Ugh. Can't sleep. Friend who is in the CICU at my work is, I'm all but certain, going to die today. His barely-past-teen daughter (an undergrad at Cal) is up at the hospital now, sending updates to a group of friends, but my elderly flip phone can't process them so I don't know exactly what's happening.
I want to just get dressed and go up there, but I don't want to intrude, but I don't know if anyone else is there with her and I'm by far the nearest person. I'll go in before work and make sure her mom or (ex-but-still-involved)stepmom is there before I go.
He was a huge, huge personality, and when I saw him Monday night he was so diminished, and old, and small, and laboring for each breath, and everyone was still hoping and expecting he'd turn a corner (not the doctors, which I could tell because I know most of them and I've known them for far too long to not know the exact subtext of every patient-related word they say -- but his family, his kid).
Fuck.
Oh, JZ, how awful. For his family, for you, for everyone.
She's his only official next of kin. He has two ex-wives and an ex-girlfriend locally, and some siblings in LA, but his daughter, S, is the only blood relative within 500 miles.
Her stepmom, A, told me she'd already gotten clearance from Cal to take next semester off because "my dad is going to need me there to take care of him after all his surgeries." A is tough-minded and pragmatic and very protective, and she and I talked a bit, and I told her very quietly that the impression I got from everyone I trusted (I had his permission to talk with the docs) was, contrary to the hopeful message everyone was getting from his family, that no, he likely won't leave the hospital alive.
I felt extremely unsure whether I had any right to burden anyone with it, but there was such a gap between what the doctors were saying and what S and her mom were saying, and I was so afraid that when it happened they'd just be blindsided by it. A said she was glad to hear something straight and blunt, and that someone in S's inner circle needed to know the true situation rather than what other people hoped it might be in order to really look out for S's best interests.
It's been wrenching to think of this good, brave kid peeling herself away from the world she's built at college and gearing herself up for six months of full-time caretaking that will almost certainly never happen.
He's in so much pain; if it's the endgame now, I'm almost relieved that it is coming fast and without lingering and torturing him any further, but not really. There's no relief in this, really.
I'm so sorry, JZ. Just heart-breaking.
I'm so sorry, JZ. So hard.
So my officemate is working from home and I have not very many meetings today. DESPITE THAT, I will try not to just dick around online all day.
I am at work. I am dying for someone to ask me if I feel better so I can say "I'm heavily medicated, which is almost the same".
Probably will not actually be able to pull that off, so I'll just tell y'all.
