EAMC

So, yes, last night I spent several hours in the emergency room of the East Alabama Medical Center for the second time since we moved here in July (I last went July 30/31). It's a good thing that the staff at the hospital is pretty incredible, or I might be dead right now (asphyxiation). It also makes me feel that more confident about having my child in that hospital...the only "big" hospital for miles.

I told Eli I was going, and he said he'd come with. I told him that he didn't need to, but rather to stay home and entertain his parents who had stopped through on their way back to Mobile from Williamsburg, VA. When Mother-in-law heard that I was going to the ER, she insisted on coming. So, we had several hours of quality one-on-one time to talk and talk and talk (except when I was breathing on my magic peace pipe). The nurses are competent and friendly. My only (minor) complaint is that I did have to endure an IV hookup hanging out of my arm for several hours, and then they ended up not using it. And that's the end of my complaints. Pretty good, huh?

Now let me tell you the part that had my heart breaking in two.

As Mother-in-law dropped me off to go register, I could hear the sirens of ambulances pulling up at the back door. When I got inside, the triage check-in nurse was telling people that it would be a 5-hour wait because they had just gotten several ambulances and a helicopter. I knew it wouldn't be that long for me because if you can't breathe, they generally get you in pretty quickly. So, I went and sat and read, waiting for Mother-in-law to park and come in.

At some point, this horrendous wailing and screaming started. It was awful. It went on and on, and I finally figured out that it wasn't a patient in pain, because the pain in this lament was more painful than anything you would be sent to the ER for. I tried to ignore it, but my eyes welled up with tears and I was crying all over my book. When the verbal mourning subsided, a group of people who had just come from the back huddled near the exit door with somber looks on their faces. I remember that a woman they knew came in from outside right then, and one of the men said something too low for me to hear, but the woman stopped in her tracks, looked at them, and started saying, "No. He's not." And she started crying and walked outside, walking away from the ER. I remember thinking, Why isn't someone going after her to comfort her? But they just stood there stoically. The remaining woman in the group starting crying, but not audibly, and I saw her open her phone, dial a number, and start talking to someone. She stepped outside to finish the conversation. The wailing started again.

It would be at this point that the triage nurse would call me back to take my vitals. My eyes were wet when I went into the little room, and he asked what I was reading. I showed him my copy of Little Women, and he said he understood the tears. I shook my head, to indicate the the book wasn't what was sad, and he nodded slightly. Then, these two women came to the door (I only heard them since my back was to the door) and asked if they could go back and be with the woman who had just lost her husband, and I started crying again. The nurse told them that he needed to check how many people were already back there since there was a big group already. Anyway, the women were denied by another nurse (the one who counted the visitors) and made a little scene, and then they were able to go back. As he was finishing taking my stats, the nurse mumbled something under his breath about them making Tuberville's wife mad. (Tommy Tuberville is Auburn's head football coach.)

I was shortly called back to a little triage station, and before I turned left down the hall after the nurse, I looked right, and there, lined up on the wall, were men wearing khaki pants and white polo shirts with the Auburn logo and the Under Armor logo. As far as I could tell, it was the football coaching staff. And then I was whisked away.

[**UPDATE** The story was just posted.
Auburn mourns Virgil Starks]

I will never forget the woman's cries as she found out that her husband was dead. And honestly, it reminded me of a funeral I attended for a teacher at my school who had been shot in the head during a bar brawl two years ago. Everyone asked me if I had ever been to a "black" funeral before, which I hadn't. I cried all through that funeral as the family paraded by the closed casket, and women screamed and wailed and cried out to Jesus, children stood silently by, crying and weeping. The mother threw herself across the casket crying and not wanting to let go, and had to be escorted back to her seat. Women fainting, men catching them. A collective wail of mourning. The funeral lasted for hours.

The person with whom I attended the funeral didn't shed a tear, saying that most of it was a show. That all "black" funeral were like this. I didn't know what to think.

After last night, I know that grief was real, both at the funeral and at the ER. It just was too piercing to my soul to be someone "putting on a show".

I came home finally (after about 4.5 hours in the ER), kissed my husband goodnight, and told him that I love him, and that I don't want to live without him. He was asleep, but he mumbled, "Okay." :)