— पञ्चसहस्राणि नवशतानि अष्टनवतिः —
This morning I woke up to my alarm at 5:30 as usual, but there was a text from Shobhit waiting for me, sent at 4:37 a.m.:
Are you doing okay?
My response:
?? Yes, why wouldn't I be?
I stopped by the hospital to see him on my way to work this morning, and he asked again if I was doing all right, and whether I had cried. I realized this was what the text was about: whether I was really worried. I really wasn't, though. Admittedly the whole thing kind of hit me in a way it hadn't yet, when I was walking home for the night after spending a couple of hours with him, but even that was pretty short lived. I'm doing fine.
It's not that I don't care—far from it. I want to be informed, I want to know what's going on, I want them to figure out what happened. But it's been pretty clear since shortly after I met him in the ER yesterday that there was no imminent major threat, especially once they got his blood pressure back down. This just has to do with my default emotional constitution: my brain always defaults to "everything's going to be fine," unless it is clearly proven to be otherwise. Otherwise, worry is a waste of time, energy, and even your own health.
Shobhit operates the other way around. His default is to worry, about everything. This is ironic because his propensity to be tightly wound and worried and stressed at all times only contributes to him winding up in the hospital as a result. The further irony to
that is how, whether it was
his appendectomy in 2023 or this, once Shobhit is
in the hospital, for some reason he relaxes! He's always surprisingly chill when he's in a hospital bed. Maybe we should buy him a hospital bed for home. And a live-in nurse. A really cute one.
He did mention in a group text with Danielle and me yesterday about a staffer that "the young Indian guy was really cute and fuckable." I mentioned that to Laney yesterday and she laughed and said, "That's a good sign, that he's still thinking about sex." I mean, if anything is going to perk Shobhit up, it's a cute guy.
Anyway. It should come as no surprise that I already have
a photo album dedicated to this whole affair. It's got 15 shots so far, though it includes the two shots I took when
meeting Laney over hot chocolate after work yesterday. I kept that plan even though Shobhit was in the hospital; Shobhit was doing okay and I was going to head over there right after.
In fact, I even said to Laney at the start, "Don't panic. I just didn't want to tell you until now because I didn't want you to insist on canceling. Shobhit's in the hospital, but he's okay. He should be released tomorrow. I did tell him I'd come right over if he needed me, and of course you would understand, so I didn't abandon him
okay?"
Laney laughed and said, "You think I'm judging you but I'm not!" But I was just being mock-defensive because when I returned to the office yesterday afternoon Noah kind of facetiously rubbed it in: "Oh so you just abandon your spouse!" I was like: he's half a mile away, I can go right over there if he needs me! As I noted to Gabby right before leaving work yesterday, I'm actually closer to the hospital here at the hospital than I would be at home.
I did tell Shobhit I would limit my time with Laney to about 90 minutes and then head over to the hospital, and I pretty much held to that; we were together maybe 95 minutes all told. We also accidentally switched our orders, after Laney picked them up and brought them back to our table. Even though she had ordered a 12oz mocha and I ordered a 16oz hot chocolate, she set the smaller cup in front of me, so without thinking I poured it into my tumbler which already had two shots of whiskey in it. Then I took a drink and was like, "
Fuuuck!" It tasted like coffee.
Laney was sure what she had tasted like a mocha, but there was no question mine had coffee in it. Ordinarily we could just switch, but the mocha was now mixed with my whiskey. Laney isn't drinking alcohol now, and I didn't want to waste the whiskey. So I just drank it. It was the worst hot chocolate I have ever had.
— पञ्चसहस्राणि नवशतानि अष्टनवतिः —
— पञ्चसहस्राणि नवशतानि अष्टनवतिः —
I had my guest badge/sticker on for most of the day after my first visit to the ER yesterday; I never threw it away because I knew I would return. At different times of the day I had it stuck on either my shirt or the outside of my jacket. When I first returned to the office yesterday after going over there the first time, Gabby pointed it out to me and we both got a chuckle about how it cut off my face right below the eyes. The way they generated that sticker was interesting, because the security guy--the one who had showed me the poem he wrote for his kids about farts--just took my driver's license, stuck it into a little machine slot, and some program on his computer used it to generate the sticker. That photo is actually my driver's license photo.
I had the sticker on the whole time I was with Laney. We met in the lobby of the US Bank Center building, and ordered from Olympia Coffee, which has a little stand in there. Last time we went there they had a savory snack for me to buy, but not this time; I didn't want any of the sweet pastries they still had available so I just stuck with the half-empty bag of potato chips I had swiped from work. I later had
a personal roasted vegetable pizza I got from the hospital's "Four Seasons Cafe," where I also got Shobhit a vegetable wrap even though they had already fed him dinner.
We learned last night that they put him in a room usually reserved for people with behavioral issues, which apparently explained the very strange design on the door to the room: it was like a double door, except one side stretches across maybe 4/5 of the doorway and the other stretches 1/5. I have no idea what the rational is there, maybe Danielle or Ivan know (they are both nurses). I guess it was the room they had available. I had hoped for a great view like he'd gotten for the appendectomy a few years ago, but that was on the 16th floor and this one is on the 7th.
Some new information has come in, in the meantime. The doctor wants a cardiologist to look over his EKG results from yesterday before they move forward. Presumably this means he won't be released from the hospital this morning as hoped. They were already talking about doing a stress test, something that freaks him out because a stress test was involved in the accidental death of his father in India in 1990. Here's how he put it yesterday in the group text with Danielle:
My father did stress thallium test in 1990. The tech was distracted and had not told my father about the emergency stop button. My father had a major heart attack then. Then in the night they tried ballooning on him and he passed away during that
So, Shobhit is terrified of a stress test, and of the possibility of them discovering a problem for which they need to operate immediately, before he's got all his life affairs in order. He's treating this like a potentially life-threatening scenario, which it really isn't. Danielle is trying to convince him just to do it. Shobhit really thought this idea would also freak out his mom and his brother, but after his brother said maybe he should still do it if that's what the doctor recommends, he started to come around. And as of this morning he was debating whether to do the stress test now or go home and schedule it for later. I just want him to do it, now or next week, but have reiterated more than once that it's way more efficient for everyone involved if he just does it while he's still there at the hospital already. He's concerned about it meaning he has to stay another night. But then he actually started leaning toward getting it over with, and asked if I could come be with him when it happened, which I had already promised I would do.
But, all that debate happened before the doctor came and said he wants the cardiologist to look over the EKG results before doing anything. So I have no idea what impact that has on the timing of a stress test or how long he has to stay at the hospital.
But! I wrote the above earlier; I've already got an update: the cardiologist declared the EKG looks okay. Within minutes they had the stress test scheduled for 1:45 today, and I promised I'd be with him for that so I'll go over there for the afternoon. I'll do a very rare thing and just take my work laptop with me.
— पञ्चसहस्राणि नवशतानि अष्टनवतिः —
[posted 12:30pm]
