“Oh. Well that’s good news, right?” he asks me, probably confused by my tone.
“It is.”I hope.
“Good. Well, I have to get back. I’ll call you tonight, okay?”
“Sure, love you.”
“You too, Frasier,” he answers back in a much happier voice than when he picked up. The call disconnects, and I look back through the rearview mirror at my sleeping daughter, hoping the doctor is right and she kicks this cold soon.
Sobbing wakes me up hours later. Tapping my phone screen, it’s the middle of the night, and there is Grace right next to me with tears streaming down her face, snot covering her nose, and a red color to her that immediately has me jolting out of bed.
“Grace, hey. Look at me, sweets.” I say, half in a panic.
She does, but it’s the way her chest is heaving as if she’s trying to get a breath down but can't. The tears are silent now, and it looks like she isn’t even breathing.
Pure, unadulterated panic wracks me. “Breathe, baby. Come on,” I say and then take a breath in for her to follow it. She tries, but what leaves her is more akin to hyperventilating.
That’s it. Flu, my ass.
I scoop her up and rush out the door, barely bothering to grab anything other than my shoes and phone. The hospital is only a few miles down the road, so I don’t bother putting her in her carseat.
She sits right in my lap, I buckle us both in together, and pull out onto the road. All the while, I’m trying to get her to take a breath, to get some air into her lungs.
Mercifully, after a few minutes, she manages to stop crying and has taken several normal breaths. The hyperventilating has stopped, and the blue tinge to her lips is receding. Not deterred in the slightest, I pull into the parking lot next to the emergency entrance and walk in with her cradled against my chest.
Straight ahead through the doors is a group of nurses or receptionists huddled behind the desk, and I beeline for them.
“Excuse me,” I call out. None of them turn, and in my already anxious, stressed state, a little attitude slips through. “Excuse me?” I yell louder.
They all look my way, annoyed at the interruption. “Yes?” one shoots back, and I want to bitch at her for her complete lack of professionalism atwork.
“My daughter can’t breathe. She needs to see a doctor.”
“Ma’am, this is an emergency room. You can take her to your primary care physician in the morning,” one of the shorter nurses answers this time.
“Thisisan emergency. She was just blue in the fu–freaking face two minutes ago because she. Can’t. Breathe. And I took her this morning. They said she has the flu.”
Each one gives me an unimpressed look as if to say,so what do you want us to do?
I take a breath. It doesn’t help my own nerves or rising annoyance. “Look, I’m not leaving until someone gets me a damn doctor to examine my daughter.”
You’d think I asked them to chop off a limb, but one of them leads us back to a room, bringing the paperwork for me to fill out with her.
Twenty minutes later, a much kinder, older-looking physician walks in. I’m honestly not sure if she’s a doctor or a nurse, but her bedside manner is much more approachable, putting me at ease immediately.
Or as at ease as I can be right now.
Grace is still in my lap, but I turn her around to face the older lady as she walks over and kneels in front of where we’re sitting in the cold, plastic chair. “They said she’s having trouble breathing?” she confirms as she pulls her stethoscope out and places it under Grace’s shirt to take a listen.
“She’s breathing okay now. But she woke me up with a red face and blue lips not even thirty minutes ago.”
The nurse closes her eyes as she listens to me and Grace at the same time. After a few seconds, she pulls back, stands, and walks over to grab something from inside one of the cabinets.
She comes back with something that looks like two beakers side by side with a tube sticking out of it. “Can you blow into this as hard as you can, sweetie?” She points to the end of the tube for Grace.
She wraps her lips around it and blows hard. The breath is no longer than a second, and a tiny whistle rings out as a ball flutters up in one of the tubes then drops back down as Grace dissolves into another coughing fit. They sound even more mucusy than yesterday, and I look at the nurse to see what she thinks of the sound, but she’s looking at the tube Grace just blew into with a worried look.
“Okay, there’s definitely some fluid in her lungs. I’m going to need to order some x-rays of her chest, and we’re going to get started on admitting her. I want to watch her for at least the next twenty-four hours.” She stands to leave but must see the panic on my face because she stops. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll get the scans ordered and know more in a few hours.”