My Korean Deli_ Risking It All for a Convenience Store - Ben Ryder Howe [107]
“What about work?” Gab says.
“What kind of work does your mother do?” the doctor asks. Gab tells him about the deli.
“She needs to stop immediately,” the doctor says. “That kind of stress is the worst thing for someone with her risk factors. I suggest six months of continuous rest, and then she can go back to work gradually, but in a different kind of job.”
Gab and I nod solemnly, stunned by the news and frightened of what it all means, but relieved that we’ve found out in time.
Jolt number three has yet to be delivered, though, and it comes when we ask the doctor if we can talk to Kay and tell her how lucky she is.
“She’s in a coma,” the doctor says. “We had to put her there so she can recuperate, and I think probably she will come out of it soon, but I can’t be sure.”
A coma? I think. Of course: the one way to get my mother-in-law to settle down and stop doing things. I’m sure if she were awake she’d be ripping the tubes out of her arms and trying to get out of bed, demanding that Gab fetch her a Parliament, which she’d try to get away with smoking in the hospital bathroom. And then she’d run to the store, yelling at us for abandoning it on a Saturday, of all days. (Emo and Dwayne have actually been holding down the fort just fine since this morning.)
“Well, can we see her?” Gab asks. “Just for a second?”
After making us promise not to disturb her, the doctor assents and takes us to the most dismal of all possible hospital rooms, an underlit windowless space with stains on the wall and disused machinery stacked in the corners. As much as I like the doctor, I have the urge to yank Kay out of here and put her in some swanky Manhattan hospital, whatever the cost. But then the nurse pulls back a curtain, revealing Kay’s spent-looking body, and I realize that with all the machines she’s hooked up to a move would be impossible. She’s been stripped, gurneyed and intubated, and her life force is so deeply buried in the coma that all her facial muscles have gone slack, to the point where she’s become unrecognizable. It’s not her! I feel like saying. She’s somewhere else in the hospital, somewhere the situation is less dire. We should find her and see if she’s okay!
But then I see draped over a vinyl chair what I know to be Kay’s signature article of clothing: that sleeveless orange shirt that shows off her arms and touts a place she’s never been to, and I have to leave the room so as not to disturb her while my emotions get the best of me.
THREE DAYS LATER Kay wakes up, and after the doctors have checked her out and she’s eaten, the family stages a kind of intervention while she’s still stuck in bed, informing her that for the sake of her health, we have to sell the store. Lying there somewhat stunned, my mother-in-law has an expression on her face that I’ve never seen on her before: she looks helpless and resigned. She doesn’t rip the tubes out of her arms and walk away. She doesn’t pshaw everyone and say, “Please. I make my own decisions.” She just sits there and listens without resisting. Finally, I can’t help thinking. Ganging up on her doesn’t feel good, but with a woman as strong as Kay, what choice do you have? And since we are helping her, whether she sees it that way or not, it is important to be strong ourselves. After we explain why she’s here in the hospital (she herself can’t remember anything from the day she came in), I think she does understand how close to killing herself she has been. That look of acquiescence would seem to indicate a recognition that it’s time to let go, though later it occurs to me that, knowing Kay, it could just as easily be shame at not being stronger, shame at not being able to work and dread of the physical pain that idleness will cause.
Nonetheless, she agrees to come home and rest, and for a few days we