HH1 The Patient's Room. Adele Kurtz House on Hill Chapter 1 The Patients Room

The House on the Hill Chapter 1 The Patient's Room by Adele Kurtz. Today I'm excited to bring to you the first installment of a book in development called The House on the Hill. You are invited to eavesdrop on our conversations from varying perspectives, ranging from a precocious young child, a couple of wise or screwy old women, and a frightened runaway slapped down a few too many times. And if we stay together until the end, we may find out how their fears find peaceful resolution as they grow to understand and appreciate one another. This chapter starts at the beginning with my own adult account of how this all got started. Perhaps the ground is familiar to you too, a sacred heart-wrenching time and place. This series starts when someone I love is nearing her end. I vowed to stay with her for as long as it takes, just remembering and listening to help her hold on and let go. Join me at The House on the Hill. A brown brick two-story propped atop a rare hill on Longwood Drive in Chicago. It stood on a third of an acre, looking like an old bulll of a house, strong and mighty, surrounded by flowers which had been strewn at its feet, cascading down rolling platforms in honor of battles fought, lost, and won. It's a short walk from the Beverly Metro Station at 107th Street to The House on the Hill. I jumped off the platform with my carry-on bag, released the handle so the roller wheels popped out, crossed the tracks, rounded the corner, and there it was. I could see it from the crosswalk and smiled as I saw that it looked just as radiant and florific as I had expected. It was a beautiful spring day, scented with new beginnings. When I approached the long driveway I wondered, what was that smell anyway? It couldn't be the crocus, the tulips or the daffodils, scentless lovelies as they were, or the trillium I just passed. I caught another familiar whiff and looked down at the cute tiny white boughs underneath my feet. Lilies of the Valley! I nipped a bunch with their slender leaves to give to my mother inside. I rolled my bag up the driveway to the house and stashed it near the doorway. I was now free to fly up the two flights of stairs to her room. I was thinking about how I couldn't wait to open the windows wide and let the fresh breezes through. This is exactly what she would have done for me, if she could. I remembered when I was just a little girl. She came to get me, to free me from the witch inside, after I had been quarantined in this house due to a case of chickenpox. I wanted so badly to be back with my family, the other kids. I'd been so lonely for nearly a month and she rescued me on a day just like this. On that blessed day of my release, she threw open the windows on both sides of the corner room. She grabbed the sheets on my bed at their bottom corners. She sang in a throaty, dramatic voice. Summertime, when the livin' is easy. She flashed me a mischievous grin as she bent low at my feet and then she snapped the sheet and sang out, get up lazy bones, greet this beautiful day. The sheet rose up in the air, sailed softly and gently whiffled down over my eager tiny body. And now, there she was, on a bed in the same room, the chickenpox room, but her case was far worse than mine. I looked at her tiny head, popping out from a crisp white sheet, her body no more than a wrinkle underneath. Tubes led into her nose, connected to the whirring oxygen tank. My mom weighed no more than the measure of her age now, 83. Her bones were covered lightly in wrinkled, freckled flesh, a mottled pink and gray tan, coursed with long, twisty streams. I took her hand, wrapped in skin as delicate as crepe paper. One could scrape it off with the flick of a finger, I thought. She knew I was there. She stirred and I heard her voice just a second. Del Marie-bee? Del? Barely audible. Del? She said my name. The song kept playing in my head. I looked at her closed eyes and sang under my breath. So hush, pretty mama, don't you cry. Many years before, I held an arm like hers was now, maneuvering stairs. It was my grandma Peggy's skin, I felt, peeled away from what little muscle remained, leaving a harsh scrape as she slipped. I learned that no matter how strong the woman once was, skin and bone can turn so delicate they can tear and crush with the slightest pressure. My mother's tiny body was now as fragile as that skin, barely holding on. I picked up her hand, caressed it, and stared at it with reverence. I thought about the many gardens it attended, faces it had wiped, noses it had blown, and the million tiny stitches it had pulled with needle and thread. I looked at the nails on her fingers, now nearly as blue as her veins, tinged with a Coca-Cola color. I recalled how I enjoyed watching her transform her rough, garden-proud hands into lady fingers with glue-on nails and brilliant red polish. I twisted the diamond on her finger, dangling loosely toward her palm, and tried to set it straight, upright, so it would face her when she would awaken. A perfect three-quarter carat round solitaire in a simple platinum setting, the same ring my father bought her sixty years before. The ring was secured, slightly, from falling off by another one set with five smaller gemstones, each stone representing the birthstone of their five children. Her lips were thin, with a gray-blue cast, accented by a small blackish mole, distinctly right of center, like her politics. In earlier times, not really so long ago, the lips would tighten, and her tongue would lash at those who differed from her conservative platform. There was little fight left in them now. When she spoke, it was barely above a whisper, so slight that hospital staff, including her own personal doctor, shook their head in confusion at her every word. It angered her to be