It was Monday morning, April 29, 1996 at 9am. John had left for work and then the phone rang. It was John's dad and at first it seemed like he just wanted to chit chat...very unusual for him. Finally he said Mom had to be taken to the hospital late last night. She had suffered a massive heart attack and was in the ICU. He didn't have much more information but he was going to visit her and call us back.
Once I was off the phone with him, I called the ICU myself. The nurse couldn't have been nicer but the news wasn't good. She said that if John and I wanted to say our good byes we should leave immediately. I had her type up a report and fax it to John's unit while I called John and gave him the news. He was shocked just like me. He went to talk to his commander and I started packing for a road trip. By 11:30am John was home with the paperwork for 2 weeks of emergency leave. We had 2 adults, one 5 mo old baby and one dog and we were on the road by 12 noon.
We got to St. Louis by 12 noon the next day. We stopped at my folks house just long enough to say hi and drop off Rob before we headed to the hospital. The next 2 weeks pass by in a blurr. It was a fine balancing act between taking care of Rob and spending as much time as possible in the ICU. By the time John's leave was over his mom was out of the ICU and into a regular room. There was still a long road ahead of us.
John's mom was to come home and build up her strength to be ready for a quadruple bypass. John headed be to Fort Polk and I stayed behind with Rob to help and cook for John's mom. I fixed lunch and dinner every day and she would take walks and naps everyday. Things were going very smoothly and at the end of 3 weeks she was ready for surgery. The surgery went really well and I was finally able to reunite with John at Fort Polk.
It would not be for long. We received word that the whole unit was being moved to Fort Bliss in El Paso, TX.
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