The Invisible Black Woman

Note: if you’re squeamish about blood, skip this one, but I hope you don’t. I promise to keep it to broad strokes. I say that because if you’re “the strong one,” there’s a plot twist, exclusively and specifically just for you, so read ‘til the end.

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We were both so ecstatic to finally be heading home. We would have to pick up the meds from CVS because—surprise, surprise—we didn’t get them while we were there. Of course, they weren’t ready yet, so we would have to wait until the next day to get his new medication. Thankfully, he still had blood thinners at home, but he would have to take four times the dose to make up the ten milligrams they put him on, twice a day.

Something we both wondered before we left was about his wound care. While it had obviously healed enough for him to go home, we weren’t sure about when the bandage and gauze could be removed. I meant to ask them while we were there but in our haste, I didn’t. I assumed it would be in his discharge instructions.

It wasn’t.

Still, we both thought, no big deal. They had been checking his incision every day and weren’t concerned so we figured we shouldn’t be either.

Let’s call that mistake number two.

The first thing hubby wanted to do after being in a hospital for two nights and some change was take a proper shower. Who could blame him?

“You think I should be okay taking the bandage off?”

“I think so? They didn’t say anything about it but let me check the discharge papers.”

I went through them and found not a single mention of aftercare.

“Hmmm. It doesn’t say anything. But it seemed like if it was an issue, they would have said?”

“I think so.”

“Just take it off in the shower since it’ll probably be easier.” Seemed like a rational suggestion in my head.

He did not. He decided he wanted to remove it beforehand and replaying the tape, it’s hard to say what would have been the exact right call. We both thought we each were right.

A few minutes later, I heard him yelling for me and my heart jumped in my throat.

My husband doesn’t yell. In fact, if you ask our mechanic from back in the day who lost our keys when we took it in for an oil change, he’d tell you he would prefer if he was a yeller. Hubby speaks calmly and even keeled when he is incredibly pissed. And folks find that more terrifying. I remember when we stopped by for the third day in a row to learn that the mechanic still hadn’t found our keys and this time, hubby had come with me.

He took a deep breath and calmly spoke to him.

“Where the keys are is not our problem. That is your problem. Either find them by tomorrow morning or have a copy ready by then. Those are your two options.”

At no point did he break his gaze as he spoke to him.

The keys turned up before the day was out.

I remembered picking up the keys on my way back from work and being so happy they’d been found.

“Thanks, Carlos!”

“Sure, no problem. Can I just ask you one thing?”

“Okay?”

“Please, please. Don’t ever send your husband here.”

Welp, lesson learned for him and fortunately, it never needed to be repeated.

So, when I heard him yell for me, I knew it wasn’t good and I didn’t quite know what I was going to see.

“What’s wrong, babe?”

“It won’t stop bleeding.”

“Okay. Let me see.”

“I didn’t even get the bandage off all the way. As soon as I tried all this blood spilled out.”

“Okay, so let’s get you on the chair.”

I walked him over to the recliner and had him elevate his feet.

“Okay, let me look.”

By then the blood was running down his leg pretty good. It wasn’t gushing out, but it was a steady stream and with the bandage still on, it was hard to tell how big a gash had been made. I didn’t think it wise to remove it.

“Okay, okay. You stay here, keep pressing. I’m going to get the clotting gauze.”

I applied the clotting gauze for about three minutes. The blood showed no signs of stopping and I made a split-second decision. In that moment, I thought back to how I didn’t listen to my gut and go to the emergency room when they scanned his legs and nothing turned up. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

“Babe?”

“Yeah?”

“We have to go.”

“No, no, no… no.”

It was such a resigned response. He wasn’t really fighting me, he just looked fully exasperated.

“I cannot believe this shit. I cannot believe we have to go right back.”

“Babe, I know. I know. It sucks, but it won’t stop bleeding. It’s your femoral artery. We can’t risk it. We need to go. NOW.”

He looked at my face and knew by the look of it I would toss him over my shoulder bare-ass if I had to.

“Okay. Let me get some clothes on.”

“No, you stay here, keep pressing and keep your leg elevated. Tell me what to grab. If it starts soaking through, just yell, okay?”

