Matthew Dicks - Stung

 

The bee stings me on my thigh, as I'm getting onto my bike. It hurts like hell, but I don't really think anything of it. I'm 10 years old, and I spend half my summers without shoes or shirts anyway, so I'm getting stung all the time. But I don't know that this is a bee that's never stung me before. It's a yellow jacket. 

 

I get on my bike, and I start riding home. It's a mile uphill up Federal Street to my house. About halfway home, I notice that my hands are starting to swell. My fingers are pink and fat. And a second later, I notice my feet are swelling, too. I can feel them pressing against my sneakers. I'm not worried. I'm curious. It's 1981, and we're all living in perpetual haze of secondhand smoke. We're eating peanut butter sandwiches on gluten packed Wonder Bread produced in asbestos factories. [audience laughter] So, there are no allergies in the world. I can't imagine that this would be something to do with my beast thing. [audience laughter] 

 

About a quarter mile from my house, though, I'm having a hard time breathing, and I realize it has nothing to do with the hill or the pedaling. I feel my throat getting tight, and I know something's wrong, and now I start to get afraid. I pull into the driveway and I drop my bike. I go into the house. I push the kitchen door open, and I fall down into the house. And with everything I have, I suck in a breath and I call for help. And there's no answer. 

 

I remember that there's no car in the driveway. I'm home alone. So, I pick myself up and I go into the dining room and I get the phone. It's hanging on the wall. It's got a long curly cord. I get down on the ground, and I call the first number I can think of. My mom picks up on the first ring. She's actually in the hospital. She's had back surgery, and I've been calling her every night, and I have the number burned in my brain. I tell my mom, “I can't breathe. I don't know what's wrong.” And as calm as you could be, she says, “Hang up the phone and call 911.” But I can't stand up anymore to get the phone onto the hook. 

 

So, my mom tries to hang up on her end to call 911 herself. But it's 1981. And back then, if you couldn't get both phones hung up, you couldn't break the connection. [audience laughter] And so, she's clicking and then I'm still there, and clicking and I'm still there. [audience laughter] So, she tells the roommate in the room to call 911, and I hear her give our address. And then, she comes back to me and she says, “How are you doing?” And I can't breathe at this point. My mom's calmness turns to anger. She says, “Try to breathe. You calm down and you try to breathe, dammit.” [audience laughter] She says that, “Help is coming and you better breathe.” [audience laughter] 

 

She hears the paramedics arrive. They come into the kitchen, and they find me unconscious on the ground. She hears them say that I have no respiration and no pulse. She listens to them start CPR on me. She's screaming in the phone for one of them to pick it up, but they don't see it, and they can't hear her in the commotion. She hears them put me on a stretcher, and take me out into the driveway, still pounding on my chest and breathing down my mouth. She gets on the call button, and she calls the nurse in the emergency room, because I am coming to the same hospital that she is at. She tells the nurse in the emergency room that I'm on my way, and she has to know my condition when I arrive. 

 

I talk to her later, and she says, “It's the longest 10 minutes of her entire life.” When I open my eyes, I see a bright white light, and there's a woman's face. And for a minute, I think it's my mom. And then, that woman shines a light into my eyes, even brighter, and I blink. When I open my eyes again, I can see that it's a nurse, and I can see I'm in an emergency room, and the woman is telling me I'm going to be okay. All I want to do is see my mom. 

 

26 years later, my mom and I are back at the same hospital. My mom is in the ICU unit now. She has muscular dystrophy, and she has double pneumonia. She's been in a coma for three days, and the nurses tell me that she's just holding on, and she's not going to wake up. My wife and I have been visiting every night. And this night, I sit on the edge of her bed and I watch Little House on the Prairie with her, which is a show we used to watch when I was a little boy. I talk to her and I tell her funny things. 

 

And as we're getting ready to leave, I ask my wife if she'll give me a minute with my mom. And so, she leaves. When she does, I lean close to my mom's ear. I don't know if she can hear me, but I'm hoping, like that day that I was on that phone and she could hear me from so far away, I'm hoping that my words can reach her. And I tell my mom, “It's okay. You don't have to try anymore.” I tell her that she was a good mom, and she had done a great job with everyone, and that if she wanted to go and she didn't want to try anymore, that it would be okay with me, and it would be okay with everyone else. And then, I leave. 

 

And the next morning at work, I get a call that she's passed peacefully in the morning. When I miss my mom, which I do a lot, I think about that day when I was on that floor in the dining room on that phone and how we were so far apart, but she was right there with me the whole time, keeping me alive. I like to think that, like, maybe we still have that connection. Even though we wanted to disconnect that day, we couldn't, and I'm hoping that's still true now, that somehow that white phone still reaches to my mom, and that when I want to talk to her, she can still hear me like she could that day. Thank you.