They’d planned it for weeks. The preparations were extensive. A double sleepover: 2 friends, 2 days, 2 nights. Bella was to turn 9 and I was to turn 107 by the end of it.
We were about an hour into the happy chaos, everyone settled down before the TV with their hotdogs, and almost immediately Bella began gagging and choking and making alarming facial expressions. “It’s sharp! It hurts!” Hotdogs are deadly but not sharp… What the–? Her braces wire. The one that had come loose (again) and which I had refused to drive 40 minutes out to the dentist (again) to fix before our appointment next week. She’d swallowed the effing wire.
Thankfully, Sam had arrived home from a trip two hours before. “Where do you want to be?” he asked me. I stared at him, scanning scenarios and calculating which would be most horrible for each of us. I chose untold hours of waiting in the ER over returning distraught and traumatized children to their homes.
The local emergency room should have a wing designated to our memory when we leave. Between kidney stones, spinal injury, stitches, croup, and swallowed foreign objects we will have been admitted 8 times in three years. And that’s the local one. Pleased that my favorite parking spot was available on this Friday evening, I checked us in and Bella seemed in relatively good spirits.
I didn’t want to terrify her more than she already was so when she started asking about the status of her epic birthday weekend I tried to be positive. Would we be back before the movie was over? Probably not, but we could start it again. Would they eat cake without her? I forbade it. Would we be back in time for the sleepover part? I really didn’t know.
After two hours or so of sporadic visits from nurses and one from the doctor as we waited for an X ray, Bella was, and I quote, “so freaking bored she wanted to punch something.” I admonished her for her language and tried to make light conversation avoiding all reference to her own birthday party that she was missing with the best friends that she would soon be moving away from. I found in my bag the small adorable brand new notepad I’d tried to save for all those inspirational novel ideas (hence the “brand newness…”) and a pen. “Why don’t you draw for a bit?” She was not having it. But she did use it to communicate some feelings I might otherwise not have guessed due to her masterful Concealment of Emotions skillz.
She hated her braces.
She hated hotdogs. She hated the dentist– who DID IT WRONG. She hated her life.
This was the worst day ever. The worst birthday EVER. Why did this have to happen? Why did she eat that stupid hotdog? She should never have eaten that freaking hotdog! She was so dumb! If only–
I was well acquainted with this rant and I knew where it was going. I viewed the spiral from the top, saw all attempts at reason and comfort swirling down further into futility, and felt myself shutting down the Compassion Department and opening wide the doors of “Fine, be that way.” Come on in. I tried to be patient and understanding, given how scared and disappointed she was. Even if she was being a little B.
“You have to try not to blame yourself or anyone else. It was an accident and nobody’s fault.” That got me nothing but a very dark Bellaean look. “Tell me something about your day! What was the best thing that happened?”
“Nothing!“
“Well, what was the worst thing that hap–”
“THIS! THIS IS THE WORST THING EVER!”
“–pened at school…?”
“UGH!“
A few more attempts were similarly met with dramatic exclamations regarding the injustice of it all, and the level of histrionics rose to a height and distance from rationalization that I was unable to deal with. I would have to go Rauh on her. I had to pull a Greatest Showman. Without looking at her (frankly, a little afraid to, so menacing was her expression), I adopted my best nonchalant yet mysteriously interesting tone and tore a sheet from the tiny pad.
“I don’t blame you for not having much to report from your day at school. I went through much of my elementary education in a disassociated fog. And I’ll tell you this,” (fold the page in half) “I remember virtually nothing about 4th grade,” (unfold and use the crease as a meeting point for two corners folded down) “other than my friend Chi Yu, who was hilarious, and this:” (fold, flip) “how to make a paper clam.”
I risked a glance up at her silent steely tear-stained visage.
“Which should indicate to you the level of significance, wonder, and ultimately magical importance measured into this skill I am about to demonstrate for you, my only daughter, the jewel of my soul, and the legacy I leave for the world after me.”
A stifled and begrudging chuckle.
“This clam,” (fold fold) “is no ordinary clam, no lame, cowardly shelled creature lying around the bottom of the sea wasting everyone’s time by taking forever to transform grains of irritation into valuable pearls–NO. This clam,” (fold fold) “This creature is a construction of pure magnificence and the manifestation of truest splendor, the likes of which not many of our species is able to comprehend.” (final fold and pull) “Behold.” I presented the tiny, lopsided, unevenly fashioned, and cockeyed in every way paper clam. She laughed. “Have you ever seen anything so incredibly fantastic in all your born days?” She laughed louder. “Oh wait. I forgot the eyes. The eyes make all the difference.” I put two dots at dramatically uneven angles. She guffawed. “They say that they eyes are the windows to the soul.” We both laughed as I turned the clam to look at me and then back to her. “This guy’s clearly had a hard time of it.” We were both laughing so loudly and half crying as the stress diffused slightly that I was a bit embarrassed for the other poor folks behind the curtains suffering their untold health risks.
