Chapter 5 - THE SPECIALIST'S VERDICT
By five o'clock the next morning, we were sitting in a private, high-floor suite at the Little Rock Medical Center—a facility where I happened to sit on the regional healthcare advisory board.
I had used my corporate authority to bypass the emergency room waiting area entirely. Within thirty minutes of our arrival, the Chief of Orthopedic Surgery and a senior neurologist were in the suite, conducting a comprehensive evaluation of Mattie’s physical condition.
I sat in an armchair in the corner of the room, my laptop open on my knees, watching as the doctors gently examined her hands, her back, and her hips. A nurse was carefully cleaning the bleeding fissures on her fingers, applying medical-grade antibacterial salve and wrapping them in soft, sterile gauze.
"Miss Bird," Dr. Sterling, the chief orthopedist, said, stepping away from the examination table and gesturing for me to join him near the window.
"How bad is it, Doctor?" I asked quietly, keeping my voice low so my mother wouldn't hear.
Dr. Sterling pulled up a series of digital X-rays on his tablet screen, pointing to her lower spine and right hip joint. "The hip joint is completely destroyed. There is zero cartilage remaining; it’s severe end-stage osteoarthritis. Every single step she took was bone rubbing directly against bone. Frankly, I don't know how she was standing, let alone dragging heavy equipment in a restaurant kitchen."
My stomach churned with fresh guilt. "Can you fix it?"
"We can perform a total hip replacement," Dr. Sterling explained. "Normally, at seventy-eight, we would be cautious about invasive surgery. But her heart and lungs are remarkably strong despite the strain she's been under. With proper rehabilitation, high-potency anti-inflammatory therapy, and continuous physical care, she can be walking completely pain-free within three months."
He flipped the screen to show her hands. "The hands are a different story. The severe exposure to cold water and industrial lye degreasers caused deep chemical dermatitis on top of her rheumatoid arthritis. They will heal, but she will need daily physical therapy and specialized hand baths for the next six months to regain full mobility."
"Do whatever it takes," I said, pulling my corporate credit card from my wallet. "Fly in specialists from Johns Hopkins or Mayo if you need to. I don't care about the cost. I want her pain gone."
"We will take excellent care of her, Miss Bird," Dr. Sterling assured me. "She is admitted under full private-pay status starting right now."
I walked back over to the bed. Mattie was sitting up against the pristine white pillows, her clean, bandage-wrapped hands resting on a plush velvet blanket. For the first time in years, she wasn't standing on cold concrete, and she wasn't surrounded by the smell of grease.
She looked small in the large hospital bed, but the dark, exhausting shadows beneath her eyes were beginning to soften as the high-dose pain medication prescribed by the doctors began to take effect.
"Susanna?" she called out softly, her voice heavy with groggy sleepiness.
"I'm right here, Mom," I said, reaching down to gently hold her wrapped hand.
"Are you... are you really staying?" she asked, her faded blue eyes searching my face with a heartbreaking mix of hope and fear. "Or are you going back to Boston when the rain stops?"
May you like
I looked at my mother's worn, beautiful face, then down at my laptop on the chair—the laptop filled with corporate emails, acquisition spreadsheets, and board meeting notifications that I had prioritized over my family for nearly a decade.
"I'm not going anywhere, Mom," I promised, tears pricking my eyes. "I'm staying right here until you walk out of this hospital."
