The Horizontal Hotel

I was talking to my little sister on the phone. The one who had a baby not long ago and another one two years before that. She had a weird syndrome in her first pregnancy that caused her to itch, uncontrollably, for weeks on end. Day and night. There was nothing they could do. It did not stop until she had the baby. She had the courage to get pregnant a second time, even though they said it was a ninety percent certainty that she would be have the same thing again. She went through a genetic screening scare, didn't itch and gave birth in the fast lane.

She had a hemorrhage after the delivery of the newest edition, and subsequently gave birth to a blood clot the size of a banana. She ended up by having a d & c the next day, as if she hadn't been invaded enough already, and went home a couple of days later, down a pint or two, to find herself home alone during the arsenic hours with her gorgeous two and a half year old who adores the baby and loves to make her mom chase her near traffic, and a brand new bundle of wonder who still hasn't figured out how to set her clock to local time.

Her husband, in anticipation of braces, had four teeth pulled the week after the baby was born. No, he's not twelve years old. He's thirty-one and wants to get his teeth fixed. Besides, it's covered on his Dental Plan. He's a great guy. Normally. But, he was sick Friday night. The dental ordeal had left him weakened, his mouth throbbing with the kind of pain that makes your whole head ache. And he was making calls on the big white telephone. So he checked in to her Bed and Breakfast.

As she tells it, she had one bad moment when he was barfing, the two year old had pooed her jammies and the baby was crying for her. I call it a highlight. One of those moments, that if you survive it, you can add to your vanity wall of coping awards. I think she deserves a plaque.

But she confided ovrer the phone to me that she gets a little tired of the male "I'm sick" shtick. She admits she was sympathetic the first day: cleaning up a vomit-flicked bathroom, plumping pillows, keeping the house quiet while he was sleeping and making him fruit smoothies on demand. The next day, when he was still whimpering like a puppy in need and following her every move with his doleful eyes, it started to get a little thin. By the third day, she was heating up cans of Boost and lobbing them to him from the bedroom door.

I can relate. My husband has a tricky back. He's an active guy who has put a lot of miles on the equipment, including three broken legs, two from skiing out of control and one from a fraternity soccer game that must have been a little unbrotherly, a fractured skull from a university-era car crash and temporary short-term memory loss from the time when he was beaten up outside a club downtown for asking the wrong girl to dance. Well, that's his excuse, anyway.

So, he's no stranger to pain. And, this back thing is no fun. The first time he blew it was doing a jump start off the dock at the lake. He let a friend drive the boat who hadn't towed a lot of skiers, and was too stubborn to let go when he didn't get the perfect pull. He spent the rest of our holiday on a lounge chair, stoned on painkillers and delivering watery smiles at our toddlers as they roamed in opposite directions, one towards the road and one towards the water, given chase by me.

The second time was up at my parent's cottage. He was helping my Dad buck up logs for firewood to get us all through our winter getaways up there. It's a tough thing having five daughters when you own a cottage and a bad back yourself. Sons-in-Law have been a little, um, transient, shall we say, in our family in the last couple of years, so there hadn't been many opportunities for a boys' working weekend on the island. So he overdid it. Dad brought him home flat out in the back of the van, and I met them at Emergency.

The third time was during our one family getaway in the year of hostile takeovers and new jobs. A skiing trip to the interior, that, after one day of cruising the slopes with his overly-ambitious wife and his kamikaze kids, ended in a prophylactic late night drive back to the city, before his back totally seized up and required an air ambulance evacuation.

And the latest, and also the scariest, when an early Sunday morning downhill bike ride with the dog for a romp in the doggie park and a coffee at the Bean laid him up for a seven night stay at my Please Don't Linger Inn.

For the first day, I am the perfect fusion of gracious concierge and Florence Nightingale. I hover worriedly over my man, catering to his every need. I make sure he has ample liquids and his favourite foods. I'll make us a nice lunch and I'll perch on the edge of the bed to dine and make conversation with him. I run to the video store and stock up on all the testosterone movies that he has been wanting to see, but that I won't watch, and then load and unload them as required. I get his prescriptions for pain killers and muscle relaxants filled. I field phone calls. I send and receive faxes and files in our home office and courier them up and down the stairs for him. And I tolerate his snoring, since I don't think his back could tolerate a roll over command.

By day two, the dining room is closed and the kitchen staff goes on part-time duty. Room service is erratic, and unavailable during certain hours. He has bed-head and convalescent-breath, three days worth of beard stubble and a pile of papers from work scattered around the otherwise pristine sanctuary of our bedroom. The TV drones on day and night. And I notice that the snoring is getting louder.

By day three, he's lucky to get a bagel and some juice before noon. My life resumes by necessity and I charge around, back at my usual daily gig. I hand him the phone and the clicker and suggest it's time for him to try to get himself up for a few minutes every couple of hours. Maybe take a bath. Shave. And change his underwear. The snoring has become intolerable. I leave and sleep elsewhere, still unwilling to roll him over, lest I should re-injure him.

By day four, it's over. Either he's gotta check out or I will. It's the only way to save a marriage. The last time he hurt his back, I had a trip planned to California with a group of girlfriends. I hovered between guilt and greed for a couple of days, before he convinced me to go. He had the clarity to get that he wasn't exactly looking sexy lying there, a sad puppy bedheaded five o'clock shadow of my former husband. I went and worried a lot, but he managed. My friends brought the kids and the kids brought him food. It was a good thing. By the time I can back he was homo erectus again (don't go there!), and we were able to resume our friendship.

And there is a really petty little part of me who says, hey, I've done pain. I've stayed in that hotel. So I may appear gruff, distant. Don't get me wrong. I am sympathetic. To a degree anyway. I mean, face it, God made men and women different. Men do testosterone. We do pain. The kind of pain that is truly indescribable. The kind of pain that makes you hold your breath, that makes your eyes water, that makes you lose control. The kind of pain that makes you want to get off that birthing bed mid-delivery and just check out. When men have pain like that, they get morphine. When we have pain like that, we get laughing gas and told to breathe. And, unbelievably, or maybe stupidly, we often go back and do it again.

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