When the ER Came Home

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This one is different.

This one was harder to write.

I’ve written about strangers.

About suffering.

About grief.

But this.

This was home.

This was my mother.

Fear doesn’t feel the same when it’s personal.

It doesn’t whisper.

It screams.

I cried writing this.

Quietly at first.

Then fully.

What happened over those two days in the ER and ICU didn’t just test my training.

It tested my heart.

A visit, then everything changed.

She came just to visit.

A few days, nothing more.

We had plans.

Soft mornings.

Mom-made food.

Old stories.

Visits with friends and family.

And then, without warning, it happened.

“I feel… strange”, she said.

A moment of giddiness.

Her balance tilted.

Her words slowed.

A shadow on the left side of her body.

My father tried to dismiss it:

But I knew.

God help me, I knew.

The moment I knew

I drove her to the ER.

Holding it together with trembling calm.

Every second echoed like thunder in my chest.

I kept looking back at her.

Checking for signs.

Hoping not to find them.

In the ER, I wasn’t a doctor.

I wasn’t just a son.

I was both.

I was broken.

Neurology arrived.

Left sided weakness.

Power 4/5.

Negative CT.

A ghost in the brain. 

Everything to fear.

Time, bleeding.

They advised thrombolysis.

A clot-busting injection.

I looked at my father.

The man who taught me strength.

The man who never cried, at least in front of me.

He watched it all unfold in silence.

He’d spent a lifetime holding our family steady.

But this?

He couldn’t fix this.

I saw him place his head in his hands, and fold into a chair.

Like he’d been shot through the soul.

I’m a prisoner to that image.

To this day.

I was both

I signed the consent.

I was, and wasn’t, her doctor.

I wasn’t brave.

I was her boy.

We thrombolysed in the CT room.

Minutes passed like hours.

Then she whispered:

And in that moment, I felt real fear.

Fear that claws at the back of your throat.

Fear that my mother is slipping away.

A bleed?

A mistake?

All because I signed a wretched consent form?

Did I make the wrong call?

We rushed a repeat scan, praying.

I held my breath for what felt like eternity.

Watched her go into the machine.

Staring at the monitor.

Shaking.

I watched the images load on the screen.

Heart thumping in my mouth.

Clean.

No bleed.

Tears fell in rivers down my cheeks.

By her side

We shifted her to the ICU.

I sat by her bed.

Staring at monitors.

Watching her chest rise and fall.

Like a sacred rhythm.

Whispering prayers to a white ceiling I’ve never believed in.

Until now.

The image of my father, head down and undone, haunted me.

His regret filled every room he entered.

But how could he have known?

Breath-held hours

By morning, when I saw her, her smile had returned.

Moved her left hand.

And her left leg.

Against gravity.

Normal.

That simple, ordinary, impossible movement.

Bit by bit.

She came back into her body.

My mother.

My mother again.

Two days later, she was discharged.

Whole.

Walking.

Smiling.

But I haven’t discharged the weight of those hours.

Because in the ER that day, I wasn’t the doctor.

I was the boy watching his mother collapse.

The son watching his father break.

And the man trying not to fall apart beside them.

If this made you pause, forward it to someone who might need it.

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More soon.

Another moment.

Another reminder that we are still, somehow, human in all of this.

Yours,

Dr. Adarsh Nath,

Letters from the ER

Disclaimer:

Patient details have been changed to protect confidentiality. This is a personal reflection, not medical advice or substitute for professional care.

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