Creative Thoughts

Paper #3 - Draft #2

Blank White Walls

            In Mitch Albom’s book For One More Day, the main character tells a story of his life with his mother and father.  Growing up, his father told him that he could either choose to be a mama’s boy or a daddy’s boy, but not both.  He ends up choosing to be a daddy’s boy, but then due to unfortunate circumstances, is forced to become a mama’s boy.  I am not sure I completely agree with that.  My mom and I definitely get along very well, especially the older I get.  We do all the fun girly stuff such as shopping, getting our nails done, and having lunches on my afternoons off.  I couldn’t imagine my life without her, through good times and bad.  However,  for most of my life, and still today, some could call me a Daddy’s Girl.

              We have always been really close and it has been very hard for him to ever get mad at me.  Actually, I can only remember one time that he ever spanked me.  We have a relationship that is one of a kind in my opinion.  I never have a problem telling him about my life, whether it’s about my car being hit by a hit and run driver or about having a crush on a boy.  From hanging up pictures in my house to fixing my disposal to mowing my lawn, my dad is always eager to help me out.  And somehow, I always end up finding multiple dollar bills hidden somewhere noticeable that I will find after he leaves.  He’s always there for me 100 percent, and I think our relationship grows better every day.

* * *

            When I say that I don’t like hospitals, I really actually mean it.  I’m not another person whose ninety-year-old Grandma died of old age in the hospital.  I’m not the girl who’s had numerous injuries that landed me in the hospital for dumb reasons.  No.  When I say I don’t like hospitals, it is for a much deeper reason; a lot has to do with those damn white walls.

            It was one of those days you could never forget, not even if you tried your absolute hardest.  The smell of the hallway was a mixture of Clorox and ammonia.  The walls were completely white, silence ringing all the way down the stretch.  The floor was lonely, only getting used once in a while by people moving very rapidly.  All the doors were closed, with the name plates protruding words from the dictionary that my thirteen year-old vocabulary had yet to include.  I walked slowly down the hallway, back to the boring white room where my mom sat. 

            That day had already been a day of hell.  My older brother had just turned fifteen, and we all know what that means…. driving permit.  That morning he was itching to get his permit, so my mom drove Tom (my brother) and me to the Motor Vehicle Department.  I had a mixture of emotions.  Yes, it would be awesome eventually for my older brother to be cool and drive me around without my parents being in the same car, but that day, the thought of Tom driving scared the shenanigans out of me!  However, I had to get used to it very quickly.  Smile. Take picture. Print out white temporary permit.  In the blue van we go with Tom in the driver’s seat.  I’m not actually sure how I lived that day because I don’t remember breathing all the way from the Motor Vehicle Department to Longmont United Hospital.  Against whatever thoughts I had about not getting to the hospital safely, I was soon there, dreading the rest of the day ahead. 

            I walked through the door into the white room where my mom sat.  Magazines were scattered on the table next to me, but all I could think about was where my daddy was, and what was happening to him.  I watched the television blankly; I wondered why I was sitting in this room and what kind of news I was going to find out in that blank, white little room with the magazines. 

* * *

            Long before I was born in the 1970’s, my dad decided to go to New York City and get a tattoo.  Being the A-personality he was (and still is!), lines were not his thing.  Instead of staying with his friends at the local tattoo parlor that they had decided on, he went to another parlor down the road.  A magnificent lion on his upper left arm was produced that day.  It wasn’t until about thirty years later in 1997 that doctors found out that hepatitis C was running through his blood veins.  His treatments for hepatitis C began in 2001 and ended in early 2002.  The combination therapy for hepatitis C has a side effect of compromising your immune system.  It did exactly that to my dads’. In November 2002, after being ill from taking a trip to his hometown of Newington, Connecticut, he developed pnenmonia.  It took one afternoon doctor’s visit to land him in the hospital.  The pneumonia was un-treatable, other than by having a massive lung operation called a thorocodomy. 

* * *

            After what felt like an eternity, the doctors came and got our family.  Through the winding white halls we walked and walked and walked.  Peering into rooms as I walked through the halls, I saw generations of people lying in the beds.  I wondered what each of them was in there for.  Cancer?  Old age?  A concussion?  Epilepsy?  Scenario after scenario ran through my head all the way to the ICU.  What an incredible pun: ICU.  So literal.  Coming upon the door that the doctors had pointed out as the room where my dad was at, I decided to hold back a little bit and let my mom and brother go in first.  I could feel my heartbeat speed up and my breathing get more difficult.  I felt like soon I was going to be in a bed in the ICU.  After a minute or so, I walked in. 

            There, in the bed, was not my happy smiling daddy driving me to school every day or buying me coffee at Starbucks.  He wasn’t the daddy that left my home the morning of his doctor’s appointment.  He wasn’t the daddy I remembered or wanted to ever see.  He was a daddy in pain; tubes seemed to overtake his entire body like an octopus eating its prey.  His face was as pale as the blank white walls which surrounded him.  Why couldn’t they color the walls??  Tears fell as fast from my eyes as rain in a hurricane.  I couldn’t breathe anymore; which was apparently becoming a pattern for the day.  My mind went still for a moment.  Then, after a couple moments, I finally got a “Hi” out.  I went over and saw him, wishing we were getting coffee at Starbucks or eating breakfast before school.  He told me that everything was going to be okay.  The lung surgery had gone well.  They had peeled the built up tissue off like you would peel an orange, so now he could breathe much better.  At least one of us was breathing easy…..

            For the next fourteen days, my dad was in the hospital recovering.  On Thanksgiving Day 2002, my mom, brother and I brought over a Butter braid for breakfast in the morning.  We stayed all day watching movies and having good conversations.  For Thanksgiving dinner, we ate the hospital turkey dinner.  Believe it or not, it was actually extremely good! But no matter how good the food was or how beautiful the room that he was in was, all I wanted was for him to be home in Loveland, sitting in his comfy chair in the basement living room. 

            On one night during those fourteen days, I wanted to keep my daddy company, so I spent the night on the pull out couch.  I didn’t want him sleeping all alone in that blank white room.  Apparently, during the night, multiple doctors and technicians had come in and weighed him, given him drugs, and done multiple tests.  I slept through it all.  I guess you could say I was just there for the moral support!  After those long, draining fourteen days of recovery in the hospital, my dad was able to come home to his comfy chair in the basement living room.  The day he came home was the day I started breathing again.

* * *

            It is almost November 2008, approximately six years later.  Not a Thanksgiving goes by that I don’t give extreme thanks for that Thanksgiving Day in 2002.  I give thanks for the incredible family I have, and the strong amazing dad that God blessed me with.  I think God made my dad an example of excellence, to show me that even  through trial and error, everything will be okay and remember to breathe.  He still battles Hepatitis C every moment of his life, and until God grants the world with a cure, he will still be battling.  As much as people think that I worry about him, and I do, I remember that Thanksgiving in November 2002 and how that moment in the ICU changed my life.  I know that whatever happens in my daddy’s life is what God wants, and He will do what’s right.  As for now, I’ll just worry about what coffee I’m going to get at Starbucks and what pictures need to be hung on my wall next.  Why worry about what may never happen?  Just breathe.