The clam had worked and she was now obsessed with making them, enlisted my services to continue, and between her airplane/birds and my clams, we used up the entire notepad.
We were in that ER for about three hours before being told the Xray showed the wire low in her stomach and in order to avoid a perforated intestine (which, yeah, let’s do that) we would be sent, by private vehicle, to Kansas City Children’s Mercy Hospital for a scope extraction. Turns out “private vehicle” doesn’t mean ambulance, so I called Sam to have him send everyone home and meet us at the next hospital, filled my bag with clams, and got out my keys.
The 44 minute drive through the pitch black back roads with my little Chickapen in the back seat and a wire in her belly felt surreal. I’ve been having kind of a hard time of it and this event did nothing to quell my anxieties. It could end very badly. Sadako and the Paper Cranes is not at the top of my Feel Good Books chart. “Bella and the Paper Clams” must not end badly. Surely not. Surely. What was I not getting, God? I’m trying so hard to be compliant and forgiving and patient and accepting. How am I supposed to be handling this? Are you asking me if I can give her completely to You? Can’t I just say YES! YES! I’ll trust that You’ll take care of everything! Please don’t let the wire move wrongly. If only I’d driven the long way out to the dentist when the wire had popped out of place again! Why didn’t I at least try to cut it down with nail clippers?! I am so stupid! If only—
If I’m learning anything lately it’s that I have control over exactly nothing. At some point I have to trust that though God’s timing and plans are not at all similar to mine that they are good. Not only are they not similar to mine but they are also generally not at all the way I would do things and there is no way for me to anticipate what happens. Trying to war-game every scenario and have a strategy in place for everything is exhausting. Plus, I get confused easily and tragically, I’m not clairvoyant. I misunderstand a lot of stuff.
Much like when the nurse says “Children’s Mercy Hospital” but really means Children’s Mercy Hospital: Adele Hall Campus, which is 20 minutes further downtown than the Children’s Mercy Hospital: the other one I tried to check us into first and at which I freaked out a bit when they said they were not aware of my daughter in the system.
Much like Google Map’s directions saying “Take Exit 192” but the actual exit has no number and is identified as “The Paseo.”
When I finally arrived, at the correct hospital, they asked for my ID. I pulled my wallet from my bag in an explosion of clams and birds which fell to the floor. “The clams!” Bella dropped to all fours and collected them. She was still shoving them back into my bag as we walked into the waiting area, where Sam and the boys met us with a change of clothes and a LeapPad. We were together for only about 20 minutes but it pulled all the scattered bits back together long enough to recharge me before the next phase. Bella and I went back to the exam area, got another X-ray, and then waited 5 more hours.
During this time, my non-medically trained mind was imagining that damn wire clawing its way through her intestines, destroying my child from the inside out, and nobody doing anything about it: just waiting. I tried to pray. I tried to encourage Bella, who was scared and sad about her party. I tried to economically text while still preserving my battery, but I was so very tired. It was almost midnight when the doctor came in.
There would be no scope. We were to let the wire make its way out on its own. Get another X-ray on Monday and if it’s still in there, return for the extraction.
Bella was, of course, in the bed right next to me as the Doctor said all of this, but when I told her it all meant that we could go home and there would be no little operation, she smiled so wide I think I saw every tooth. Her relief was so intense it brought tears to my eyes.
There is a small, sharp, destructive thing inside her where it isn’t supposed to be. And there is a small, sharp, destructive thing inside me where it isn’t supposed to be. I try to disguise it and explain it and justify it, but doubt simply has no place here. I can say that I trust God to take care of me and my family but if I am truthful, I doubt His goodness sometimes. I doubt His kindness. I doubt His concern for my happiness. I trust that He knows best. I believe that He has a plan and that He will win and that I want Him to win. But when I get scared that His winning will cost me something, anything, I doubt the whole endeavor. What if He asks me to give up my dream of being published for real, my comfort in financial security, my child? Will I still love Him? Will I still trust that He knows best? I want to say that I will, but when the question becomes more than rhetorical I immediately beg, bargain, and doubt.
As I drove and then as I sat for the 5 hours, I also eventually ran through a list of memories: every time I have seen no way through, every pain I thought unhealable, every situation I thought unsalvageable, He has built a road, produced a balm, and MacGyvered a solution better than I ever could have. I have to remember those times. When I’m in the disassociated fog, the one thing I need to remember is that He always wins. Not over me, but for me.
Tomorrow I hope to see nothing exciting in that X-ray. But if the wire remains, I’ll try not to let the clams hit the floor– I’ll try to remember His track record. I’ll try to see things through trusting eyes. The eyes make all the difference.
Smile When You Say That