Dearest BF, There Was Purple in the Room

I awoke in a room smelling of baby powder, antiseptic cleaner and urine. My body hurt all over.

People in white lab coats, some in blue and others in polka dotted scrubs, filled the room. Something large was attached to the side of my throat, other plastic tubes went down my nose entering different parts of my body internally and a large plastic thing was in my mouth and shoved down my throat, gagging me. It was a nightmare come true.

I tried to cry out, reached up to jerk the obnoxious things off of me; then I heard a stern command of,
“Put her out!”

Several days later, I’ve now been told, I woke again. This time, the gag inducing intubation tube had been removed, but the rest of the paraphernalia was still solidly attached to my body. My hands were lightly fastened to the bed rails with some sort of bright, colorful cloths. I remember thinking, why it was that someone tried to make such an obscene item, pretty.

A nurse came in and asked me what I remembered. I answered in a voice hoarse and damaged, that I remembered greeting my best friend at my front door, she had driven from out of state to stay with me. We had talked about my upcoming spinal surgery scheduled for the next day, and then we went to our respective bedrooms to sleep. That was it.

I was told I had taken a bad turn after the surgery, and stopped breathing. I had been intubated over a week and extubated three times before I could breath on my own. I had been in the hospital over two weeks now. This also happened at the peak of the COVID pandemic, which meant no visitors, period. Not my children, grandson, my neighbors or my best friend, who had gone home over a week ago back to her own family. I fell into a stupor. I did not want to talk to these people I did not know, I shut down.

For days I did not speak to anyone, they even brought a psychiatrist in. He diagnosed me with PTSD, prescribed meds and left. I hated this very cold, completely white room without curtains on a window that faced a stark, windowless building. There was no color, nothing green and not even a picture on the wall.

My only comfort was my Native American Spirit Box, for me, a religious symbol of my Animistic Spirituality. At one point, the staff tried to take it away from me, while I was still unable to walk, for safety reasons, they said.

An angel in purple appeared in the doorway, her face livid red and her voice clear. A tiny woman, swathed in a purple dress, wrapped in a vivaciously colored purple scarf and wearing the most beautiful purple crystal necklace I had ever seen, walked in. She wore a mantle of power, dwarfing every one else in attendance. They parted, allowing her near my bed. Her dark eyes flashed at all of them as she ordered them to leave the room. They complained, but complied.

She knew! She understood how sacred was my Box. Lifting my blankets, she tucked it in beside me, leaned over and told me she’d take care of the problem, and she did! My purple savior had worked on several Indian Reservations over her long medical career, and she recognized the depth of my faith and my need to keep my Box near.

Over the next few weeks, she coached and cajoled me on how to get better in order to get the tubes removed from my nose and the massive intravenous structure sewed onto my neck, out too. Eat, drink, rest, move around and smile. It was not easy, but with her encouragement, I eventually escaped from most of the intrusive medical instruments of torture.

Soon her time allotted to me, came to an end. How thrilled I was, when I received a call from her the next morning and we spoke like old friends. This continued every morning for the next two weeks. Finally, I was discharged, but had to go to a rehabilitation facility. I could not yet, take care of myself. My lovely, purple angel handled all of the arrangements and when it was time for my final discharge from that facility; my purple angel and her husband picked me up, carried me to their home and cared for me for weeks.

Though I hated that hospital room, and still do, I have to give it thanks for delivering my purple angel to me. Without her, I know in my heart I would have perished. My purple saving angel is now my very best friend, thank you cold, white hospital room!