My grandma is in the hospital.
My dad got told first, and last night he told my brother (who was at Dad's) that it wasn't a big deal.
My uncle called this morning, begging to differ. Grandma hadn't felt well and had gotten a ride to the clinic. That's good, because she then had some kind of episode involving her heart and nearly died right there.
No big deal? I am going to kill that man and no jury will dare convict me.
So this morning my brother, mother, and I set out to visit. I was secretly convinced that Grandma was already dead, so I busily planned how I would beg off school for the funeral. Cynic? Moi? You're damn right.
Got the hospital, asked where she was.
Intensive Care Unit.
I have a thing about ICU. It is the kind of thing where I was an impressionable little girl and it scared the bejesus out of me. I had nightmares for weeks afterward. And that time the patient, my relative, made a full recovery, being notably younger than my grandmother is now.
Stress!
Got the the ICU. Grandma's room looks like my memories and dimly recalled nightmares.
PANIC.
If my mother hadn't been there I think I would have fled to the corridor and quivered for at least twenty successive minutes.
But we went in, and she's doing well. She'll be released tomorrow unless something comes up.
I'm not sure what the problem was. Something with her heart. It sounded, to my grossly uneducated ears, like it might have been a heart attack, or maybe just super high blood pressure.
We let her rest and headed home. I began cooking lunch and paced, getting more and more frustrated with some nameless thing. I didn't realise until the tears came that my nightmares still loomed just out of my mind's eye.
I cried. For a few minutes, I became a terrified little girl again. And then it faded, and I calmly washed my hands and face before returning to mind my stove-top.