Never Cover up What We Did With a Dress

“What’s happening to her!?” I screamed at the nurses that were rushing in and out of the room. One of them drew the blinds shut, distinguishing any hope there was for me to find out what was happening to Lily first-hand. I continued to call out, but I was matched with steely silence. My stomach felt uneasy and sick, and I wanted Manson next to me, holding me, telling me everything was going to be OK.

After what felt like hours, my tears began to subside, and instead I was overwhelmed with tiredness. I leaned against the glass that was separating me from the doctors and my daughter inside the room. I placed my hand to my forehead and sighed, not even noticing when someone wrapped their arm around my waist.

“What are you doing?”

I opened my eyes and turned around quickly, unable to hold back my need to hold him. I nuzzled my face and body close against his own, and I felt the chills of worry that were cascading through his body. I knew he knew something was too wrong for me to say. Instead he held me, and I cried into his chest, my arms eventually finding their way around his back, holding him close. We stayed like that for ages, inseparable. We didn’t speak, we didn’t move. We just held each other until we found out what we needed to know.

The sound of a door opening beside us forced us to change our position. I looked up to see who had left the room. It was the doctor who had spoken to us earlier. Feeling nauseous with nerves, I leaned against Manson for support as the doctor began to speak. I couldn’t help but identify the strong, sad look in his eyes. It was the look of bad news.

“I… well, first of all I would like to introduce myself to you both, considering you don’t know who I am.”

Was he for real? Lily was painfully ill and all he could tell us was that he wanted to introduce himself? What was he doing?

“If you could follow me…”

Manson gripped my hand, and if it wasn’t for him moving quickly after the doctor I don’t believe I would have taken a step in any direction. I passed rooms full of sick children, crying parents, rushed nurses. No matter how different every one of these people were, I couldn’t help but notice they all shared the same dull, pained expression in their eyes. The more I looked, the more I began to believe that I, too, looked increasingly more like them.

Before I knew it, I was sitting in a dark office with blue carpet and no windows, facing the doctor, Manson on my right side. I didn’t understand why it was that Manson and I had to come into his office, but something also told me that I did know. I knew exactly why I was here, and I wasn’t going to like it.

“I am doctor Ron Myer.” He said, “and I, unfortunately have some very bad news.”

“What is it?” Asked Manson.

“Well, I have already told you Lily has meningitis, and I also informed you that certain complications can come with that.”

I hated the fact that he was taking so long to get to the point, and my eyes began to water in impatience. I just wanted to know what was wrong with Lily so that I could help her. I wanted to know so that I could find out what I had to do as her mother that would make her get better. Dr Myer looked at us as if gaining approval to go on. I didn’t move.

“She… Lily has begun to rapidly degrade in health. She is having severe trouble breathing. It isn’t too complicated to temporarily fix, and of course we’ve already made sure Lily is successfully connected to a mechanical ventilator…”

“So what’s the problem, Doctor?” I inquired.

“Well, the problem is, Mrs Manson, we’re not too sure when Lily will be able to breathe for herself, if ever. This complication occurring so early on in the diagnosis is really not the most practical of things. It will make any operation we may have to preform much harder.”

“So what you’re saying is that… you don’t know if Lily will ever be able to breathe for herself again?”

“Well, that’s a stretch, but for now, she won’t be able to for… a period of time. Look, I am sorry I cannot be more specific at the moment. The fact that the meningitis has developed and progressed so rapidly is hard to understand. For now, all I can say is you both have to have hope and patience. Lily is very sick, but for now, we just need to do as much as we can.”

“Well that’s not good enough!” I cried, standing up viciously, forcing my chair to topple back and hit the ground. I stepped closer to the doctor’s desk. “Tell me what is wrong with my baby!”

“Chesney!” Manson shouted, slightly shocked. I could see the look on the doctors face, and it made my cheeks flood with redness. I was embarrassed, but I was too worried and too agitated to care.

Manson had stood up and was behind me, wrapping his arm around my waist, trying to guide me back toward my chair. I followed him limply.