ignored, to languish in a room where you were talked about, but not to. The last time we visited the doctor, I watched her seething beneath the hospital sheets in a bed set up like hers was now. She called out in a hoarse whisper, I don't like you talking about me, doctor. I'm right here. A bit paranoid, her doctor said to me. I nodded my head toward the patient in the bed. With good reason, she whispered hoarsely. I can hear you well enough. I'm not deaf. She struggled to raise herself and wanted to be heard. Bring me home, goddammit. I want to die in my own bed, not in your goddamn hospital. I longed for those lips to speak and smile. I pictured them painted red and laughing, talking. I looked at her cheeks, sculpted prominently, reflecting her proud Native American heritage, something the rest of her family strongly denied. Across them were tubes leading to her fine-pointed nose, providing a constant flow of oxygen from a hissing machine in the corner of her room. Her eyes, set deeply into her creased forehead, fluttered, a flash of green and amber highlights over deep brown. Del Marie-bee? you came. Her lips wrinkled into a semblance of a smile. I watched her eyes flicker with sudden light. She tugged my hand, still holding her fingers. You called, and I came. Just as I always promised, I said. Good, she whispered earnestly. So much to say, but but, but. Her voice trailed off. Oh, never mind now, Mom, I replied. Shh. We will have plenty of time to talk when you feel strong enough. Gonna help you get as well as I can. Plenty of time. As I leaned closer, I witnessed a shadow fall over the brightness of her eyes, like a fast cloud over the sun, ecliptic. She shook her head and tried to lean up. I left you stuff to look over, she said with great effort. All the old papers Johnny had you can keep. They're in my old room. Sleep there. Stay there. So you can just kind of keep an eye out. Her voice trailed off, her eyes closed again, and I felt peace stir her weakened heart back to sleep. I gently let loose of her hand and adjusted the sheets over her body. I looked around her room with its medicine cart and eating table, and tables were topped with unopened rectangular cardboard cartons of coconut water. I scooped up a wrapper from an energy bar, the remnants of food left uneaten, and threw them into the trash. I picked up the log she kept fastidiously with her own hand, recording her blood pressure and oxygen levels, a tiny spiral notebook with an orange and pink paisley cardboard cover. Beside it lay the tools she used to measure them. The finger pincher, the monitor wrapped in black Velcro. She would obsessively pull them out whenever she felt upset. I looked at her again as I recalled her saying, would you look at this, as though it was the most fascinating piece of news of the day. Hey baby, please grab my notes. Look at my records. See how low this is? Or how high this is? She would check her vitals so often that she worked herself into bonafide panic attacks. We needed to call ambulances so often that her doctor advised us that maybe the monitors should be removed from her grasp. He suggested, as delicately as possible, that she was causing the results by her obsessive recording of them. She felt insulted by his attitude. I would be dead if I listened to you and your goddamn advice. Doctor, what's your name? Many times dead. She needed the reassurance of the paramedics to confirm her recordings and tell her that this was not the day she was going to die. I had been called many times over the past several years to catch the next flights out of Denver to handle the details of her expected demise. The emergencies turned out, blessedly, not to be so final after all. It was ever the sheer force of will and determination that resumed her heart to beating, brought color to her skin, and kept her with us. She simply had no intention of dying. No, not now. So the monitors remained and the notebook. I tidied things up and left them on the rolling pull-out bed table where she could get to them. I walked around the house without a clue as to what she wanted from me or how I could help. I asked the walls to talk to me and tell me anything they could to help me unlock the mysteries of this house. A hundred million memories were held within these walls, over a hundred years of shadows, ghosts, and stories. I would stay here as long as she needed me, in a little room adjacent to hers. Although I had no idea how long that would be, I felt it would provide plenty of time to remember the many memories I had of this place and its occupants. My mother had shared many stories of growing up, and I felt I could hear them all as vividly as when she told them to me. I had been hearing voices in my head for a while now. Since I had no reason to believe I was going nuts, I decided to write their words down and describe the scenes from my imagination. For as long as it takes, and no matter what, I thought. (Summertime, put that song in here.) If you enjoyed this segment, an introduction to the series, The House on the Hill, please check out the rest of the podcast to be featured here on KCIW Community Radio in Brookings, Oregon. Before we go, I would like to tell you what's in store for the next segment, The House on the Hill. You will get a chance to meet my mom as a teenager. In her words, not mine, she describes herself as a stupid farm girl who just didn't know any better. Then, in the following segments, we will focus on her early life, and you can hear how she pulls herself out of this series of mistakes, kicks up sand in Fort Lauderdale, and then ends up in Chicago with the man of her dreams. Or is he? Well, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, just whet your appetite. Please tune in and check out my other podcasts on KCIW. There's plenty more in the oven if you want them. Bye.