East of Paris: A little bump on the noggin (fiction)

Jana slowly regained consciousness out of the mist she was floating in.

A steady beeping. A muted hissing that rose-and-fell. Smells like the dentist office.

The light was odd...luminous and diffuse...and her arms felt heavy. Turning her head she saw that the red numbers on the clock read 4:23 AM. Jana NEVER woke up that early in the morning. Looking toward her arm she saw tubing and wires snaking out from beneath the blankets and over the railing that would prevent her from rolling out of bed.

As her mind cleared, she remembered that her bed did not have railings. Patting with her right hand, she could not find Gwain.

WHERE WAS GWAIN?

Turning her head the other way she saw a figure standing at the foot of her bed, looking at her chart. He was indistinct and fuzzy. Clearly her contact lenses were not in.

“Where am I?” she asked the anonymous figure.

“You are in the hospital” the figure replied in a man’s voice.

“I kinda figured that out” Jana replied. “Which one? And why?”

“I have a few standard questions that I need to ask you before I can answer your questions” the man deflected.

“What is the last thing you remember?” the man in the white jacket asked.

Jana could now hear a man cursing and using foul language. He was very loud and very angry. His voice faded as his gurney rolled past the door of her room and continued down the hall. Jana had flash-backs to the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

“I remember that we were getting ready to go to a meeting” Jana said.

“Who is ‘we’?” the man asked.

“Gwain, my husband and I” Jana answered. “Oh my God! Were we in a traffic accident? We were running late. Is Gwain OK? WHERE IS GWAIN?”

“Your husband is fine. He has been sitting with you every day. He went back to the hotel to sleep” the man reassured her.

“Do you remember what this meeting was to be about?” the man pressed.

“I certainly do” Jana said. “Our house was being condemned so they could build a solar farm. In fact, every property on the square-mile where we live was being condemned. Something about the property be optimally placed for pushing the power to the grid. All of our neighbors were meeting with an attorney to contest the condemnation process.”

Jana could see the silhouette of the man’s head nodding as he picked up the cordless keyboard and entered some information into her “charts”.

“I don’t know if you have spent much time in the hospital but there can be no expectation of privacy. You are something of a celebrity. Most people don’t survive what happened to you” the man told her.

“What DID happen to me?” she queried.

“According to your husband, you slipped on some icy steps and hit the back of your head. Your husband claimed that you said you were fine except for some ringing in your ears. He said that you started to slur your words as he was driving to the meeting...He chalked it off to a concussion and drove you straight to the closest Emergency Room.”

“Lots of people bump their heads” Jana said. “Why does that make me a celebrity?”

“You had inter-cranial bleeding exacerbated by the blood thinner you have been taking. The location of the bleeding put pressure on the parts of your brain that regulate blood-pressure. Let’s say that you provided a lot of different specialists with a very exciting time.”

“So, which hospital am I in?” Jana wanted to know.

“You are at University of Michigan’s main campus” the intern or resident informed her. The University of Michigan was an honest 80 miles from Asphodel.

“When can I check-out?” Jana asked.

“I can’t answer that, but a lot depends on if we can find a step-down facility that offers the therapy you need to get back on your feet. You were put on waiting lists as soon as you left surgery.”

Jana reached up and felt bandages on her head...and surmised that she had no hair left.

The last thing she remembered was grabbing her purse and pushing the door to their house open…. 

***

Mama Duck waddled out of her room followed by a dozen baby-ducks. Such was life in a teaching hospital. The doctor/professor pontificated in medical jargon, totally confident that the patient would understand no more than a slab-of-beef on ice in the butcher shop would understand what the butcher was saying.

Obviously, the Professor either didn’t know or didn’t care that Jana was fully capable of converting the Greek and Latin terms into everyday English. Jana didn’t have a lot of super-powers but a 99.9th% vocabulary was one of them.

After three reviews by three separate Mama Ducks and ducklings and countless anonymous medical people floating in-and-out of her room, Gwain was finally allowed to enter her room.

Jana teared up. She learned that he had faithfully showing up for three full weeks and sat with her for ten hours a day, not knowing if she would ever regain consciousness.

She could not see that Gwain’s eyes were also leaking tears.

“I want to go home” was all she could say.

“First, we have to get you better” Gwain said.

He couldn’t bear to tell her that the Eminent Domain hearings had proceeded at the speed-of-light (as these things go) and their home had already been bull-dozed.

There would be plenty of time to tell her later. He and God had a lot of conversations about that over the last few weeks.

“What do you think about spending the rest of the winter in Texas?” Gwain floated a trial balloon.

 

---Note to my readers---  

I had a request for some fiction "...to fend off cabin fever."

I am not in a position to make any promises. It will either grow "legs" or it won't. I hope to publish Tuesdays and Thursday and then migrate to a M-W-F installment drop.

---End Note---