Broken concentration

Over the past five weeks, time has turned into something like Christmastide, or the summer holidays -- it's moving at a slower pace, yet is way too eventful, despite our state of modified house arrest, where we wash our hands until our knuckles feel like sandpaper, and wipe down switches and devices with rubbing alcohol.

One recent evening, I was getting ready for bed, a ritual consisting of several careful steps, as I divest myself of the day, and set up things I must remember for successfully launching myself into the coming day. This particular evening, this meant setting my FitBit to charge on the computer out in the living room, in preparation for putting it back on my wrist, where it professes to keep track of how well I've slept. I have my doubts about its accuracy, but this isn't the point. The point is, my FitBit vibrates when I have an incoming call or text message; it even tells me who is trying to contact me, if they're among my phone contacts.

My phone, as it happens, was also charging, lying on my bed after one of its "wink-outs". This is something that it started doing a few months ago, I can only conjecture that this is because I've had it for nearly four years, which makes it, in terms of devices, a dinosaur. After winking out, the phone takes about 30 seconds to load back up again, so I set about removing my eye makeup, shoes, and top.

I had just finished brushing my teeth when the landline rang. An 800 number. At 10:30 pm. The nerve.

It was Lifeline, Demeter's emergency service, which detects any movement by Demeter that could be interpreted as a fall. At the same moment, my revived cell phone rang. It was Double Leo Sister, calling from her home 500 miles away. She doesn't call unless it's an emergency; Lifeline must have reached her first when I failed to answer my momentarily disabled cell phone, being unaware of any calls because my Fitbit was charging in another room. I hastily explained that Lifeline was on the landline, and that I'd get back to her, once I'd checked on Demeter. Lifeline was telling me that my mother had fallen, and I told them I could be there in two minutes.

I shoved my bare feet back into my shoes and retrieved my top from the laundry basket. Grabbing both my keys and Demeter's keys, I barrelled into the living to get my coat, as I gave the Resident Fan Boy a quick rundown. He followed behind at some distance as I fled up the dark and deserted street, a dog in some empty house barking at my shadow.

The Resident Fan Boy caught up with me as I pounded the entry code into the front door keyboard at Demeter's condominium building. I told him the stairs would be quicker, and I rushed left, as he turned right to take the elevator anyway. He arrived at Demeter's apartment several minutes after I did.

Demeter was bruised and shaky in her slip. Being a retired physio, she'd managed to regain her feet, and answer Lifeline to forestall an ambulance.

Apparently, her legs had mysteriously given away, and she had folded to the ground. Most of the impact had been taken by her right knee, shoulder, and temple. Her clothes were strewn where she'd fallen, and we improvised an ice pack of frozen perogies, which we applied to her forehead with a damp dishtowel, as she protested gently.

We stayed until she was safely tucked into bed, folding her clothes, and turning off the lights, before retreating back up the block, as I slowed my breathing.

I discovered that in my haste, I'd left my phone on the bed. It promptly winked out once more, as a long parade of texts from my sister came through.

It took a while for sleep to come.

The next morning, Demeter's brow was unbruised, and she was only slightly sore. It didn't occur to me until later, that I had spent the previous afternoon taking the laundry to the laundry with younger daughter, demonstrating how to carefully wipe door handles and elevator buttons on the way, then washing our hands carefully afterwards.

All such precautions flew out of the window when I flew out of the house.

Demeter seems fine.

In which it is demonstrated once again that Persephone is rubbish in an emergency

I had just crossed a side road and was heading east, so all I heard was the thump. The next thing I heard was the cyclist. He was livid.

"Jesus Christ!! I don't believe this!"

So I knew he was okay, sort of. I turned to see a fella in his fifties sprawled on his back in the cycling lane. His bike seemed to have slid partially under one of those tank-like grey cars.

