Heroic

It's been a week. After coming home I have no idea what to do with myself.

The story is a little clearer now, although most of the pieces will be missing until my father wakes up. A fire started in the apartment across the alcove from my Dad's apartment. He must have gone in to find the resident asleep, so he got him out and then proceeded to fight the fire with a couple of extinguishers. We have no idea yet how big the fire was or how it started, but we do know that my Dad put it out.

He was overcome by smoke and passed out as he headed out of the apartment; they found the two fire extiguishers near him. The EMTs took him to Harborview Hospital in Seattle, where his heart stopped. They performed CPR on him twice and had to shock him twice to get his heart going. They did surgery on him after discovering one artery completely blocked and another partially blocked; they put stints in and he was put in ICU.

Where he is still. His heart is fine, working like it should, and he's overbreathing the ventilator, meaning that he could breathe on his own, and is. But he has to be awake for them to take the tube out. And he isn't waking up.

More tests on his brain today to find out what might be going wrong, why he isn't waking up. The impact of the smoke he inhaled, the potential lack of oxygen for an unknown amount of time, the affects of carbon monoxide poisoning, all a concern.

The nurses working with Dad have had to put up with my brother's jokey manner, their way of coping, and my silence, which is mine. Yet yesterday, after having an update from one of his doctors, I dissolved into a puddle on the floor. I've never been offered a cup of water from so many people.

I had to come home. Missing my boys, finding my reserves running so low that I couldn't talk above a whisper and was having trouble driving my car. The three hour drive home was the longest in my life.

So, now, more waiting, more preparing, more practicing optimism. But, it is all exhausting.