Narrative

One morning in 1998 I woke my mom up and told her my stomach hurt. She squinted at me in the dark room, looked at the clock on the dresser, and saw that it was nearly 7:00 AM. She answered the way she always did when I announced I wasn’t feeling well a mere hour before school began, “That’s too bad, you’re still going to school.”

                I shook her shoulder and whispered, “Can you stay home today with me?” She looked at me curiously and felt my forehead.  She knew if I was play-acting I wouldn’t want her to stay home, as that would cut down on opportunities to watch TV after Dad went to work.

                Mom pulled the covers over her head as she sighed, “Fine, but I’ll take you to grandma’s but I’ll tell her you’re sick and not allowed out of bed.” This was okay with me. I climbed into bed between my parents but couldn’t go back to sleep. My stomach was hurting more and more with each passing minute and I couldn’t stop myself from rolling around.

                When mom went to wake  me up to go to grandma’s my hair was plastered to my face with tears and I had chills. Mom guessed I probably had the flu, but when I couldn’t stand for the throbbing pain in my side she immediately called in sick for work and told me to get dressed because we had to go to the ER. Oddly enough, I don’t really have any memory of what happened between this point and the hospital, but it’s safe to assume I most likely laid in the back (strapped in a seat belt no doubt, that’s something my father would never let pass no matter how sick I was) moaning and crying. I also can’t recall exactly why I wasn’t prepped for surgery right away, but something must have alerted the doctor to the possibility of something besides appendicitis. At any rate, I did get to jump ahead of about 10 people, one I remember having a scary looking head wound.

                The next thing I remember is being in a room and the nurse explaining I needed an IV. I didn’t know what that was, but the second I heard the word “needle” I started crying harder. As I felt the needle go into my wrist I remember thinking, “Huh, that actually isn’t too terrible,” but for whatever reason I couldn’t stop screaming. After that the nurse said I could pick out a sticker from her desk. I picked out a black sticker with a tiger on it that said: I did greeeeeaaaaatttt!!!! My stomach pains died down several minutes later. As a child I didn’t connect it with the IV, but now I realize the IV most likely had some sort of painkiller in it. I told my mom I wanted to go home now, but the doctor entered and said I needed to stay the night because they still weren’t sure what was causing such severe pain, and if it was appendicitis I needed to be in the hospital in case it ruptured suddenly, as appendixes tended to do.

                The next tissue was the wheelchair. I wanted to walk to my room but hospital rules dictated that I had to be wheeled. I must have been cried-out by this time because I accepted it and climbed into the chair instead of throwing a fit. On the hallway to my room we ran into my dad and grandparents. This relieved my mom because it meant she could leave me and go have a cigarette outside. I had to share my room with another girl my age, and I was a little comforted to see she had an IV as well. She had brought along her little toy dollhouse and let me play with her. She sadly told me she didn’t have all her dolls with her because her dad hadn’t brought all of them. I did notice her foot was wrapped up and she couldn’t leave her bed although I was allowed to walk about the room as I wished; I just had to make sure I didn’t knock my IV stand over or get tangled up in the tubing. I never asked her what happened, but when I got home mom told me she had spoken with the girl’s mother, and the girl had lost her foot by sticking it under the lawnmower while her father was mowing the lawn.

                The night passed relatively uneventful, except for a traumatic experience with the nurse who came in to collect my blood. I cried, predictably but the worst part was when she returned later and said the sample got contaminated and she had to collect it again. I watched TV with my friend; I even remember what we were watching: The Dark Crystal. Luckily whatever was wrong with me corrected itself because the next day the doctor said I could go home. I said goodbye to my friend and told her to call me when she got out of the hospital. We stupidly did not exchange numbers.