Friday 07.03.2014 - Tick tock, it's weekend o'clock

The doctor is telling me it won't be today. I have to do an extra stress test to see if I am a candidate for the s-ICD, and they won't send for the device until that is done. Nothing happens on Saturday and Sunday, so I am here for another weekend. I tell Rich and for a moment his mask slips and I get a glimpse of how exhausted and anxious he is. His Dad has been with us for a week to help with little'un, but has to go home tomorrow. I think Rich feels alone. I know I do without him.
I have been keeping my chin up all this time, but with this latest knock I can feel the cracks are beginning to show. What I wouldn't give for a room with a door I could close right now. Four people all going through these dark moments of our lives with nothing but a thin curtain to separate us from the conversations of the family and friends of our neighbours. You overhear everything and get sucked into their lives as much as they get sucked into yours.
There is Mrs OldMamma, an elderly Italian woman who wallows in her misery and masterfully manipulate all of her relatives. She orders every meal with a side salad, wolves down the main course, keeps the salad on her table and when her children comes to visits she picks at it and laments that she can't eat a thing. She gets a lot of sympathy for declaring to nurses and fellow patients that it would have been her and her darling departed husbands anniversary today. Except it's the third one she's had since I got admitted.
Then we've got Mrs Posh St. Batty, exceptionally well bred and completely mad. She is a vigorous lady of 82, has had a very exciting life, travelled the world in her youth, fiercely independent and is that warm and funny blend of kind and judgemental that only old ladies can pull off without seeming anything other than charming. She makes the nurses roll their eyes and the doctors brace themselves as she launches into the last 25 years of her medical history every chance she gets, but really she is just terribly afraid of being sent home to pass out again. Or even worse; being sent home to sit and be afraid of passing out again. In her words: "oh darling, what I need is a vet, just put me down, just get a gun and shoot me."
In the corner there is Mrs NotQuiteLastLegs, a very frail old lady who is defying the odds and is slowly recovering. She lives alone and has a social worker visit her in place of her daughter who hasn't been seen here at all so far. The last time she felt good was years ago. The social worker had to break the news to her that her absent daughter had signed a Do Not Resuscitate order for her when she fell ill.
The walls here are dripping with emotions, the rooms are filled with people scared of death, the hallways are crowded with family members relieved and worried in equal measure.
I long to escape from everybody else's emotions and take some time to feel my own.
In a room with a door I can close.