Direct Support

     I had come to care for the way Miriam Sowsbury took great deliberations in shifting her weight from her left foot to her right instep, and the slow, trailing green eyes following each shoe as though by looking at her feet she could will them to keep her standing.
     She always looked a bit cautious – to the casual outsider even precarious – but after one year of witnessing how Miriam’s gentle spirit appreciated the hidden intricacies of her conscious existence, I smiled when I saw her attentiveness to the small details other people missed in the course of their harried schedules.     Soon Miriam would be out of the restroom. I unwound the breathing tube from the oxygen concentrator unit, making sure to also check the proper functioning of the lighted display. Two hours and fourteen minutes remaining. We had time to look at the toddler’s section again for Miriam’s niece’s child. It was not clear whether it was a little boy who liked glitter or a little girl fond of tractors.
    The restroom stall creaked open. I caught a glimpse of those green eyes stirred by Miriam’s internal emotions before I noticed the blotched coloring of her face.
    She shuffled and breathed with muted heaviness. Miriam looked at me. Those eyes held confusion and an ancient knowledge woken from its rest.
    Her fluttering hands gripped either side of the sink edge. She looked down at her feet and sucked in breath faster each time.
    I thought it was her heart.
    “Miriam?” I asked, not knowing what I was going to ask. Anyone could see she was not all right.
    Child’s Pose is a yoga position placing the heart low, so that oxygenated blood rushes into the muscle and lets it recover. I remembered this from a class a friend had convinced me to take years ago. Miriam had to find a resting moment before she fell over. How she could do this came to me in a few ideas.
    “Lean on me,” I said, standing behind her. I curled my arms under her armpits and secured them against my shoulders.
    She resisted the falling back, the force of gravity and the pulse thundering in my arms. This close, her eyes were enormous round things in her face.
    “Here, here,” I heard myself saying, and I lowered both of us as slowly as my straining arms allowed.
    She sat on the floor with her feet in front of her. I scrambled around and jumped to the oxygen concentrator and the hissing cannula. The machine wheeled over the tile too slowly and stopped too close to Miriam, but too far outside her chest – the air she needed inside of her ribs.
    “Here, Miriam, put these on.” She had a redder face and her shoulders wracked with crying. I had never had to put cannula on anyone; now I would have to since she could not.
    The forking tubes twisted as I tried to untangle them. I held the nose pieces up, but Miriam stared at me with red-rimmed green eyes and seemed not to comprehend. The tubes I pushed over her ears, trying to keep them from falling, trying not to harm her by tugging delicate skin and cartilage, trying most of all to put the oxygen where she could access it, where she could collect a breath and take a moment to gather the careful inventory of herself so necessary to her internal calm.
    Her eyes searched me over. “Call her,” she said.
    It seemed inevitable I had only brought her niece’s number in my folder. The cannula lay just under Miriam’s nostrils. Her face had not changed color; it looked worse than before. I had never been present at someone’s death. This was what I imagined it looked like. In my mind I called sirens to lift her away, but I should have known that, too, was in my head.
    A broken dove sounded close by. She was crying. I scrambled for toilet tissue from the stalls, for her and for a moment away to still my hands.
    I stared at Miriam as she moved the cannula to wipe her face with the tissue. I looked for a solution that was not there. She was still having difficulty breathing when someone else walked in.
    “Do you need anything?” The employee wore a company shirt and beige trousers and stood there taking stock of us. I wondered what she thought about two people on the bathroom floor, where to begin. She squatted and talked to Miriam with smiles as I said brief words to fill in missing knowledge.
   Miriam sobbed and leaned suddenly into the store worker’s side. She sought comfort from a stranger, not an acquaintance who knew she liked warm lemon tea and biscuits for lunch.
    Redness faded from Miriam as she stopped crying. The employee rose and talked to the manager at the door. No one came in – our presence, I supposed. I located the folder in my bag and opened it to Miriam’s page. The number led me to a machine, where I left a message for the niece and again wondered what to do next.
    I heard wheels. As I turned to watch what I thought was a gurney, the employee rolled in a wheelchair.
    Miriam watched the employee set the brakes. She moved around the cannula until they fit back into her nostrils. Then she took them out.
     I supported her arm to help her stand. The tubes draped over my shoulder. She watched her feet as she stepped in short, dainty movements across the tile. She lowered herself gently into the seat. The redness passed into her usual coloring.
     I brought her machine and handed over the cannula tubes. She put them in. Her breath came easier, now.