PART VI: COLLEEN'S ICU INTERLUDE
The armless chair next to Col's bedside had a rocking feature of sorts so it was mildly comfortable. Col continued writing me short notes intermittently, gesturing with her right hand for a pen. Sometimes, in spite of the tube, the note would be accompanied with a smile from Colleen. At one point she wrote, "You had a meltdown."  Immediately I started denying it. "I had a meltdown?" I'm thinking, how did she know? Did she hear me all the way in here? So then I offered a weak, "Well..." and let it trail off.

From time to time, I asked Colleen if she was in pain. Mostly she indicated no, but a number of times pointed to her throat. When the nurse then inquired if she wanted more pain medication, Colleen would indicate yes.  

From time to time, I also checked the round clock on the wall, the kind with the second-hand. Leslie and Pat would make it to Baltimore no earlier than 1 AM. In the interim, Dr. Tottenham finally came into the room to tell me that Colleen's blood pressure was doing well. Out of Col's earshot I asked, "Does that mean no new lines have to be put in?" No new lines, she confirmed. We'll let her rest (this is rest?) overnight, she said, and try to extubate in the morning. I thanked her, and even touched her clinical hand. Fear eased its grip another micrometer.

It had taken an hour or so after first seeing Colleen intubated to notice the ventilator equipment located to the right of her bed, and its unmistakable sound. The pump itself looks toy-like, made out of blue and white accordioned plastic, and smaller and less robust than you'd expect for performing such a life-and-death job. From my bedside chair, the ventilator pump, housed in clear plastic, stood directly in my line of sight. I watched it go up and down in an exact, digitally programmed, unvarying rhythm. A relentless mechanical plodder capable of saving lives, of mimicking the expansion and contraction of real lungs. I watched Colleen's chest rise and fall in lockstep. The sound of a ventilator mimics nothing but itself, however, particularly its downward, percussive thunk. As the clock ticked on into the late night, and as I settled in for whatever was to come, the ventilator pump became the dominant, sometimes the only, sound-print in the room.

Sometime after midnight it must have been, one of Colleen's nurses quietly told me that Colleen was  breathing on her own. She delivered the news so softly, it almost didn't register. Instinctively, I looked at Colleen. The breathing tube hadn't gone anywhere. It remained exactly as it was. Breathing on her own? Several perplexed seconds passed before I understood. The tube was still in place, but the ventilator was no longer pumping. Colleen lungs had taken over. She was breathing on her own. Fear's grip eased a millimeter or two.

I told Colleen the good news. 

A little while later, I asked her, "Would you like me to read to you?" She and I were alone in the room then, the lights still soothingly dim. She nodded yes, and then hand-gestured her wish for the pen. "No drama," she wrote.

I had purloined a copy of Vanity Fair magazine from one of the many waiting rooms I'd waited in over the past few days. I asked Col if she'd like me to read a piece about Audrey Hepburn written by her son Luca. She nodded yes. I was mid-sentence, Colleen actively listening to me reading, when Leslie and Pat came quietly into the room. It must have been 1 AM by then. Colleen brightened at seeing them. A few hours earlier, encouraged by Colleen's increasing alertness, I'd called Leslie and Pat en route in the car to let them know things seemed to be trending upward. Now  got to tell them that Colleen was breathing on her own. It was a warm reunion.

The three of us stood around the bed, sat around the bed, took turns reading Colleen's hand-written missives, and told stories. Colleen used her fingers to indicate "LOL" in response to one of them, which made all of us laugh, as Colleen smiled beneath the obnoxious tubing.

Around 3 or 4 AM, Leslie and Pat left for their hotel room--they'd reserved a double in the same hotel as me. I stayed on and kept vigil for the rest of the night, dozing for minutes at a time. I had the sense that Colleen was doing the same. By this time, the nurse had removed Colleen's hand restraints. I marveled that Colleen was able to lay still, to refrain from trying to rip out the breathing tube herself.

When dawn's first light filtered through the windows, I couldn't believe we'd made it through the night.