Hospital Sounds
Always a Musician
I lay on a fold-out recliner-turned-parent hospital bed full of worry and desperate for sleep. Thankful to have the window bed in the shared room, I can see the night lights of Boston peeking around the edges of the drawn shade on my left.
To my right, I see the hallway light slipping under the door frequently obscured as the night nurses walk by.
My roommates are two infants in cardiac distress. One of them is my own baby boy, only a few days old. The parents of the other baby didn't spend the night. I unkindly judge them for not staying unaware that soon I will also leave my newborn in the scary hospital at night all alone.
This is my second night in the hospital. I spent the previous night in the cardiac ICU fearing for my baby's life and trying to make sense of the previous twelve hours. The upgrade to the regular pediatric cardiac floor means a quieter night will be in my future- for which I am grateful.
I'm still getting used to the hospital sounds - alarms followed by racing feet, gentler alarms, indicating low oxygen saturation rates, increased heart rate, rhythms or misplaced lead lines, and activity in the hallways. I try to grab a few minutes of sleep before one of the infants wakes to eat or the nurse enters for a vitals check.
Oops, too late! Here comes the nurse to care for the baby without a parent. After she cares for their needs, feeding them a bottle, changing and weighing the diaper, and taking vitals, she turns on the overhead musical mobile for the baby.
Though a fine melody by Brahms and a kind gesture for the baby, my nervous system reacts and I impolitely tell the nurse, I'm trying to sleep. Please turn that off. I'm a musician and I can't rest with music playing in the background
It's been several years now since I claimed the word musician as my own. I blame the demands of motherhood but there’s more to the story than I am allowing myself to believe. Until I heard myself say those words, I hadn't noticed how my body rarely feels at rest when listening to music. One would think it to be the opposite for a musician, but a mind trained for years to hear the intricacies of the music- the harmonies, melodies, instrumentation, and intonation- can't be turned off.
I guess I'm still a musician, even here in the hospital with a life on the brink.
*Note: This memoir vignette took place 13 years ago. Thankfully, my son is now thriving
Writing Prompt:
I write to heal.
Early in my healing journey, my journal accompanied me everywhere I went so I could hear and process my thoughts as I put pen to paper. Often, those writings came through various writing prompts. To pay it forward, I offer you a writing prompt with each post so you can join me in discovering your inner hero through writing.
If writing to heal resonates with you, consider using the following prompt to direct your writing.
Here is your prompt:
I'm still a _______, even ________.
Write to Heal Writing Circles
I write to heal and connect with my inner hero.
This essay started as a thought, a pondering, and then a journal entry.
Journaling is a way of slowing down, checking in, and tapping into our inner being that so easily gets lost in the hustle of the day.
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