It's 1:21 am.
It's been an exhausting week.
My daily lack of sleep is building up.
I'm in over debt with sleep.
And my body has this thing that it does that drives me crazy.
When I get TOO tired, I get insomniac.
It's insane.
Like can you please make sense ? Because you're not.
Anyhow.
It's 1:21 and I'm in bed for ages now.
I check my Ask (yes I still use it, I know it's pre-historic, and I don't care) for the random questions it suggests.
I get this question:
What is the most heroic thing you've ever done ?
And I remembered my story from the ICU today.
So I held this woman's hand.
She was in the ICU.
I took her case.
As I was checking her charts, I noticed they were removing her breathing tubes, so I wanted to see.
The room was filled with nurses.
All I could see, though, were her eyes.
Now, mostly in the ICU, you'd expect patients to be unconscious, right ?
Yeah, me too.
And I believe they wouldn't have wanted it in any other way. It's a very itchy place.
Beepings never stop. It's quite, cold, and there are no windows. You don't know how long you've been sleeping, don't know what day it is, what time it is and what exactly happened to you.
And you find yourself in grey rooms that feel like cold metal and desperation, that reek of sickness. It's a demonstration of humanity's attempts against its own futility.
The patient is surrounded with machines.
Endless lines and monitors.
The rooms are relatively spacious, which is worse. There's room in there..and it feels worse, because it's empty, except for all those machines.
So this patient was conscious, unlike the majority of patients there.
She was a middle aged woman. She underwent an open heart surgery and was admitted for post-op complications.
But she was conscious and all.
And this woman had fear screaming in her eyes.
Her eyes screamed so loud to me, it ached my heart.
They were so wide.
I could tell she was wondering how close she is to dying.
It made my heart sink.
Like all those people around her and all these expert doctors in this great facility yet not one of these people sensed how mortified this woman was.
How all she needed was a hand to hold.
She couldn't speak because of all the tubes.
She was gesturing, she wanted someone to hold her hand.
So I did.
And I assured her with my eyes, and squeezed her hand.
Before they removed the tubes she was gesturing something else to me but I didn't understand. Then I realized she was asking me not to leave her. I said I won't.
And just seeing how different her eyes were right then...
She had the look of a wounded prey that had just found shelter.
I was there when they removed it and I saw how painful it was.
She later told me she felt they were killing her.
When she was able to speak again, she prayed for me.
Such prayers aren't like any other prayers.
My heart squeezed in on itself.
I wiped her tears and told her she's okay.
Before I left I asked if she needed anything. She said she wished for fresh pomegranate juice.
And you wouldn't believe it, I got her just that lol. I got pomegranate juice for an ICU patient.
Wow huh.
So yeah, these are the kind of moments one should write about.
And that, folks, is the silver lining of insomnia;
I wrote my heart-warming story.
Good night.
4th of January, 2016.