A lady with long blonde tresses, evidently also in her fifties, crept out of her vehicle and gingerly picked her way around his supine body. "Omigod! Are you all right? I'm sorry!" I guess she'd tried to pull into traffic and somehow had not managed to see him, despite his bright blue helmet and reflective vest. No wonder he was cross.

As people approached, I saw no one on the phone, so I darted into a shop, where the proprietor tried to hand me her cellphone. I gathered she wasn't going to make the call, fished out mine, trying to remember how to access the keypad, as I mostly use the thing for texts.

Then, of course, I couldn't hear the operator, who ended up shouting over my babbled explanations that I needed to tell her if I needed police, firefighters, or an ambulance. She transferred me to another operator, and I had to go out on the veranda that edges the line of shops to see how things were. While I was gibbering away, the cyclist had been helped to the curb where he sat shaking his head and a firetruck pulled up.

I gave the operator my details, and slunk on my way, my ego almost as bruised as the cyclist's elbows.

I try to be a good neighbour

First off, this isn't the blond terrier that turned up on our back deck while I was grabbing another cup of tea. But this looks very like her. We see all sorts of things on our back deck: sparrows, cardinals, squirrels, pigeons, morning doves, blue jays, finches, cats, chipmunks, raccoons... I'd never seen a stray dog out there before. I noticed she had no collar and my heart sank. I went out to talk to her and she bolted, heading into our new neighbours' recently renovated back porch, whimpering as she ran. I spoke in as gentle and friendly voice as I could manage, trying to get her to come to me. She gazed at me through the slats and snuffled and sneezed a few times before starting up a steady bark. As I approached her, she backed herself into the kitchen door, glancing over her shoulder and barking all the more.

Our new neighbours arrived last summer, shortly before I fled for my annual Victoria visit. The Resident Fan Boy gave a rundown on their renovation progress with each of our evening calls. (Rather tedious, really; I guess he couldn't think of anything else to talk about.) They had left postcards for their surrounding neighbours, apologizing for the noise and mess, so I knew their first names, but had never actually met them. I certainly didn't know they had a dog.

However, the dog's behaviour was signalling me that this was her home and I'd better not corner her. I went to check the front door and this time I felt a dropping in my stomach. The door was ajar. I rang the door bell. No response. Gingerly, I pushed the door a little farther open, and called. No reply. I rang and called again. I could see a bottle of cleaning fluid standing in the hall, with piles of stacked up wooden chairs in the kitchen, beyond which was the anxious face of the canine sentinel, watching me guardedly.

I headed back to my own kitchen, pondering the possibilities. I didn't want to enter the house. I certainly didn't want the little dog to stray into the street. Was this an emergency? Somewhere, I'd made a note of the non-emergency number for the police but I couldn't find it and I felt the time ticking by. Finally, I picked up the receiver and made my very first 911 call ever.

I went out to wait, then decided to find the postcards with the neighbour's first names. When I came out again, the little dog was gone. As I scanned the street, two police cars roared up, and parked in a V-shape across our driveway. The officers asked me cursorily if this was the house before heading in and I could hear the little terrier inside as they closed the door. I went back to my house to wait and less than five minutes later, the police cars drove off.

I guess I never will know if I did the right thing.

Painful Irony

"Crosswalk" by Vermont artist Gillian Klein

The springlike evenings that have marked early November may have been some comfort to the Resident Fan Boy as he lay stunned in the street after a cyclist slammed into him. My regular readers (all five of you) may recall my "gremlin" experience of a couple of weeks ago when I was assailed by fears of my husband's untimely demise on the verge of a business trip to Québec City. So, of course, when the crisis came, it was in a crosswalk less than two blocks from our house. The Resident Fan Boy remembers stepping into the street when the signal changed.

 That's all he remembers.

Back home, I was flitting between tasks, and beginning to wonder why my husband was late. I thought, given the balminess of the day, that he had chosen to walk home from downtown Ottawa which takes about 40 minutes. Elder daughter had left to do homework at a friend's, and of course, she didn't know the number. I had instructed her to call it in when she arrived, so when a classmate pounded on our door a few minutes later, I went prepared to say that elder daughter was gone, and as yet, unpinpointed.

