Am I Okay?
“Where am I?”
I didn’t even want to answer. In less
than a minute, she’d forget she asked. What would it hurt if I simply waited
her out? As some unseen force took control of my vocal cords, shoving out
words, I hear myself say, “The hospital.”
“Oh, am I okay?”
There was the million dollar question.
Every parent worries about days like this one. What started out as a simple
stomach flu, or so we thought, resulted in our family doctor ordering us to the
hospital for tests. Even the nurses and doctors in the ER thought it was
silly—this kid obviously suffered from intestinal flu, nothing more or less,
and should simply be watched for dehydration, but if the doc orders tests,
tests they will run.
“Where am I?”
“The hospital.” I leaned back in the
hard plastic chair. It squeaked in protest and I folded my hands over my face.
First they’d run a white blood cell test. Obviously, if something was wrong,
the white blood cell count would be through the roof. In the meantime, they’d
put her on IV fluids and got some fenegren going to stop the nausea. She became
drowsy and the white blood cell count results came back low, if anything.
“Am I okay?”
But they didn’t want to miss something
so they ran a c-cell test. That test came back inconclusive. I remember
worrying because I was late for work and losing money. The fluids and medicine
obviously helped…why were they wasting more time? But they wanted to do an
ultrasound—even though everything suggested she didn’t have anything major
wrong—so she drank some nasty stuff before dozing back off. They ran their test
and I paced the floor in my fast food uniform, the smell of old pizza and
grease competing with the acrid bite of disinfectant.
“Where am I?”
“The hospital,” I answered again, almost
out of habit by this point.
A man came in, his face permanently
embedded on my memory. He looked like Colonel Sanders from the chicken place.
He held a clipboard and seemed to be impatient and in a hurry. “Do you want
Rainbow Babies or Cleveland Clinic?”
I blinked at him.
“Am I okay?” Her voice seemed to be
getting stronger, but it was still the same two questions so I just reached out
for her hand. I remembered staring at the king of chicken in complete
confusion. “For what?”
“For the emergency surgery.”
“What? Do you have the right room?”
Colonel Sanders explained that my
daughter had appendicitis, worse that it’d gone gangrene and her immune system
had probably shut down days ago. Now her other systems were following suit in a
massive collapse and she’d need surgery to survive.
“Where am I?”
“The hospital.” They’d rushed her away
and I’d followed along. She kept sleeping, drowsy from both her illness and the
meds, while my heart beat as hard as a cop at the door of a crack house. I gave
up trying to guess what would come next, begging whatever gods might be
listening not to take my baby girl away.
“Am I okay?”
“Yes,” I whispered, trying to find my
voice past my fear. She’d be okay. She had to be.
