Lucky

December 18th, 2006
Mothering, Thomas

There’s nothing like a trip to the ER to give you some perspective on life.

On Saturday night Thomas woke up in deep distress–couldn’t breathe. As I held him on my chest I could feel his muscles heaving in and out, trying to force his diaphragm into action. I was proud of myself: I calmly called the pediatrician, then woke Reed up to tell him I was leaving for the hospital. “Have fun,” he said.

I didn’t get weird until we were halfway there. It was snowing like mad, and the van was slipping, and from his carseat a few feet behind me, Thomas was trying to cry. I suddenly thought of the scene in A Civil Action where the kid with cancer dies in the backseat of his parents’ car, en route to the ER, during a terrible rainstorm. “Please don’t die. Please don’t die,” I said, although the more likely scenario was that we would both die under the cast-iron bumper of a skidding semi.

When we arrived intact, I wrapped him up in quilts and carried him into the ER. First thing I saw was a blood-covered guy covering his left eye with his mangled-looking hand. “Wine glass to the eye,” I heard the triage nurse explain to an orderly. “Wine glass in the eye.”

Eeeew. And that goes for the injury, the all-too-imaginable scenario that caused it, and the guy’s girlfriend, who was wearing a cheap cocktail dress and flip-flops. For a minute, I almost forgot why we had come.

Thomas had a fun few hours of being suctioned out, x-rayed, poked and prodded, and sprayed with nebulized steroids. Every time they whipped out a new drug or monitor or tube, I couldn’t help but think about how glad I was that I could bring him here, as awful as it was for him. I lay on the hospital bed for hours after the nebulizer treatment. Thomas eventually fell asleep on my chest, and his breathing had eased beautifully. I was so grateful I didn’t have to suffer through this terrible night alone, at home. There’s nothing worse than feeling helpless. And while the omnipotence of modern medicine is a complete farce, in this case at least there were things that could be done, things that helped. All for a measly $75 copay.

My feelings are too complex for me to wrestle cleanly into words right now. All I can say is I can’t believe how lucky I am. I walked that edge where you face a verdict–will it get better, or won’t it?–and got a quick and easy yes. Once upon a time, I thought yes was a given, but these days I know better.

We drove home at 3 a.m. The snow had gathered in the perfect image of Wenceslas’s vision: deep and crisp and even. The whole surface of the world glittered.

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