“Okay. Just grab my sweats, a pair of boxers, and one of my black shirts.”

“You got it. You’re gonna be okay, okay? It’s going to be okay.”

I didn’t believe a single Fraggle Rocking word I was saying. It was his femoral artery. I remembered what the surgeon had said and all I could do and say over and over was, “just let him be okay. Just let him be okay.”

“How you doing over there?”

“I’m okay.”

“Do you feel woozy, dizzy?”

“No. I think I’m feeling okay, just—it’s still bleeding.”

Of course it was.

Clearly Murphy decided to double back and meet us at home once we left the hospital.

I grabbed his clothes as quickly as I could and helped him put them on.

“Can you walk?”

“Yeah, I can walk.”

“Okay, we need to go slow. We don’t need to raise your blood pressure because that’ll just make you bleed more. Got it?”

“Fraggle. Got it.”

He didn’t say Fraggle.

I did my level best not to drive through any red lights or go too much over the speed limit. Once we got there, I pulled in front of the same blessed place we’d just left and scanned for a wheelchair.

Amazingly, I remembered to put the car in park first.

This time, the valet had changed shifts and for that, I was relieved. I was greeted by a young man who took one look at my face and could tell valet parking was the least of my problems.

“Can you just give me a minute? My husband was just discharged and I need to get him to the ER. Can you just let me do that and come back, please? I’ll leave the keys, but just let me get him situated.”

“You take all the time you need, ma’am.”

“Thank you, thank you so much.”

I speed-walked inside and looked for a wheelchair then went back out to get him.

The hospital wasn’t straightforward. It was in the heart of the city, so you couldn’t exactly drive up to the ER doors. So I wheeled him inside the lobby and made a beeline for the reception desk. The same gentleman that had helped me before was standing there. I couldn’t have been more grateful. I could tell he recognized me.

“Ma’am, how can I help you?”

“What’s the quickest way to the ER? I need to get my husband to the ER.”

He came from around the desk, took hold of the wheelchair as he looked at me and said, “I got this. Come with me.”

And in that moment, with my husband looking up at me, I burst into tears. Not because of what was happening, but because this man who didn’t know me from a can of paint was being so incredibly kind in a moment I needed it the most.

In the midst of what happened, when they took hubby away by ambulance, I’d gone into my proverbial closet and put back on the same cape I wore almost exclusively to work. Because I had to. Because I needed to keep it together and myself in check. Because I knew that there was no time or room to be weak while this was all happening. For brief moments, I’d taken it off, but not long enough to breathe or to relieve the pressure, stress, and anxiety that had been building. It seemed all I managed to do was pacify it ever so slightly. And there, in that moment, when I let my guard down, the ball of emotions I’d been keeping at bay spilled out.

I felt a tug at my hand.

“Oh, sweetie. It’s gonna be okay. I’m gonna be okay.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry? Why are you sorry!?”

“I was trying to keep it together. You weren’t supposed to see me cry…”

Goofy, right?

The lengths we go to to keep our armor intact. Not because we don’t have emotions or we don’t cry, but because we rarely can afford to. We don’t have the luxury of being vulnerable. At home, sometimes. It really depends on what your home situation is. Even if you have the world’s greatest partner, who do you lean on when their life hangs in the balance? Who do you turn to? Friends? Maybe. But oftentimes we rationalize that away because we don’t even know where to begin. Or worse, we don’t think we’d ever truly be able to put the emotional-barely-hanging-on genie back in the bottle once we let it out. So we turn those emotions inward, allowing them to fester and eat away at us. Very often because it’s never just the one thing that’s happening. There are a multitude of crises to juggle and solve for, enough to make your head spin.

When you’re the strong one. When that is what you are dubbed, it’s almost a trap to try and be anything but. Not because you don’t want to be soft and vulnerable and lay your emotions bare, but because there is often very little space or time in the day to do so. So in those moments, when it all becomes too much and you find yourself the equivalent of exposed—at least that is what you tell yourself—you apologize. You scold yourself for being “weak.”

But you’re not weak. You’re human. Not superhuman, just a human who seemingly performs superhuman feats everyday. You are a complex being with emotions who deserves to simply and completely—as every other person on this planet…

Just be.