THURSDAY AM . DAY 9 . BALTIMORE
I'm here in Room 956 with Colleen, who was awake and playing "Words With Friends" on her iPad when I walked in around 8:30. Slowing down, I've started taking the 8 rather than 7 o'clock morning hospital shuttle. Colleen was allowed only thin liquids yesterday, i.e., no milkshakes or ice cream, so we're waiting to hear today's ruling. She's hungry. We also hope that this is her final full day at Hopkins.

10 AM 
We just heard: thin liquids it is, again. My thought is this: today's new food orders just haven't made it onto the hospital-wide computer yet.


Part II: Colleen's ICU interlude 
I've tried to describe verbally to my sisters the emotional, existential jolt inside me upon seeing Colleen lying in the ICU hospital bed, eyes closed, intubated and on a ventilator. I doubt I'll be any more successful in attempting to describe the ineffable in writing. (In anticipation of our sister Leslie asking me the meaning of "ineffable," I give its definition here: "in.ef.fa.ble, incapable of being expressed in words."}

By this time on Monday night, it was dark outside and must have been around 8:30. I had last seen Colleen 6-1/2 hours earlier as she was being wheeled on a rolling bed into the procedure room. Any surgery has its risks. Yet I had no sense that Colleen was heading into harm's way. She smiled her Colleen smile at me and I smiled back before settling into the waiting room for the duration.

Now I'm standing at Colleen's ICU bedside, the breathing tube Colleen has always dreaded thrust deep into her throat, rudely trailing from her mouth into two much wider tubes, one white, one blue, that connect to the ventilator machine, which is now doing Colleen's breathing for her instead of Colleen breathing for herself. My eyes are fixed on her face, and the sight of the breathing tube, the shocking intruder that could kill her. How could this have happened? We had been so careful, so deliberate with the anesthesiologists, and they with us. And now the very thing we'd done everything to avoid had grabbed us from behind anyway. In less time than it takes to snap a finger. The ground had given way beneath us. 

A nurse stood opposite me on the other side of Colleen's bed. I asked her if Colleen had woken up yet. I asked whether Colleen knew she was on a ventilator.

"Oh, she's awake," the nurse said. "Ask her to squeeze your hand."

"Colleen?" I said. And, with her eyes still closed, she squeezed my hand. I held onto hers for a while before leaving the room to speak again with the doctor. "I'm going to talk to the doctor, Colleen," I said. "I'll be right back." I didn't know what Colleen knew. I didn't know what she was thinking or feeling. I didn't know how sedated she was. She couldn't have told me anyway. The breathing tube had rendered her mute.