The Phone Call

 

It’s been a few months since he died. A simple, white stone now stands watch for him at Camp Butler National Cemetery.

I have put off canceling his cell-phone service as long as possible. His children, friends and family from all over the world still call to hear him say “Leave me a message,” then weep and pour their hearts out into his voice mail.

But money is tight. The phone has to go. It really wasn’t much good, when none of his doctors would call him on it when he so desperately needed them.

It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.

I knew Amy wasn’t doing well; when I had seen her on Friday, she just laid in bed, breathing heavily. She didn’t even turn to look at me, much less talk. I had sat with her for a while, sang Amazing Grace almost inaudibly, and left the small bag of bananas and salt prunes she had requested on the small table beside her bed.

I had left strict instructions with the nurses that night—Please, call me if anything happens. Call me if she passes. I want to know. I didn’t know if they’d be able to reach any family for Amy, as family contact had been spotty at best the entire time she’d been in the hospital. I wanted there to be someone who could bear witness to her last moments. 

 

I’m sitting at my desk when the phone rings. A blue jay is feeding her baby in the coral tree outside my window. She is determined and direct, pecking her catch in gentle spurts into the little bird’s gaping beak. The fledgling squawks hoarsely for more. I pick up the phone.  

 

It’s my son’s oncologist. My heart no longer jumps into my throat when I hear his voice; we speak frequently now, comanaging my son’s leukemia–a case that is proving anything but ordinary. I have no idea why he is calling today.

 

My 72-year-old dad is in neurologic intensive care in a strange hospital in a strange city far from his home and from mine. In the midst of my fully-booked morning of seeing patients, I am trying to reach my diminutive stepmother on the cell phone that she does not know how to program to hear her layperson’s interpretation of what the strange doctors are telling her.

Unable to get through to my step-mother, I step into the next exam room to see Mr. P, a 72-year-old man with stable coronary disease and Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). He has difficulty hearing and is here with his protective wife for a routine checkup.

My twins were born just twelve hours after I came home from work, but six weeks earlier than expected, so I extended my maternity leave for as long as possible. My partners were accommodating and generous while I was away, but they were plenty glad to have me in the call rotation when I came back. So, after my four months’ leave, I was on the schedule within a week or two of returning to work.

On a cold December day, I heard a knock on our clinic door. “Hello? Can someone help me?”

Her name was Sara. She wore an oversized blue jacket, black rain boots and a scarf over her head. With my bright blue Health Leads patient advocate polo shirt, I greeted Sara as she sat down in the chair next to me.

“I need some childcare vouchers. They’ve stopped giving me money and I can’t seem to make ends meet any more,” she told me quietly.

 

“I need you to come back to the hospital,” I would say over the phone. I would hear a rush of inhaled air, signaling stunned shock. “Is there someone who can drive you?” I would provide only enough details to communicate urgency and allude to the dire nature of the patient’s condition.

 

After forty years of critical care nursing, I have lost count of how many calls like that I’ve made, of how I perfected the words, of how I danced around the truth, of how I baited and buffered to make sure the person on the other end of the line arrived at the hospital safely. The calls ran together. But one call stood out, because it required no words, and I was its recipient.

The call came twenty years ago, but it stands out in my mind like it was yesterday. I was a student nurse on a psychiatric rotation, and my clinical instructor called to inform me that the patient that I had been caring for had died. The death occured after discharge from the hospital. And the cause of death was suicide.

 

My phone rang. It was late on a Tuesday afternoon, and I was at work. It was Dr. H. “I hate to tell you this over the phone, but time is of the essence,” started my new gynecologist, in the call that changed my life. “The biopsy shows you have a rare and very aggressive form of uterine cancer. I’ve already obtained an appointment for you this week with Dr. K, a gyn-oncologist, and he is prepared to operate the following week.