Floor 10 (A mother’s PICU experience)
By: Amanda Clark-Rudolph
Tags: Mothers, Parents, Baby, Parenting, Moms

Floor 10 (A mother’s PICU experience)

Photo by Alex Powell on Pexels

Hospitals are little worlds.

I walk in a haze through the cold-tiled hallways observing the diverse crowd that reminds me of the bustling streets of New York City.

An eclectic mix of emotions resonates from this place.

At this moment, I am not sure where I fall. Everything feels so abstract and unreal

it is as if I am lost in a painting trying to find my way home.

I am taking a brief step out of time.

A break from floor 10. The floor that many try to avoid.

The custodial staff runs through the rooms in a frenzied, awkward hurry while looking down at the scuffed-up floors.

Not many people look up on floor 10, due to the windowed boxed rooms that display the raw emotions and realities of the young.

Looking up becomes voyeuristic, no matter how accidental a simple glance may be.

People also don’t look up in fear of interaction. Most don’t want to explain, and if you hold a glimmer of hope, you don’t want to show this to the mother who has lost hers.

I don’t know how to act up there. I don’t know how to take care of myself. I don’t know what to say.

I don’t know how to exist on floor 10.

Down here, I go to the cafeteria, chapel, gift shop, and atrium. These places are lighter and busier; they provide a temporary illusion to the heaviness upstairs.

Up there, I sometimes feel that I can’t move anymore. Down here, I can pretend for a short while. I can forget that life can be painstakingly harsh.

I can forget for a moment that life is a spider web of delicacies, and spider webs can be easily broken-regardless of the fact it was woven yesterday.

But you see, it is rare that I come down here because I feel guilty whenever I am not on floor 10.

I feel guilty about everything, even though the doctors have reassured me that this is no one’s fault. Still, I feel guilty.

I hold a baby’s hand up there because the wires make it almost impossible to hold him. I stroke his tiny head because the breathing tubes cover his face. I whisper to him that I would switch places if I could.

Over and over, I say these words. I tell him, he is strong, a trooper who will make it through. I reassure him that mommy is right here. I try to ignore the beeps emitting from all the rooms, including mine.

This is what I do for hours on floor 10 until I notice the clock has surpassed time again, and I need to go downstairs briefly to recharge before the walls cave in on my soul.

And so I go to the chapel to pray; I go to the cafeteria and force myself to eat, and I go to the gift shop to buy grooming essentials I didn’t think I would need.

And after a short while, I walk to the elevator, step inside, and click the button-10. I stare at the quote, “A quiet hospital is a healing hospital” that exists on an elevator banner.

And sometimes I am in there with another person or family that is also going to floor 10. These are the saddest rides of them all because no words are exchanged, only nods and a heavy silence.

The metal doors open, and we go our separate ways to the hallways where youth does not receive a bi.

This is life.

Babies are not exempt from floor 10.

However, I soon realize this floor has somehow exemplified my faith, for it taught me to see the beauty of the ordinary and made me question why I wasted energy on such trivial matters; a broken faucet, a lost phone, a red light.

The bigger picture was always near, but there had been many times when I lost sight of it all.

Floor 10 provided a beacon for what mattered most.

A week after learning a way to live and cope with the PICU, I was on my way home with a healthy baby boy.

Blessed is hardly the word. Grateful, ecstatic, relieved-none of them was quite the word.

FOUND.

I found what mattered most; all pieces of the big picture were magnified on floor 10.