Daughter’s Bedside Vigil

Excerpt

A flat red line, blinking numbers on a black cold screen. I watched the vitals-monitor intently as his blood pressure continued to crash and his heart rate became a line as flat as the horizon. In the background I was vaguely aware of the resident calling out orders to give glucose, bicarb, check an ABG. Crinkling plastic wrap as the nurse fumbled to open a syringe, in a flurry of purple scrubs. “He couldn’t be crashing,” I thought in disbelief. He was supposed to be a simple congestive heart failure exacerbation who we would diurese and send home to his brownstone in Brooklyn. His family was filling the room: his daughters, his only son, his grandchildren, and a rabbi. I could feel their cumulative body heat huddled behind me as I stood awkwardly at the end of his bed, rubbing his sheet between my fingers, a sort of primitive reflex of comfort, from my childhood of rubbing a silk baby blanket. …