Brother, I'm Dying - Edwidge Danticat [82]
Once in Ward D, where no lawyers or family members are allowed to visit, and where prisoners are restrained to prevent escapes, to protect the staff, the guards and the prisoners from one another, his feet were probably shackled once more, just as, according to Krome records, they’d been during the ambulance ride. He was given another IV at 10:00 p.m., at which time it was noted by the nurse on duty that he was “resting quietly.” He was to be further observed and followed up, she added.
His vital signs were checked again at midnight, then at 1:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. the next day, when his temperature was 96 degrees, his heart rate a dangerous 114 beats per minute and his blood pressure 159/80. At 9:00 a.m. he was given another IV and 5 mg of Vasotec to help lower his blood pressure. By 11:00 a.m., his heart rate had decreased to 102 beats per minute, still distressingly high for an eighty-one-year-old man with his symptoms.
The records indicate that he was seen for the first time by a physician at 1:00 p.m., exactly twenty-four hours after he’d been brought to the emergency room. The physician, Dr. Hernandez, noted his test results, namely his high white cell count, his elevated liver enzymes and his persistent abdominal pain. He then ordered an abdominal ultrasound, which was performed at 4:56 p.m. The ultrasound showed intra-abdominal fluid around my uncle’s liver and sludge, or thickened bile, in his gallbladder. Before the test was administered, my uncle was given another patient consent form to sign. He signed it less comprehensibly than the first, next to a stamped hospital declaration of “PATIENT UNABLE TO SIGN.”
At 7:00 p.m., after more than twenty hours of no food and sugarless IV fluids, my uncle was sweating profusely and complained of weakness. He was found to be hypoglycemic, with a lower than normal blood sugar level of 42 mg/dl. The doctor on duty prescribed a 5 percent dextrose drip and twenty minutes later, my uncle’s blood glucose stabilized at 121 mg/dl. It was then noted that he was awake and alert and his mental response “appropriate.”
At 7:55 p.m., his heart rate rose again, this time to 110 beats per minute. An electrocardiogram (EKG) was performed at 8:16 p.m. The next note on the chart shows that he was found pulseless and unresponsive by an immigration guard at 8:30 p.m. There is no detailed account of “the code” or the sixteen minutes between the time he was found unresponsive and the time he was pronounced dead, at 8:46 p.m. Only a quick scribble that cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) “continued for 11 mins.”
Aside from the time he had throat cancer, my uncle nearly died on one other occasion. It was the summer of 1975, and I was six years old. He was stricken with malaria. Fever, chills, nausea and diarrhea had sent him to his doctor, who’d hospitalized him.
I hadn’t seen him in several days when Tante Denise brought Nick, Bob and me to the hospital to visit him. When we walked into his small private room, he was curled in a fetal position, and though he was wrapped in several blankets, was shivering. His face was ashen and gray and his eyes the color of corn.
“The children are here,” Tante Denise had told him.
He seemed not to see us. Grunting, he closed his eyes as if to protect them from the ache coursing through the rest of his body. When he opened his eyes again, he glared at us as if wondering what we were doing there.
“I brought the children,” Tante Denise said again. “You asked for them.”
He looked at each one of us carefully, then said, “Ti moun, children.”
“Wi,” we answered, a weak chorus of five-and six-year-olds.
Looking at Nick, my uncle said, “Maxo, I’ll be sad to die without seeing you again.” Then turning to Bob, he said, “Isn’t that right, Mira?”
He called me Ino, the name of his dead sister.
“Ino knows I’m right,” he said. Then closing his eyes once more, he added, “Kite zetwal yo tonbe.” Let the stars fall.
His words evoked a loud wail from Tante Denise, who grabbed us by the hands and