Day 8

Thanks again, my friends, for all of your well-wishes.

No change today. Stable is good. He’s still maintaining an oxygen level of 88-93 at 55%. At one point he started losing his stats because a bunch of gunk from his lungs clogged up the tubes. But they were able to suction it up right away.

They’re hoping that it’s all beginning to break up and he’ll be able to start coughing it out.

Litzi’s comment about waiting is true. Or as Tom Petty sang, “The Waiting is the Hardest Part.”

Every minute is an eon, and if Big Kid survives, it’s going to be a long road to recovery.

They say that patience is a virtue, please God help me be a virtuous woman.

The RT specialist who came with the new respirator told us he usually works with sick babies. I told him he was in the right place, because my baby is very sick.

The phone has become my frenemy, like it’s a live thing. I need it to keep in touch with the hospital, but every time it rings, I fear it’s them and that the news is worse. Sometimes I’m so afraid to call and check in that I make my husband do it. I go in the bathroom and run the water so I don’t have to hear the conversation. Then he taps on the door and tells me the update and I cry on his shoulder for being such a coward.

My mom tells me I have to distract myself or I will drive myself insane while we wait. I can’t focus on TV. Medical dramas make me flee the room. Police shows have dead people. The news makes me want to scream, why isn’t my son the headline? I know that’s an inane thought, but if he dies it will be the end of my world as I know it. But we are just little people in a big world, and the world goes on with or without us.

So I read. The first book started out ok, until one of the characters starts getting sick from an undiagnosed infection. Away with that. The next book has kidnapped children. No.

I end up digging out the entire Little House on the Prairie series and reread them again back to back at the hospital. They were childhood favorites where Ma and Pa always took care of their girls and nothing truly evil ever happens.

I never recognized what a selfish sonofabitch Pa Ingalls was until this reading of The Long Winter, though. Not once, but twice he goes down to the Wilder boys feed store and gorges himself on pancakes and bacon with lots of maple syrup. Meanwhile his wife and 4 daughters are down the street, huddled around a stove, grinding kernels of wheat in a hand-held coffee grinder to make enough flour to bake a lousy loaf of bread. What, he couldn’t deny himself a couple of pieces of bacon so they could each have a bite after months of no meat?

Yeah, I distract myself with idle stuff like that.

I want to touch my boy without the gloves. I want to feel his skin. I want him to feel me brush back his hair with my very own hand and not latex. I want to put him back in my womb where he can live without air and I can cradle him with my love and keep him safe. Please, I beg, please let me touch him. Only if you wash your hands before and after, I’m told. I scrub hard, to wash away every last germ.

His feet are so cold. I remember when I could hold them in the palms of my hands and count his perfect little toes. His feet are much bigger now, and not as brand new, but just as dear to me. Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone.

I place my hands on his chest. Heal, I command his lungs. Heal, damn you. Once my hands could soothe away any booboo, and I want that power again. But I’m afraid this booboo is too big.

So I hold his face in my hands. I sing our special song and whisper in his ear, “Don’t leave. Don’t leave.”