This is where I was tonight.
Nora was one of my earliest childhood friends. Our parents knew one another; we were in the same play group, we learned to swim together, we were in different school systems, but my family always went to Christmas Eve services at the church where her family attended. (We're not Christian. We just like carols.) She and I hadn't been in regular contact for several years, but last summer I saw her and her girlfriend of five years when they came for the couch—they were furnishing their apartment—and we talked a little, and I assumed I'd see her in another six months, because even old friends are always out there somewhere. I was writing "Chez Vous Soon" when she died and my mother called in the middle of the day to tell me. None of the circumstances are the same, but that story became about her death. Mostly the part about how it should not have happened.
Nora was about halfway through studying to be a Medical Assistant at Clark University Computer Career Institute. She had earned straight A's and was very excited about her new career, but was struggling with a long-standing drug problem. She checked into a detox program at Bournewood for help. Between 9:00 P.M. on December 6 and 9:00 P.M. on December 7, her medical record reported that she was given 2 doses of methadone, 4 doses of lorazepam, 2 doses of trazodone, 3 doses of quinine sulfate, 2 doses of depakote, 2 doses of dicyclomine, and 1 dose of trimethobenzamine. She was supposed to be checked for safety every 30 minutes. At approximately 2:00 A.M. she died in her sleep. For the next 6 hours, hospital staff continued to check her off as OK every 30 minutes. By the time a staff member finally realized she was in trouble, at about 8:00 A.M., she was already in rigor mortis.
About a hundred people came, give or take the reporters and the police officers. It was so bitterly cold, I was wearing my grandmother's fur-hooded winter coat; I had mittens borrowed from Nora's father and my fingers are still stiff. People held candles. People lit candles from one another, because the wind kept blowing them out. (If you turned your hand carefully around the flame, it stayed steady. One woman said, "This is what we do. We share light.") There was a sign: We Remember Nora. No one made formal remembrances. No one sang. The stars were very clear, and brilliant, and the moon was immense. We talked in small groups, and sometimes I saw people stand in front of the photograph of Nora with a votive candle burning next to it, and some of them looked like they might have been speaking softly. I don't know the names of any of the people I was talking with, except for a medical resident who lived in the neighborhood and one of the reporters. I couldn't remember all the words of the Kaddish, but I said the ones I knew.
I hope the vigil changes things. I hope the lawsuit changes things. I don't want her written off as another junkie for whom the hospital cannot be held responsible, because everyone knows that people like that aren't worth the expense . . . She had black hair and pretended to skinny-dip in the Arlington Res and I am fairly certain she introduced me to Batman. And even were none of those things true, she should still be alive.
Nora was one of my earliest childhood friends. Our parents knew one another; we were in the same play group, we learned to swim together, we were in different school systems, but my family always went to Christmas Eve services at the church where her family attended. (We're not Christian. We just like carols.) She and I hadn't been in regular contact for several years, but last summer I saw her and her girlfriend of five years when they came for the couch—they were furnishing their apartment—and we talked a little, and I assumed I'd see her in another six months, because even old friends are always out there somewhere. I was writing "Chez Vous Soon" when she died and my mother called in the middle of the day to tell me. None of the circumstances are the same, but that story became about her death. Mostly the part about how it should not have happened.
Nora was about halfway through studying to be a Medical Assistant at Clark University Computer Career Institute. She had earned straight A's and was very excited about her new career, but was struggling with a long-standing drug problem. She checked into a detox program at Bournewood for help. Between 9:00 P.M. on December 6 and 9:00 P.M. on December 7, her medical record reported that she was given 2 doses of methadone, 4 doses of lorazepam, 2 doses of trazodone, 3 doses of quinine sulfate, 2 doses of depakote, 2 doses of dicyclomine, and 1 dose of trimethobenzamine. She was supposed to be checked for safety every 30 minutes. At approximately 2:00 A.M. she died in her sleep. For the next 6 hours, hospital staff continued to check her off as OK every 30 minutes. By the time a staff member finally realized she was in trouble, at about 8:00 A.M., she was already in rigor mortis.
About a hundred people came, give or take the reporters and the police officers. It was so bitterly cold, I was wearing my grandmother's fur-hooded winter coat; I had mittens borrowed from Nora's father and my fingers are still stiff. People held candles. People lit candles from one another, because the wind kept blowing them out. (If you turned your hand carefully around the flame, it stayed steady. One woman said, "This is what we do. We share light.") There was a sign: We Remember Nora. No one made formal remembrances. No one sang. The stars were very clear, and brilliant, and the moon was immense. We talked in small groups, and sometimes I saw people stand in front of the photograph of Nora with a votive candle burning next to it, and some of them looked like they might have been speaking softly. I don't know the names of any of the people I was talking with, except for a medical resident who lived in the neighborhood and one of the reporters. I couldn't remember all the words of the Kaddish, but I said the ones I knew.
I hope the vigil changes things. I hope the lawsuit changes things. I don't want her written off as another junkie for whom the hospital cannot be held responsible, because everyone knows that people like that aren't worth the expense . . . She had black hair and pretended to skinny-dip in the Arlington Res and I am fairly certain she introduced me to Batman. And even were none of those things true, she should still be alive.
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