I was walking home from work on Wednesday evening and just turning down into my neighborhood when my ears caught the notes of the clock tower across the river.
The atmosphere must be just right, I thought as cocked my head to try to hear each note of the Westminster tune, and the eight dongs after it. It was as if the city was the living room of my parents’ home and the clock they had purchased for one October 1st anniversary was chiming and I suddenly remembered reading Charles Dickens on Christmas vacation.
The next day I drove to work, but as I drove home and got out of the car, I heard it again, this time preparing for nine dongs. I almost never hear this clock from home.
The next day I didn’t hear the clock. But as I walked the halls at work, between a family struggling with a difficult situation and the bedside, I was reminded that there really are cases where time seems to stand still, as if someone has run up the steps of the world’s bell tower and stuffed pillows around the clapper.
When a four hour heart surgery becomes a ten hour heart surgery, this happens. With each walk I take to talk to the family, it’s as if one more pillow has been stuffed. The air seems to take on a dream-like quality I remember from the day my mom died. The schedules and plans I had for the day mist away like a fading mirage on a screen.
Not too long ago in a case like this, I first assured the person in the waiting room as the hours stretched on that the doctor wasn’t worried, but things were just taking a lot longer. Then, the situation progressed and the next time I made the trek down the long hall, I was forced to relay that the doctor was in fact worried now.
These are the moments time stands still, and looking at your watch no longer matters.
When a person gets so sick the atmosphere in their body is incompatible with life, this happens. When the heart continues to beat in a hostile environment as the other organs shut down and blood is shunted to the vital organs and away from the hands and feet in the last desperate effort of the human body to hold one, this happens.
And then the other day, I had a brief moment of my own. It was morning at work when the overhead tone went off: CODE BLUE. I suddenly remembered that the area where the alarm was being called was the unit where my grandma went sometimes, and I knew she was scheduled to come that day for a test on her poorly functioning heart, which by the way makes a person at risk for sudden cardiac death.
I ran to Sue, who knows everything.
“Do they do stress echos over there?” I asked in a panic.
“Yes,” she said.
I ran down the long hall I always walk down with news for someone else. I bolted through the double doors and passed the receptionist’s desk and hit the down button on the elevators. Of course they were both on the first floor, probably full of staff running to the code.
As I stood waiting, the receptionist said, “Katrina, we have mail for you” and pulled out a stamped envelope.
“I’ll be back,” I said, but the elevator still wouldn’t come and so I took the mail and stuffed it in my book, before jumping on the elevator and running toward the scene down another long hall. A tall, lean respiratory therapist jogged up, heading the same place, and shouted, “I’ll get an elevator” as he passed me and the nursing supervisor who was also on her way.
“I’m afraid it’s my grandma,” I told the nursing supervisor as we rushed after the respiratory therapist.
We burst off the top of the elevator, and it wasn’t my grandma as you might have guessed, and I think the patient did okay although it wasn’t my business any more.
And just like that, the pillows fell out of the clock tower for me and counting time became valid again.
When I got back to my unit, I tore open the envelope I had been handed.
It was from the person I had talked to all through the long surgery which had progressed from tedious to dangerous. In a world where trauma and drama are never more than a phone call away, the thoughtfulness fell on my heart like music.
Dear Katrina,
I want to thank you very much for all you did for __________ and me….you came out to give me updates at least four times during the operation…May God bless you.