Chapter 7
"Smog is still a problem," a raspy male voice said. "I can tell you, the air is the cleanest it's been in 50 years. Although it still feels like we're breathing sandpaper."
"I was born in Van Nuys," a smoother, younger male voice replied. "In 1970, during a Stage One smog alert. Mom told me she coughed and wheezed the entire time she was in labor."
Rickie identified the younger voice of her son, Jesse Edwin. Her eyes opened and the diffused light revealed a couple of men speaking casually together at the foot of a hospital bed. Her hospital bed, she realized with a start.
"Your mother's awake," Raspy Voice said. "I'll get the nurse."
"My son," Rickie tried to say. It came out a pathetic gurgle.
"Welcome back, Mom. Don't try to talk. It's Saturday afternoon. You've been here since about 3 A.M. I found you in your room at Shutters. You're safe now. I called Dr. Lerner. You were in surgery for an hour, and then she transferred you to this private room here at UCLA. Nobody knows where you are except Dr. Lerner, Judy, me, and my AA sponsor, Shank. Judy left awhile ago, but she'll be back tomorrow morning. Me and Shank will stay with you tonight."
"I'm dying of thirst," Rickie said, her tone hopefully conveying sufficient force to send Jesse Edwin running from the room in search of a fire hose or other source of relief for the unbearable burning dryness in her throat.
Jesse Edwin gently patted her hand, uncomprehendingly, as though she was a simple fool. Her mind attempted to plow gamely ahead to furnish her with some sort of useful conclusion to this new scenario in her life, the attempt producing only fountains of anxiety instead of the hoped for intuitive leap towards understanding and calm. A flashback rocked her mind, something the lady in the cloud said. It was important. Forgetting her thirst, she decided she must speak to Jesse Edwin of this Great Truth which was now before her. She focused on the son who stood beside her, his high cheekbones sweeping into his proud, intelligent forehead, his long black hair falling below his shoulders, his posture proud, his black eyes glittering with love and sympathy.
"I saw her," she said to him. "I saw Our Lady. She was wrapped in a purple cloud. She told me the secret of life. The secret is..."
A nurse entered the room.
"She's trying to talk," Jesse Edwin said, "but it's coming out kind of strangled."
"That's from the dryness caused by the anesthesia and the intubation. I'll get her some ice chips," the nurse said, disappearing from sight.
"You need to wet your whistle, Mom. It's okay if you feel a little fuzzy. Dr. Lerner was here earlier and told us it'll be awhile before your anesthesia completely wears off."
Loping slowly down the avenue of her dawning consciousness were several new feelings, chief of which were a growing rage accompanied by an almost unbearable frustration. The feelings took form and with that form began choking her bodily, to a degree which forced her to raise herself upward in an attempt to shake them off. She badly wanted to return to the lady in the cloud.
The man with the raspy voice returned, whom Rickie now knew to be Shank, Jesse Edwin's AA sponsor.
"Mom looks kind of wigged out," Jesse Edwin said.
"She needs a sedative or something," Shank replied. "She's waking up, beginning to figure out where she is and it's scaring her."
The nurse returned and placed a precious ice chip between Rickie's lips.
"Nurse, can you give my Mom something?" Jesse Edwin said. "We think she's freaking out."
"Dr. Lerner will be by in a few minutes," the nurse said. "We'll see what she says about administering some medication. In the meantime, why don't you hold her hand and continue to reassure her everything's going to be all right."
Rickie felt the pressure of Jesse Edwin's fingers upon her palm and, realizing the futility of struggling against the choking rage and frustration, let herself fall back, her body feeling heavy as a chunk of stone. She could not, at this point, imagine herself ever again attaining a state of calm like the one in the purple cloud and this realization brought with it an almost infinite sadness at her core. She closed her eyes and sank back behind a barrier where she could dwell, wombishly safe, in semi-darkness, while around her those with stronger ties to the world would work hard to meet what they believed to still be her need to be resurrected and returned to the clamor. That they would resurrect her, she had no doubt, upon which she would once again be expected to make herself useful in the chores, commitments and goals of those who lived without the certainty she had but recently attained, wherein she learned firsthand life on Earth indeed was short, and as such, had best be lived carefully, if at all.