by Terry Tierney
My wife points toward the window, her hand trembling. “There’s a bear outside.”
She lies propped up on a mechanical bed in the Intensive Care Unit with tubes piercing her arms and thighs connected to monitors flashing green lines and digits. Her eyes and raspy voice convince me this is no cuddly bear but a grizzly of wilderness proportions, a supernatural bear perched without a ledge on the eighth floor, threatening to punch through the glass with razor claws.
After we arrived at the hospital, I soon learned to decode the worrisome screens by listening to the nurses and doctors, but I have no idea what the bear intends. Will it crash into the room, swipe away the wires and equipment, grab the oxygen tank in its oversized jaws, or worse gouge my wife, what little there is left of her?
One night at Yosemite a bear ripped off the side panel of our friend’s Toyota. He thought he had cleaned out the food traces, but his young daughter left a candy wrapper between the seat cushions. A park ranger inspected the damage the next morning and fined him for violating the policy against feeding bears.
In my wife’s room I see several snacks for the bear depending on its taste for throat lozenges and tissues spotted with blood and body fluids. Our friends never saw the bear that slashed their car in Yosemite.
When the doctors allowed me into the Emergency Room last night, they said the ambulance had delivered her just in time. Her blood pressure was dangerously low and her pulse extremely high. Her heart, lungs, and kidneys were shutting down. They pumped her full of adrenaline, blood products, and other fluids, but they had not determined what caused her crisis. Assuming a possible infectious disease they gave her antibiotics. I overheard someone mumbling that she had less than a 50-50 chance.
Stunned by her rapid decline, I kept repeating the same origin story I told the 911 operator, the firemen, and the medics who wheeled her out of our house, recalling the only incident I could blame. Two days before we had walked along the canals of Venice, the final day of a Mediterranean cruise we spent years planning and saving for. She felt an insect bite her neck followed by intense pain, a welt and hot rash, but neither of us thought the sting was life threatening. We didn’t see the wasp or whatever it was. We flew home the next day without incident, and she stayed in bed most of the day after our flight. We blamed jet lag. Then the diarrhea began. After she awoke with little sleep on our second day home her symptoms spiked. I tried to schedule a doctor’s appointment and waited for a call back. An hour later I decided to drive her to the Emergency Room, but the rash covering her body made my attempts to lift her excruciating. She couldn’t stand on her own. I called 911.
Even with the bear outside the window my wife falls asleep until the nurses arrive with another round of tests. In the morning, she whispers that she heard gerbils scrambling and scratching overnight, wondering if they might be attracting the bear who continues to watch and wait. But my wife feels safer now that the bear’s been joined by a dog resembling the black German Shepherd who protected us for many years.
The ICU team invites me to their 10 a.m. meeting in front of her door. Each doctor pushes a cart with its computer, medical supplies and paperwork into a crowded circle that fills the hallway. The major issues right now are low blood pressure and irregular heart rhythm, neither of which is responding to medication. One of the doctors insists she should be kept awake during the day to help her sleep at night, as if the ICU were free of loud noise and constant interruption. I secretly decide not to participate in that effort—her time zone is the least of her problems.
A few hours later the head doctor recommends an atrial shock to stabilize her heart rhythm. My wife signals her okay, though I doubt she fully comprehends. I give my assent after hearing the pros and cons. She can’t live long with an erratic heart, but there’s a chance the shock could kill her. They ask me to leave the room.
I find myself wishing for the distraction of a bear or dog outside the waiting room window when I hear her screams piercing my own haze of worry and denial and landing like body blows. I face the thought of leaving the hospital without her. I suppress my fears and bury the numbing emptiness under trivial details. Caring for the pets and the house. Unraveling our finances. Suppressing my emotions long enough to tell our family and friends, though I doubt I can ever describe her ordeal without breaking down. The wills, directives, all those things we planned to finish. We never really faced the abyss.
After three shocks, her heart responds. When they let me back into her room, I’m relieved to see her breathing. Her numbers march in better order. Exhausted, my wife manages to nap for less than an hour before a nurse arrives to check her blood pressure. She wakes up and says she feels like she’s on a ship. She recognizes the Oakland cityscape outside her window, but the room doesn’t look like our stateroom. She didn’t know they had hospital rooms on the ship. She’s surprised we docked so close to our house.
I tell her yes, we sailed on a Mediterranean cruise, and we disembarked in Venice. Now we are back in Oakland. Her illusion makes some sense. I try to sound upbeat, saying, “I still have sea legs myself.” She doesn’t seem to believe me, struggling to reconcile my words with what she sees.
The lead doctor comes back holding his iPad and wearing a controlled smile. “Good news from the blood test,” he says. “She has a Strep A infection, which we know how to treat. The antibiotics we started last night were just the right thing. But the Strep bacteria spews toxins throughout the body, so the real problem now is toxic shock.”
I force a weak grin. Good news, he says. I remember someone telling me in the Emergency Room she was in shock, but I never expected this. When I ask him about the cause he shrugs and suggests the bug might have carried Strep or the bacteria might have entered her bloodstream through the bite wound. Strep is everywhere. Her symptoms—major organ decline, delusions, rash, and sores–are typical of toxic shock syndrome.
The bear returns with the dog each night, and my wife sees other animals wearing fashion and cartoon wardrobes. The rocking ship motion continues along with loud echoing noises and random voices, sometimes mine and once our son who lives far away. She hears periodic screams down the hall one night begging for help, but the nurse assures her they have done all they can. One morning she texts me on my way back to the hospital after feeding our pets to say they moved her room, but I’m relieved to find her in the same corner of the ICU. I don’t want to lose her.
As she begins to improve, they wean her from adrenaline, plasma, and oxygen and draw off excess fluids from her body. One doctor wryly comments that they resuscitated her and now they must “desuscitate.” Medical humor. They need it. The team expresses continuing concerns about her eating and regaining strength along with their hope that the Strep doesn’t resurge and bust through her thin wall of antibiotics.
After eight days in the ICU her heart, lungs, and kidneys return almost to normal. She graduates to the regular hospital where she takes cautious steps with a walker. Everyone compliments her courage and resilience. When the bear and dog do not reappear, my wife misses their company.
Three days later the doctors allow her to leave in a wheelchair with me carrying a shopping bag of pills, ointments, and bandages, both of us grateful to make it home again. Our cruise was titled “Mediterranean Odyssey” and now we feel like Odysseus himself, having taken the long way.
Terry Tierney is the author of the poetry collections Why Trees Stay Outside and The Poet’s Garage and the novels Lucky Ride and The Bridge on Beer River. His poems and stories recently appeared in The Shore, Poetry Online, wildscape., Discretionary Love, The Bellevue Literary Review, Ghost Parachute, Flash Fiction Magazine, and elsewhere.
January House Literary Journal 
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