Hydrate, and rest

I was just reading….with delight…Abigail Thomas’s Substack essay about her recent hospitalization, and it triggered (how I hate that word, yet one more noun turned into an unattractive verb) a memory. Summer of 2023. Not all that long ago, actually.

Howard and I, after suffering like everyone else through the isolation of the pandemic (and the two-years-in-a-row cancellation of a planned trip to southern France), decided that it would be a good idea to take a within-the-USA trip, and we booked a river cruise in the northwest: following (in reverse) the path of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and then culminating with an additional week in three separate national parks.

It was a terrific trip. My idea of hell is to be on a huge cruise ship (and my opinion is based simply on intuition, not experience, since I have never actually been on a huge cruise ship. Seeing pictures is enough)…but smaller vessels suit me just fine, and I’ve loved such trips in the past…once around the coast of Japan, several times on various European rivers) and this trip on the Columbia River was woderful, with good companions and lots of history and the food was okay as well. And there were laundry facilities on board so we didn’t have to repack dirty underwear and tee shirts. (Hey…these minor things are important)

The national-parks part, of course, was by bus, with stays in various hotels. Less pleasant traveling but the scenery made up for it. A tour guide, female, traveled with us and she was cheerful and charming. We spent time in Glacier National Park. Then Yellowstone. Then… wait. In retrospect, it was in Yellowstone that something went awry. I had been to Yellowstone several times before and so I knew already that Old Faithful would burst forth and everyone seated on the wooden log benches that surround it would say “Ooooooh” and….

I suddenly became ill-tempered. I am not by nature an ill-tempered person. But the women seated on my left, as we waited for Old Faithful to do its thing, turned to me and said, “Where you from, Hon?” and I cringed, because I do not like being called Hon, but politely replied “Maine. And you?” and she replied “Michigan” and I said, “Oh, I very much admire your governor, Gretchen Whitmer”…and she said, “That bitch?” And, well, it was downhill from there. Presumably Old Faithful erupted but I didn’t notice, because I also erupted and was volubly rude to the lady from Michigan and after a few moments Howard took me away so that I could simmer down. Behind me, Old Faithful also faded to a minor burble and Howard hoped I would as well.

He took me into the nearby cafeteria. It was lunchtime, and I ordered lunch, but when it came I couldn’t eat. I always eat. But for some reason I could not put a bite of food into my mouth, and then I went and found a comfortable chair where I sat huddled, enveloped in self-pity and misery, until it was time for our bus to leave, and then I huddled in my seat in the bus and didn’t care about the scenery any more and I guess we drove all the way to Jackson, Wyoming, where we were to spend time in the Grand Tetons.

But all I remember was lying on the bed in our Jackson Hole hotel, burning hot but shaking with chills, and Howard was taking my pulse and looking very worried. He called our tour guide who, he tells me, chirped reassuringly that I would feel better after I “hydrated and rested.”

Howard is an MD, albeit retired. Next thing I remember I was in the emergency ward at the local hospital and they were giving me oxygen and testing me (positive) for Covid and Howard was sent away and I was in a NO VISITORS; PRECAUTIONS REQUIRED room for days to come and…this is where Abigail Thomas’s essay feels so familiar. The world turned Kafka-esque.

A nurse’s aide, (full protective gear, including paper booties and plastic face shield) comes into my room to ask: Did you write THE GIVER?

I nod, acknowledging that it was true.

These are my hands, at the time of our conversation:

She says: Can me and my friends have your autograph?

*****************

Days pass in a blur.

Gradually I am getting a little better.

I talk to Howard on my phone and he tells me that our flight home has left, we now have no tickets back to Maine, the tour group is gone, and the hotel ($500 a night) is telling him that he must soon find another place to stay because 4th of July weekend is coming up and our room is booked.

The person who mops the floor of my room (while wearing ull protective gear asks: How do you get your ideas?

My friend Jeff Bridges* who has, not long before, himself miraculously survived a near-fatal bout of Covid, emails me: Just remember that shit is what makes flowers grow.

* shameless name-dropping

The hospitalist, a woman, tells me that she has a ten-year-old son who, the night before, had watched an animated film called THE WILLOUGHBYS, based (very loosely) on a book by me. Not only that, but she is from Boston and attended the same medical school as Howard. I feel privileged, in some vague way, that in this sterile and isolated room, I have a new friend whose eyes, above her mask and behind her shield, are warm and comforting.

And there is this: Howard tells me that when he sits down to dine alone in a restaurant, a nearby couple invite him to join them, and when he tells them the reason he is alone, they ask permission to pray for me, and join hands to do so. When dinner is over he finds that another person in the restaurant has surreptitiously and anonymously paid his bill.

****************

I undergo a week of infusions of the same drug, I am told, that Donald Trump had been given at Walter Reed, and finally my hospitalist/friend allows me to be released from the hospital.

I still test positive for Covid and I cannot walk more than 25 yards without stopping to rest. I am tethered to a portable oxygen machine as heavy as the Samsonite suitcase I took with me to college in 1954; it emits a squeal every time a kink in the tube impedes the flow.

I taxi back to the hotel from which we are about to be evicted, and Howard and I stumble to a nearby outdoor restaurant where I park my squealing machine under the table, briefly remove my mask, and manage a few bites of something.

Eventually the waitress says: You still workin’ on that?

Even if we had been able to find an airline, one that would allow a gasping passenger with an oxygen tank, that could get us to Maine, now smoke from forest fires in Canada is delaying and cancelling flights.

We make a lot of desperate phone calls and finally, defeated, we hire a private jet which gets us from Jackson, Wyoming to Portland, Maine in four hours.

It costs $35,000*

But! What foresight! We have paid $1000 apiece for trip-interruption insurance.

When I attempt to get reimbursed, though, at least in part, by the company to whom we have paid $1000 apiece for trip-interruption insurance, I am asked to get a statement from “my physician”. I don’t have a physician in Jackson, Wyoming. I do, though, recall the name of the hospitalist, and write her a letter reminding her of our close friendship and how much her son enjoyed my work. But oops.

Apparently she does not remember me.

*$20,000 more than the house my husband and I bought in Portland, Maine, in 1963.

Jeff was right, though, about the shit—flowers thing.