With the Phone call from Shell going around and around inside my head. We find the ICU and are shown into a room, where a Nurse arrives with a doctor to tell us the news face to face.
KIM IS DEAD.
They gave us the technical terms for why she died, only me and Tom could understand what they meant and Tom summed it up nicely, “The infection she had was too much for her”
We were asked if we wanted to see her as they got the paperwork sorted. We decided to go in two groups, Me and Tom, then Mandy, Trudy and Stu.
Tom and myself head down to see her first. The ward is painted in what I can only describe as window XP task bar blue. As we are shown into the bay, We see the bed with clean uncreased white sheets, above the head of the bed was a wall of white and red sockets, and monitoring equipment.
Lying in the bed, sheets neatly running across her shoulders was Kim, bandanna taking pride of place on her head. As it always has since her hair loss. She looked so peaceful, like she was just asleep. That is when I turned to Tom and lost the hard coating I had been using to do what needed to be done.
It must have been a strange sight, me standing there head rested on the chest of Tom, a 6ft 2in bloke with a rugby players build crying and blubbering my heart out. A heart that at that moment had a part of it ripped away. I look across at the 17 year old I loved and cared for so very much, A child I cared for like my own, a child I comforted when she fell over or was ill. A child that would not see the life that had lay out in front of her.
I started to pull myself together numb all over, just wanting to find a place to hid, to curl up and block out the world, to cry and hold my broken heart. I wanted the world to stop, so I could get off and mourn Kim. But alas life goes on around the stillness of this moment.
Sitting in the room waiting for Mandy, Stu and Trudy to return and the doctor to arrive, I feel nothing, just numbness. Everyone files into the room, the Doctor, 2 junior doctors, and 2 nurses. The Doctor talks, I just sit there. Unthinking, until the bone marrow comes up.
My mind was doing what it did back on that cold dark night that we were told about Kim's illness. The Practical, Professional part of my mind took over. “Can it be opened up to be used anyone needing it, or used in research?” over half the room were taken aback by this, & a junior Doctor shuffles out of the room. “we need to look into that” replies the doctor. Then carries on with the rest of the needs to be done stuff. Until being call out to the junior doctor, with some notes.
They came back in, saying that it can not be used by anyone else as it was harvested for Kim, but as we agreed for any spare to be used for research, then it will all be used by research labs. At least Mandy's selfless painful act would not be in vain after all.
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