I knew you would save me

Bob had a vacation week planned--he was going to go down to the lake with a friend--and he asked me if I wanted to take a few days off and take a long weekend down to Bennett Spring. So I did. I took off Thursday and Friday, and we left Thursday after he got off work. On Thursday I spent most of the day running around doing errands, picking up some snacks for the trip, going to the bank, etc., then rushed home and packed, since he wanted to leave as soon as he got home at 5:00.

I guess it must have been around 2:00 that I started feeling kind of bad. While I was out I'd eaten a bagel and some Doritos, which didn't seem too bad, but I was having the feeling like I had back in February when I felt like I was going to die. I tried to ignore it, and went ahead and finished my work, then took a quick shower, and laid down for about a half hour. It was abdominal pain, sort of like indigestion, I guess. When it happened in February my doctor thought it was probably a hiatal hernia, but it hadn't happened again, so I didn't do anything about it.

I still didn't feel great when Bob got home, but I didn't see any point in not going, although he suggested it. It wasn't too bad really, but as we drove, it got worse. We had been going to stop and eat on the way, but I knew I couldn't eat. I just wanted to get somewhere where I could lie down. I had called the motel ahead of time to tell them we would be getting in late; we actually got there a little earlier than I had thought, and it was a good thing.

On the phone, the guy said that we would have the room above the office, and he would leave the key in the room and a note on the board in the window, since the office closed at 9:00. We must have gotten there just a few minutes after nine, because the lights were still on in in the office, but we didn't see anyone. We also didn't see a room above the office. There were some stairs on the side of the building, but they led up to a plain door that looked like some kind of a storage area or something. I went up and tried the door, and it was locked. So we walked around and couldn't figure out any other place it could be.

I went back to the office door and tapped on it, and someone finally came out. I said, "Maybe we're just dumb, but we're the Clines and we were told that we had the room above the office, but we can't find it." He laughed and said he hadn't gone up to open it yet, and it was the room at the top of the stairs. Actually, there were two rooms, and the locked door was the outer door. He gave us our room key, then led us up the stairs, where he unlocked the outer door. (This will become important later.)

Once in the room, I got into bed, and Bob called a doctor friend of his for advice. His friend is a gastroenterologist , and he said it sounded like gallbladder. He told Bob to give me clear liquids and saltines, so he went out and got Jello, 7-Up, and oyster crackers. I ate a little of the Jello and a little 7-Up, but by then I was so nauseated that I couldn't keep anything down. Without going into detail, that was basically the entire evening and throughout the night until about 2:00 a.m.

On Friday morning I woke up without any pain, but still didn't feel quite right. We went to the restaurant at the park and I had toast and tea for breakfast, then told Bob I thought I'd like to go back to the room for awhile. He went out and fished a little more and I slept -- I think I just needed some more sleep. By evening I felt pretty much okay, so we went in to town and had dinner (Shoney's seafood buffet), then he went fishing and I sat on the bank and read.

This weekend was a special weekend where you didn't have to have a trout tag or even a fishing license to fish in the park, so we knew it was going to be crowded, and it was. Bob fished for awhile in the morning, then came back and got me and we had breakfast at the lodge, then we went back to the room and took a long nap! It had been a rough couple of days for both of us, me throwing up, and Bob having to sit by, helpless to do anything about it.

We went out for dinner that evening to another buffet, Golden Corral, I think, or something like that, then he fished in the river and I sat on a bench and read. I got a lot of reading done this weekend, which was my goal.

On Saturday night, late, Bob went out to the car for something. The night before he'd done the same thing, and when he came back I said he'd been gone a long time, but he said it had only been fifteen minutes, so I didn't really pay attention. I looked up from my book, thought, hm, it's been awhile, but thought maybe he'd gotten on the phone with a friend or something.

A little while later I looked up again, and thought, wow, it's really been awhile! Sometimes he talks a long time on the cell phone, but I looked over at the table where he'd put his wallet and things, and the phone was there. He could have been re-rigging his fishing equipment, which was what he was doing the other night, but I didn't think he planned on fishing Sunday morning since we were starting back. All of a sudden I got really worried. What if something had happened to him?

I jumped up, pulled on some shorts, grabbed my cell phone (in case I had to call 911 or locked myself out, since he had the room key), and rushed out, to find him standing in the open door of his van waiting for me. "Thank you," he said. "I knew you'd come looking for me eventually." He had left his phone inside, and he had locked the outer door, thinking the room key would unlock it, but it did not. He didn't want to knock in case he woke someone up. He said he'd tried the room key in the outer door lock, and it fit, but he hadn't actually locked or unlocked the door with it. He had his car keys, but no wallet. He said he scrounged around and found fifty cents, but he would have had to find a payphone, and then, I would have probably come out and found the van gone, which would have worried me, too.

He said he had thought about lying down in the parking lot and pretending to have had a heart attack or something, but that probably would have given me one, so I'm glad he didn't.

previous | next