I responded, “Oh! That’s awesome!”
It was not lost on me how different this second delivery would be. There would be no poor intern looking over her shoulder praying for the real doctor to come in during my final push, like at Walter Reed. My doctor also offered her personal cell phone number to me and checked on me constantly in the last weeks of my pregnancy. Once I got into the third trimester, my pregnancy started sidelining me much earlier than I anticipated. I started having swelling in my legs and ankles. The swelling would be so bad that I would have to go into our athletic training room at Auburn and alternate time in the hot and cold tubs just to put shoes on. I waddled everywhere, and I had a ton of pain and mobility problems in my right hip. After the third week of the season, I was having labor scares several times a week. One day, sitting at my desk, I felt a frightening pain in my lower back and belly, and I began sweating like crazy. I texted Rick down the hallway, “I’m going to go stick my feet in the cold tub because I’m not feeling well right now.” I put my feet in the cold tub until my heart rate went down, and then I went back to work.
Unfortunately, I had another situation that wasn’t helping my stress level or keeping my heart rate low. My grandfather, G.B. Beasley, who was the patriarch of our family my entire life, was not in good health. Nearing eighty-seven years of age, G.B. (aka Dangreddy, because I couldn’t say “Grandaddy”) began to have severe breathing and heart problems. He and my grandmother, Jean (aka Nan), did everything together. They would come to my volleyball games in Auburn, escorted by my uncle Tim, and make time to have dinner with me, Josh, and Harper on a regular basis. My entire life, they have checked on people, family or not, and I knew things were different when they weren’t making their rounds like they used to. G.B. couldn’t stay out of the hospital. Once an issue would get resolved, another would flare up. I was not allowed to travel with Auburn volleyball anymore because I was nearing my due date, but G.B.’s touch-and-go issues were causing me to spend weekends traveling the two hours to his hospital in Gadsden to check on him. He wasn’t sick enough for a long-term inpatient stay but also wasn’t well enough to spend an entire week at home with no medical mishaps. After several weekend visits, I wasn’t sure his condition would ever fully improve, but I could have never imagined the dramatic turn life would take.
In September, my grandmother was pulling onto the road and was hit by another car. She broke her arm, collarbone, and both of her knees. She was rushed to the hospital. As soon as I got the call, I packed my things and Harper to go see Nan. Nan’s motto has always been, “I’d rather wear out than rust out,” and even though she was badly bruised, sore, and bandaged seemingly head-to-toe, my eighty-five-year-old grandmother still perked up in her hospital bed and tried to be presentable when I walked in the room. When I reached to help her adjust her pillows when she was wriggling around to get comfortable, she swatted my hand and replied with, “Oh, I’m all right, but I tell ya right now, don’t ever break your kneecaps.”
Doctors and nurses bragged on how strong she was and that the medication they gave her for pain should do its job and help her heal because she did not take any kind of daily medication, which was unheard of for a woman her age. The visit with Nan was relatively easy, all things considered. She was a great patient and seemed to be cognizant enough for the doctors to rule out a major concussion. Josh’s grandmother didn’t live far from the hospital, so Harper and I spent the night there to get ready to help out with Nan the next day.
The next afternoon Nan, G.B., Harper, and I were sitting around watching Judge Judy when I noticed that G.B. didn’t look right. I tried to keep Nan in conversation while I watched my grandfather sitting in the chair in the corner. He suddenly started gasping for air and sweating. I went out to the nurse’s station and asked if any of them could check his vitals. Technically they couldn’t, but they could provide transport to get him to the emergency room. With it being Nan’s third day in the hospital, I had sent all the other family members home to take showers and get food. I didn’t have time to ask permission from any of them. I flashed back to Josh’s infection night, and I knew in my gut this was going to be just like that night. I drew a deep breath and told the charge nurse to take my grandfather to the emergency room.
As we were waiting for the wheelchair to arrive, I was torn about leaving Nan alone. Because of the pain medication cocktail, I’m not sure if she fully understood that something was wrong with G.B. I was hoping she would doze off for a nap so that I could get G.B. downstairs and diagnosed, but we had to leave her when we put G.B. in the wheelchair and Harper and I went downstairs with him to the emergency room. I called Tim and told him what was going on—something it pained me to do, because I wanted him to have a chance to take care of himself for a second—and he came back to the hospital to sit with Nan. After hours in the emergency room, the doctor told me that a valve in G.B.’s heart was not operating properly, causing his blood to not oxygenate and therefore causing the breathing issues we had seen
