The Fall

On April 4, 2022, I was finishing up my work day when I got a call from my Dad. He asked me to get him cough medicine and hearing aid batteries on my way home from work. When I get to the store, I call my parents to ask them what kind of hearing aid batteries. By the time I've found the cough medicine and the battery stand, I get another call from my Dad. 

He sounds confused and tells me that Mom called an ambulance. She was on the phone with 911 while he was talking with me. I panicked and asked if I should just leave the store, or get in line and buy the items that he wanted. She told me to just leave - obviously. Fortunately, I was five minutes from their house. 

I arrived at their house and I was so scared of what I was going to see. My Dad was laying on his bed - white as a ghost. My Dad was a very white man, but this was different. He looked, scared, confused, vulnerable, but also innocently/ignorantly (?) matter of fact in a childlike way. It was an expression of "Huh, this is interesting, scary, but we just have to go to the nice doctors and everything will be OK." 

He had a cut above his eye that was swollen and bleeding. That broke my heart. He was able to tell me that he fell but that he didn't remember anything. I called my Mother-in-Law who lives nearby and asked her to come over. I needed help managing him, my Mom, and my sheer panic/heartache. My Mom said she fell asleep in the chair in the living room. She woke up to cries for help from my Dad. She found him in the hall way, on the hard wood floors. He was on his hands and knees next to his walker. She was able to help him to crawl to the bed, and help him get up on the bed. The bleeding wound on his eye was from his glasses. 

While we were waiting for the ambulance, I was holding his hand and telling him how much I loved him. He looked alarmingly white, vulnerable, tender - so not my Dad. I called my brother in South Carolina and put him on speaker. I thought we would lose him before the ambulance came. 

My Mother-in-Law arrived just before the ambulance did. I saw her peek in from the doorway and my Dad waved to her in recognition. When the ambulances arrived it was a whirlwind. A large team of people came in wearing plastic suits and masks. Two or three people went to my Dad. One or two came to me, one or two came to my Mom. They asked us to box up all his medication. They put him on a stretcher. He was wearing sweat pants with the name of the Navy ship my brother served on. He was asked if he was in the Navy. My Dad clearly told the team of paramedics that he was in the Army. His son was in the Navy, and these sweats have the name of the ship that he served on. He then went on to tell them some other facts about my brother's Navy ship. It takes a lot to take my Dad down.