It gets easier and it doesn’t

I began drafting this in the emergency room, iPad on lap, October 10, 2023, while K was resting. It’s unfinished, but I’ll leave it as is. When the doctor came and told us everything was okay, I exhaled the fear — and along with it, the rest of the words.

—

It gets easier and it doesn’t.

The triage nurse took his height and scribbled it on his admitting papers. 4-foot-11. Also in the admitting papers is a section asking how the patient was brought in: was he being cuddled?

No. He’s about 2 feet taller than the last time I cuddled him into the emergency room. But last night, for the first time in years, he asked if I could hold his hand and sleep beside him.

9 times out of 10, when we make the decision to bring him to the ER, I vibrate with doubt: is this an emergency or am I being paranoid? All times out of 10, I answer myself: and what if it were and we didn’t come?

So we come.

This morning was the 1 time out of 10 I didn’t ask the question. “Mommy,” he woke me up. “My fingernails are turning purple.”

-*-

His fever had broken the night before.

He yelled for me at midnight, croaking: “Medicine.” He had been counting down the hours until he could take Paracetamol again. He was hot and he was coughing. “I have to tolerate this for two more hours.” “I have to tolerate this for one more hour.”

I gave him the medicine. He was feeling hot and he was feeling cold. He wanted the aircon and a blanket. He was tired, he said, but his eyes hurt too much to sleep. I remembered I had an unused makeup eraser cloth. I ran to the room to grab it; it was about to live its best life as a sponge bath towel.

When they weren’t holding mine, his hands clasped each other, digging into his skin. Fingernails white, knuckles hyperextended. I took his pulse. It was fast-beats-per-minute.

“I don’t want to die.”

“You’ll be okay,” I said to him. (I said to me.)

He forced his eyes closed, forced his breathing slow, forced himself to lie steady. Still-a-kid-but-no-longer-a-kid, calming himself down.

The medicine helped. The thermometer no longer turned red when we took his temperature. And soon his hands relaxed, and soon he fell asleep.

-*-

Today, I learned that fingernails turning blue or purple could mean a lack of oxygen. Three years ago I learned that a lack of oxygen can very quickly turn tragic, and has many times meant a tube down someone’s throat and never speaking to them again.

I’m not a doctor. I only remember what I remember.

“Get ready,” I told him. “Wake up,” I told his dad. “We’re going to the ER.”

As a mother, you might be panic on the inside, but you are not to be panic on the outside. Clothes. Brush teeth. Bag. Shoes. Money — we’ll figure that out. Food into the pet bowls. We don’t know how long we’ll be. Everyone dressed?

Wait.

I asked for a hug.

I didn’t want to think about what that hug could mean.

-*-