The Roommate

I was heartily sick of lying in a hospital bed.

Blood tests, meds, blood tests, meds. Lather, rinse, repeat. My body was beginning to rebel, and soon, it would reject the needles and get ornery. My veins either collapse into my muscle like they have a freight elevator, or they do a barrel roll like alligators taught them how to get a death grip. I know my body well, and I was reaching the end of my tether.

Lack of sleep wasn’t helping, and that was mostly due to my roommate.

Now, I speak enough Spanish to know some stuff about the other patient. Blind, from birth, I think. The baby of the family. Diabetic, and with the comprehension of a child. Up to mischief and trickery when she can, and liked to sneak off in the middle of the night, when her family was asleep, and couldn’t keep as close an eye on her.

She found the candy stash, and gobbled it up.

And now she’s here, aside of me, not knowing day from night, and no matter what her sister-caretaker says, she will not believe that she’s not anywhere but at home, and doesn’t understand why she just can’t get up and wander like she’s used to.

She was prone to yelling in the middle of the night, because what fun! Except that it takes me forever to get to sleep, and being woken at arghle dot thirty for my own meds… My temper was fraying.

I was averaging two, maybe two and a half hours, of sleep. Each night. For four. Straight. Freaking. Days.

Things were weird over there, besides the obvious. I was also extremely over-medicated, so my grip on reality (and lack of sleep, did I mention that?) had left me in a half-dreamlike state, where it was hard to separate reality from hallucination.

Her visitors were very sweaty.

Now, okay, they’re Latinx, I get it. Most were likely laborers in the city we were stuck in. Lots of new construction meant lots of jobs, and these guys had the skills. But this place was set cool enough that they shouldn’t be that soaking-wet sweated, surely? In March? When it had just snowed yesterday?

But somehow, they had crammed twenty or so visitors into her side of the room. Each one had flicked side-eye at me, then scurried to the far side of the curtain. Out of sight, and more coming.

With the Mama, the matriarch. And their priest?

What the deuce is going on?

Many voices spoke. Sharp voices, castigating voices, taking turns, Mama, priest, presumed siblings. Round and round, more than scolding, acting as if she’d blown the lid on some secret that put them all in danger. Heck, the priest even gave a communion service – to scare her? Into compliance?

Do they do this for any family member who ends up in the hospital, just in case the patient’s health goes sideways?

I blearily focused on the last guy in. He was standing, trying to hide behind the curtain, but I could see his leg jiggling, his fingers twitching.

Oh.

Oh, hellfire and damnation.

Hospital. Latinx. ICE.

Sitting ducks, crammed in a room with a child-minded woman, who likely thought this was a great lark.

I made a bet with myself – how many of the people, all family members, crammed into half a room, were illegals?

And me, lying there, pale white skin. They didn’t know how much I knew, how much I realized. Which side I stood on.

All those nurses they had to walk by. A gauntlet, in the literal sense of the term. The priest could only do so much to offset those who would have them carted off.

Well, I had no cell phone to make any calls, though they didn’t know that.

I did the next best thing, in my state.

I rolled over, and pretended to sleep.

Eventually, I heard the mob tiptoe out. They were rather quiet, and I’m sure they scuttled out of there, with the priest valiantly trying to be a living barrier to anyone who might pose a danger.

I missed it by one.

When I thought it was safe, I rolled over.

Mama was still there.

She froze when she saw me awake, fear etched on her face. She knew. I had seen the situation for what it was. I could- I could-

The way Mama was angled, only she could see me, and only I could see her. The nurses weren’t paying attention, and sister-caretaker was tending her charge. A moment of no time, but it meant… everything.

Mama knew I was frazzled. She knew I was frustrated with her patient-daughter’s antics. She knew I could make all sorts of trouble, of a very permanent sort.

Instead, I smiled, nodded, and rolled over. I pretended to sleep.

I heard a whispered benediction in Spanish. Whether to me, or to her daughters left behind in the room, I have no idea.

Did that make the roommate situation any better? No, it did not. Even when I begged the patient that night, in Spanish, to please let me sleep. Till I spoke, she didn’t actually believe she had a roommate in the hospital, even when the nurses and her own sister-caretaker told her. It did not help when my interns abandoned me, and trying to get blood from my uncooperative veins, to flutter about how “cute” she was, in the next bed, with her own bleeping team. It did not help when I broke down sobbing, begging the doc to let me go home, anything was better than the torture of sleep deprivation.

But I still did the right thing.

Was that babied woman-child a pain in my posterior? Oh, heck yeah. Did she make my own situation worse? You bet. Did I want to strangle her for shouting for no particular reason, in the middle of the night? Absolutely. I had some rather disturbing fantasies on the subject.

But giving her, and her whole family, to the tender mercies of ICE? Fornicate that stercum with a saguaro.

I did what was right, not what was comfortable.

And I’d do it again…

But, please, not any time soon. I really like my sleep.