But that wasn't why she was there. Her dad, who knows the Resident Fan Boy from church, had been driving his daughter home from hockey practice when they saw the Resident Fan Boy knocked to the pavement. Her father had the presence of mind to pull his car in front of the RFB's supine body, ignoring the honks and rude gestures from his fellow commuters. His daughter remembered we were up the block and hightailed it to our front steps.

I was attempting to keep calm. I didn't know where elder daughter was, and I couldn't leave younger daughter alone in the house. Luckily, the classmate guessed elder daughter's whereabouts and hauled out the ubiquitous cell phone.

 Somehow, I remembered to turn off the mini-quiches baking in the oven, and she agreed to wait for elder daughter at the house, while I led younger daughter down to the intersection where I could see flashing lights. Pounding on the traffic signal, I bounced impatiently on my heels watching the paramedics shift the Resident Fan Boy onto a body board. Several cars sailed through the red lights past the ambulance before I made it across the road.

It was, as I've noted, a warm evening and there was quite a crowd: the ashen-faced young cyclist who gave me a slip with his information; a medical student who had been waiting for a bus across the road; a pediatrician who patted my arm, saying apologetically, "Wrong kind of doctor!" and her husband. Of course, RFB's fellow church-goers were doing their best to reassure me and fill me in. 

The paramedics were asking me questions. "Hasn't he told you himself?" I stammered, gazing at my husband who looked back at me with mildly bewildered eyes, just before they had to tip the board to allow him to vomit. We were gently steered away before younger daughter saw this; she had begun to cry quietly.

Not much to do. Fellow Church-goer offered to drive younger daughter and me home to pick up things and proceed to the hospital. While my husband was loaded into the ambulance (his first post-accident memory), I watched the passing cars in fascination, honking impatiently, cutting each other off, their drivers chatting on cell phones, oblivious to the irony.

My late grandmother imagined Hell would be an airport. I've always imagined it would be an emergency room: bleak, noisy, frightening and dull, all at the same time. I was not overly surprised when the Resident Fan Boy didn't remember the accident, but I fought back the panic as he asked questions I'd already answered.

 I'm the daughter and the sister of physiotherapists. I know the symptoms of brain injury. At one point, they sat him up in a "peri-chair" to make room for other casualties. He crossed his legs and dozed, occasionally waking to complain of the pain in his head (from the road-rashed haemotoma on his right temple), and his dislocated shoulder.

The really frightening part came when the doctor arrived with the results of his CT-scan, and suddenly he was bustled back to bed.

Two "internal bruises" they said.
Transfer to the Civic campus of the Ottawa General Hospital, they said. 
Neurosurgeons, they said.

And, dear God, that's when I had to leave him, because our younger daughter is Special Needs and I had to get her to bed with the best semblance of normalcy I could muster. The nurses and doctor assured me they would take care of the Resident Fan Boy, but oh, I hated to leave him, all hurt and curled up awkwardly on his uninjured left side...

Home to smooth things over and prepare for a night of phoning Emergency at intervals ("slight bleeding to the brain", they told me at 2 am) and a day of getting younger daughter to second set of a battery of psycho-educational tests.

Obama was sweeping to victory in the States, and in bed, watching the older African-Americans, those who remember Little Rock and Selma and MLK, weep quietly during the acceptance speech, I grieved that Resident Fan Boy, a long-time election junkie, was missing this.

As of today, nearly 48 hours after the accident, the RFB is still in hospital getting mightily ticked off, which is the best sign of all I think. With each phone call and visit, he sounds more like himself.

But oh, you drivers, quit with the cutting off and honking and cell phones! And oh you cyclists, wear your helmets and remember you're a vehicle too! And as for us pedestrians? Practise defensive walking, I guess, because even crossing at the crosswalk with the signal is no guarantee...