Page 63 of Passing Ships

Amiya’s glistening eyes go round and she shakes her head.

“No. It’s two weeks before your wedding. I booked a flight for tomorrow. I’m going to fly down and be there to meet with her doctors and discuss her treatment, and then I’ll fly right back,” she says.

Avie pulls her phone from her back pocket. “What flight are you on?”

“What are you doing?” Amiya asks.

“Texting my boss and booking a flight.”

“Avie, you can’t—”

Avie’s eyes snap to her. “I’m not letting you go alone. Now, what flight are you on?”

“American, leaving Wilmington at six in the morning, direct flight into Hartsfield-Jackson.”

Amiya

Avie’s father, Rupert, meets us at the airport in Atlanta and drives us to Emory University Hospital.

Grandma fell out of her bed sometime during the night and was found when the nurse at the care facility was making her early morning rounds, so she couldn’t have been on the floor for longer than two hours.

Two hours.

Lying on a floor, in pain and disoriented.

My heart aches at the thought.

Rupert pulls up to the entrance of the hospital and lets us out. We rush to the sliding glass doors and make our way inside, stopping at the nurses’ station where we are directed to her room located on the fourth floor.

When we enter the room, she looks small and frail in the bed. Her silver hair is matted, and her skin is so pale that it’s almost translucent.

I sit next to her and take her hand in mine while Avie takes a seat in the recliner against the window. We wait for the doctor and advocate from the nursing facility to arrive.

“Hi, Grandma. It’s me, Amiya. I’m here,” I whisper more for myself than for her.

They warned me that she would be heavily sedated and probably wouldn’t be awake much, if any, while I was here.

I lay my head on the side of her bed and close my eyes.

After dinner last night, Avie called Naomie and had her pack her a bag. Then, Sebastian ran home to get it and drop Leia off with her mother so she could stay the night with me. She climbed into bed beside me and held my hand while I cried. Neither of us got much sleep.

This morning, Lennon took one look at us and refused to let either of us drive to the airport. He forced me to sit and eat an egg and a slice of toast, then made me hand over my keys so he could load our bags and take us to Wilmington.

I must have dozed off because I’m startled awake when the doctor and Mrs. Shytle from Everbright Memory Care enter.

“Miss Chelton?”

I stand and shake the doctor’s hand.

“Yes, you can call me Amiya. This is my friend Avie.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Amiya. I’m Dr. Cameron, and I believe you know Mrs. Shytle.”

“Yes,” I say as I wave to the woman.

The doctor looks over Grandma’s IV before returning to the end of her bed and filling us in.

“Your grandmother fractured her hip in two places. As I’m sure you know, a broken hip at her age isn’t easy to treat, but a broken hip for someone her age who is suffering from advanced dementia is much worse. Not only does the injury affect the patient physically, but studies have shown that they’re most likely to experience functional decline as well. Making rehab difficult because they’re unable to accurately communicate their pain levels, creating an obstacle for verbal consent and humane rehabilitation.”

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