By the time I realized the ceiling above me wasn’t mine, the beeping had already crawled under my skin.
Hospital ceilings are too clean. Too white. At home in Columbus, Ohio, the plaster above my bed has a faint crack that looks like a crooked little branch.
I used to stare at it on sleepless nights, tracing the shape in my mind until my eyes finally closed.
The ceiling over me now was seamless and bright, a square of fluorescent light glaring in the corner of my vision. The air tasted like metal and disinfectant. My tongue was thick.
My right hand trembled when I tried to move it, and something tugged at the skin on the back of it.
A plastic IV line.
A monitor to my left chirped at a steady pace, a metronome counting out the beats of a life I almost left.
I swallowed and thought, with a clarity that scared me more than confusion would have, I am in a hospital bed, and I do not know why.
A shape leaned into my field of vision, the soft blue blur resolving into a face framed by a disposable cap. “Mrs. Eldrich?” The nurse’s voice was gentle but practiced.
She’d said this a hundred times to a hundred strangers. “Can you hear me?”
I nodded. The motion made the room tilt.
My neck felt like it had rusted overnight.
“You gave us a scare,” she said, adjusting the IV pump with quick, sure hands. “You came into St. Catherine’s late last night.
Loss of consciousness, depressed breathing. We had to intubate briefly in the ER.” She paused. “You’re stable now.”
Stable.
That meant I’d been unstable.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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