“I’m sorry, I do understand how you must feel,” the doctor said sweetly. “But, unfortunately I cannot give either of you anymore details as of yet, and I have to move on to my other patients now. Lily will probably be able to see you now, but she’ll be moved into a permanent room away from ER when we have a bed, and pronounce her as stable. If anything happens, I’ll be the doctor who will be treating her. Once again, I am sorry.”

Manson and I still stood, his arm around me in a means of support. Once the doctor left, Manson let go of me and collapsed onto his chair. I watched as his head fell effortlessly into his hands, and he let out a sigh of a mix of emotions I could not identify. I walked over to him and crouched before his chair, suddenly feeling as though I needed to make him feel better. I took his hands in mine and looked at his face, longing for him to lift it off his hands so I could look at him.

“This is all my fault.” He said.

“What? Why?”

“I… I don’t know, I just feel terrible for not being around. We might have realised she was sick…”

“This has absolutely nothing to do with you not being around!” I shouted. “Please, stop with always having to accuse yourself of being the problem when stuff goes bad with Lily or me. It has nothing to do with you not being here.”

He swallowed. His face was taught as he whispered, “what if she dies, Ches? What would we do?”

“We’re not thinking of that right now.” I said, and I moved closer to his chair, kneeling, I wrapped my arms around him tightly. “I love you.” I said.

Manson hugged me back and pressed his lips to my forehead. “I love you too.”

Manson spun me around and sat me on his lap, his chin resting on my shoulder. We stayed like that for a while, but I couldn’t say exactly how long it was. He just held me and I stayed there until we thought it would be appropriate to go and see Lily. Part of me didn’t want to, but I knew I had to, and yet another part of me wanted to see her so badly I could hardly contain my patience. Manson and I walked hand in hand down the corridor, and I was extremely comforted just knowing that he was there with me.

A nurse was still in the room, making sure the tube that was now stuck in my baby’s throat was working all right. I swallowed back tears as I saw her, and I began to wonder how exactly it was that earlier tonight everything was fine, and yet now Lily was lying in hospital, unable to breathe for herself. It looked terribly weird to see such a big tube in her tiny body. I found myself wondering how she was going to overcome this with such a minuscule system to fight her war.

“I can’t believe this is happening to us.” I whispered, and Manson walked closer to me, wrapping his arms around me.

“I know,” he replied, his voice becoming lost in my hair. “After everything else that has already happened.”

“This is by far the worst.” I clarified, resting my head onto Manson’s chest.

“Excuse me?” I heard a small voice call from the doorway of Lily’s room. “Are you the parents?”

“Yes.” Manson replied for me. I broke away from his embrace and laced my hand in his.

“You can go in and see her now. Although she won’t be awake anytime soon.”

“That’s okay.” I said, walking past the nurse and into the room. It was so unfamiliar, I wondered if Lily would recognise the difference. I wondered if Lily was scared.

“We’ll be moving her into a permanent room soon.” The nurse said. “It’s probably best if you go home and get some rest. It won’t do you any good staying here.”

I nodded and gripped Manson’s hand tighter as the nurse proceeded to leave the room, leaving us both alone with our sleeping daughter. For the first ten minutes, all I could do was stare at her. I could hardly see her breathing. Sobs caught in my chest.

“You did a good job.” Manson said to me. I looked up at him and wondered what he was talking about. “You took her here straight away. You knew she was sick.”

“So did you.”

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t have taken her here. At least, not right away. You could tell.”

I gave him a small smile and stepped closer to her bed. I could barely recognise how I felt. It was almost as if I were numb, and yet I knew how heartbroken I was to see my daughter laying on a foreign hospital bed, her body altered and damaged, her spirit crushed.

I didn’t know what to do, and it was clear to me that Manson didn’t know either. All we could do was hope that she got better, and support her. I wished more than anything that I was sick and she wasn’t, but I knew that wishing wouldn’t do a thing. In the end it was all up to luck.

I walked closer to her bed, Manson a step behind me. When I reached her, I extended my arm out to her, and touched her skin. It was both marbly and red at the same time, and I could feel the heat in her skin. I swallowed back more sobs and blinked hard so that I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t cry in front of her.

I leaned over her and kissed her forehead softly, standing back as Manson did the same.

“I think we should go now,” he said. “I think we should go home.”

I nodded, and tried to ignore the tears in his eyes.