from the mother. We checked all of the numbers and tracings on the monitor. We might not know neurology or cardiology, but we do know monitors. Despite the fact that Kara was surrounded by all of the accouterments of a severe illness, she looked just as pretty as Sleeping Beauty lying in the bed. Her face was serene and peaceful and her body relaxed. If only the fairy tale could come true and a princely kiss could wake her and make her well. Slowly, all of our friends went home and just Tom and I were left with Kara. I did not want to leave her side, even though I knew the doctors and nurses were taking good care of her, but I knew from my own nursing experience, that the parents of sick children need their rest, too. By the time we both got into the car to drive back to an empty house, we did know that the EEG showed Kara had brain waves and, for us, it meant we would press forward with all our strength and heart to help her recover. The night seemed endless. I did not sleep at all that night. As I listened to Tom snore, I couldn’t understand how he could sleep. When I asked him the next morning how he could fall asleep so easily, he simply told me, “I was tired.” I had better read that book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray, Ph.D. because it must be true.
CHAPTER 7 Like Patterns for a Quilt Eventually Saturday morning did arrive and as I rode in the car down to Portland, I wrote a letter to the Bath Middle School staff and students. All of Kara’s friends and teammates had witnessed her collapse and subsequent resuscitation, and I could only imagine what a dramatic impression this had left on their fragile adolescent psyches. I felt a responsibility to help them through this tumultuous experience by sharing the medical facts of Kara’s condition, offering them hope for her recovery and encouraging them to be courageous and adopt brave attitudes. This set the pattern for my weekly letters to the school community, and everyone became outraged if I missed a week of newsy medical updates. It became only one of many patterns in the quilt of Kara’s recovery. A second pattern was the linoleum floor at Maine Medical Center. As I walked through the corridor from the front entrance, past the portrait of L.L. Bean and up to the Special Care Unit, I eventually came to a ramp with nonskid black adhesive tapes arranged in a symmetrical formation. That was my signal that the unit was just around the corner, that Kara really was critically ill and that I really was living a nightmare. My stomach would start to hurt. That happened every day for the nine days that Kara was in the Special Care Unit. I think that if I should go and look at that floor pattern again it would provoke the same stomachache. The Special Care Unit at Maine Medical Center was true to its name. Not only did the unit give Kara the special critical care that she needed, but it also gave Tom and me the special emotional care that we required through this time. Linda was with us for much of it and together she and I timidly asked the nurses if they would let us give Kara her first bath. I knew that I would feel better if I could just do this one task, but I knew