news, I had not. She was very quiet, which was completely unnerving. Finally, after a long while, she spoke. She had meditated herself into a ninety-miles-an-hour tither.
“I feel fine,” she said in a manic voice. “In fact, I don’t feel sick at all. Let’s get out of here.”
She started to get out of bed.
“Hold on there, Momma,” I said quickly trying to maneuver her back under the covers. “I don’t think that’s how this works.”
“What do you mean? They can’t force me to stay here! I’m not a prisoner!”
“Well, for one thing, you’ve got an IV in your arm.” I touched her shoulder, encouraging her to lean back against her pillows.
She started to pull it out.
“You watch. In five minutes, they’ll march back in here and say they want to do even more tests on me like I’m their personal guinea pig. I’m not going to have it. Plain and simple. Now, Holly, either you take me home or I’ll call a taxi.”
“Momma, I . . .”
“Don’t ‘Momma’ me. Pull this tape off and be quick about it.”
There was no use in fighting her, but I sure hated it when her manic side got the better of her. On the other hand, she wasn’t wrong, really. She didn’t have a temperature. There was no visible sign of any real illness. And she was mighty determined. Besides, it did no good to argue with Katherine Jensen when she, pardon the expression, got a bee in her bonnet. I pulled the tape off; she pulled the needle out and put pressure on the puncture point.
“Get me a tissue,” she said.
I handed her one and she held it over the wound.
“Now see if you can salvage a piece of that tape to hold this in place.”
“Oh, Momma,” I said.
Lord, she was difficult. There was no please or thank you to be had. I gave her a piece of tape; she secured it.
“Now, I’m getting dressed,” she said. “Do you think I might have some privacy?”
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
I stood in the hall outside her door and thought, Good Lord, her doctors are not going to like this. A moment later I heard a thud. I knew that thud. Momma was on the floor. Just to make the situation a little more interesting, when I tried to push her door open, her body was blocking it. I managed to push my head through.
“You okay?”
“Obviously not. My plan isn’t working out as I’d hoped.”
“I’ll get help,” I said.
“Damn it,” she said.
I hurried along to the nurse’s station thinking to myself that it would be so nice if my mother knew how to behave herself. She was always right. She always had to have the last word. But this time, there was clearly something wrong. All this falling business had to have a cause behind it. And normally, whatever our definition of normal was, she enjoyed the hospital. She got lots of attention and she didn’t have to lift a finger. Maybe she was afraid. Maybe the doctors had given her really bad news before I got there, and her first impulse had been to run.
“Excuse me,” I said. “My mother is Katherine Jensen, in room 311. Well, I’m afraid she’s had a fall . . .”
The nurse all but sprinted from her desk toward my mother’s room, grabbing two others along the way to help her. I got there just as the thinnest health care worker in the world was inching herself inside through the available space.
“Now, just what’s going on here?” one of them said.
They pressed the call button and asked for two orderlies to come help. Inside of a few minutes they had Momma back in bed.
“Does anything hurt, Mrs. Jensen?” the head nurse said.
“I’m fine and I’d like to go home, if that’s all right with everyone,” she said.
“Well, Mrs. Jensen, we have to get the doctor’s okay for that. He’s got to sign papers to release you.”
“We’ll see about that,” she said.
The nurse looked at her square in the face and said, “Now, Mrs. Jensen. You gonna be trouble for me? My shift ends at five o’clock. Why don’t you be trouble for the next shift and I’ll bring you all the chocolate pudding you can eat? How ’bout it? Deal?”
My mother, who needed an all-you-can-eat deal like she needed another hole in her head, considered endless chocolate pudding and said sheepishly, “Oh, all right, but only because you asked me so nicely.”