked younger than Emily remembered and when she began to speak, Emily’s heart melted. She had longed to hear that sweet voice again.

‘I’m here for you peanut, but not yet!’

Emily was confused.

‘Its not your time sweetheart!’ her mothers soft voice tried to explain.

‘But I’m ready!’ Emily tried to argue.

‘Trust me,’ her mother began, ‘you are far from ready. You have years left in you to live and enjoy life.’

‘But I want to be with you!’

‘And I want you here! But now is not the time! Give your brothers kisses from me and make sure you look after daddy!’

The white fog was dissipating and her mothers hand had retracted. The whiteness became blackness and Emily heard her name being called once more.

As Emily slowly opened her eyes, she saw a sea of heads looking down on her. They were all smiling at her. She felt like she had been run over by a truck and all she could say was, ‘ouch!’ She felt a hand on hers and a cold liquid entered the vein she had a cannula in on her hand. Her whole body felt as though it was floating and her eyes closed again.

The next time she woke, she looked at her surroundings. She felt the cuff of the blood pressure machine tighten on her left upper arm and when she moved her head, she was able to see the reading it produced. She was shocked. For the first time since she entered A&E all those weeks ago, her blood pressure was reading as normal.

‘This cant be right!’ she thought to herself, so she called for a nurse.

‘Ah, you’re awake sleepy head!’ the nurse beamed at her.

Emily’s mouth felt like moth balls but she still managed to ask, ‘what happened?’

‘You, miss Emily, have a new heart is what happened!’ the nurse told her as she hung more fluids.

‘What?’ Emily smiled at her.

‘We almost lost you but a heart came at just the right time!’ she smiled. ‘Do you want to sit up a bit and call your dad? I’m sure he’d love to see you!’

Emily nodded with tears in her eyes. After the bed was raised, the nurse handed her the phone and Emily called her dad. It was a very emotional facetime, her father beaming through the screen.

‘We should have you home in no time!’ he said before the phone was grabbed out of his hand by David. ‘We’re going to have to throw you the sickest coming home party ever!’ She heard Richard, Mark, Steven and her father grumble at the fact that it was a bad joke. ‘What?’ David asked, ‘she’s better now!’

Just before David dug the hole deeper, Emily’s dad took the phone back and she could see he was crying.

‘What’s wrong dad?’ Emily asked with a furrowed brow.

‘I just wish your mother were here to see this is all!’

Emily simply answered, ‘she’s here more than you think!’ and smiled to herself, but that was a story for another day!