Hours to a Coma

Hours to a Coma

By Lori Finnila

There was nothing around me giving me clues to the presence that I was in life. I remember the low glare of the fluorescent light of the time of day as I stare at the ceiling from my gurney.  I tried to guess the time of day; I made out it was probably two or three in the afternoon. I panicked at the amount of time that I had been in the operating room. The numbness of my body and the smell of chemicals through cold air breathing in through my nose scared me. I had already had an emergency C-section and now I was waiting my fate of seeing my son and to be sewn up. I look down at my white robe on me as it is distant from me as a person. It’s funny how you not become a person once you enter the hospital being so detached from people you hardly know. I suppose as hard as the help tries this happens anyway.

Is my body revealing too much as I worried feeling naked and inferior. I don’t know. I could feel the fogged path I was going down next; I knew it all too well – I had been there once before, in a hospital too. It was a similar situation too as this one where I was about to lose all consciousness again. Remembering the fog of waking up to a knife cutting me and then my head thrusting up and down upon the gurney fighting for air. I lost too much and ended up with a brain injury. Now my fate rested in God’s hands to this happening again and even worse this time.

I looked to the doctor’s strong glass frames for hope in his eyes and his stern look drew me away. I got nothing…, nothing from him. Did I say something he didn’t hear? I needed his feel, I needed this for comfort. But again …, I got nothing. Eyes so brown and so beautiful cradled in a tight white wrap were now brought out to me. The cold and emptiness around couldn’t take away the igniting feeling between me and my son and what was happening between us now.

But I was still too aware of my insides that I was told were now laying on the gray, dull, steel tray next to me as my son was taken away - I learned this from my ex-husband. The rustling commotion from my cousin and the staff left too much confusion for me to understand what everyone was talking about now as my cousin addressed should he be brought in now, or should I get him? So who was she bringing in I thought as my baby was now gone, my abuser? It is scary right now. How could my cousin do this to me I thought? I pushed my weak body to connect a short while. But this would not last. I would drift off into a state of prolonged unconsciousness of scares and odd sounds for 6 hours and never know what happened to me when I awoke. I was by now fast in a coma.

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