Tie a Knot & Hang On

A week later, a shriek startled me awake in the middle of the night.

“Mummy!” Lucy wailed loudly from her bedroom. “Daddy!” Her sobs echoed down the hall, sending me practically rolling out of the bed. Dean, too, shot up, and just mere seconds later, a symphony of howling erupted from the nursery.

“Not the twins, too,” I groaned.

“I’ll get them,” Dean said as we both rushed to throw our clothes back on. “You get Lucy.” I envied his ability to stay calm in situations like this. The dogs were barking, the twins were screaming, and Lucy was crying. I was about one decibel away from ripping my hair right out of my scalp, and he was rushing out of the bedroom like it was protocol.

Dean disappeared behind the nursery door, where a hush was already falling. I took comfort in knowing he had things handled while I went to Lucy’s room. In the glow of the nightlight, tears streaked her reddened cheeks. Her eyes were swollen and puffy with moisture. When I switched on the overhead light, her cheeks were sorely red against a flushed pale face. Her hair was matted with sweat, and she was shivering under the blankets.

“Oh my goodness, sweetie,” I murmured quickly and rushed over to the bedside. “Baby, what’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

“Mummy, I don’t feel good,” she cried, tears spilling from her feverish eyes. Her voice was creaking and shivering with her body.

“What hurts, Lucy? You have to tell me,” I pressed, trying to be as gentle and calm as possible. The last thing I needed was for Lucy to startle even more. If she got any louder, she’d surely get the twins started up again. Travis would undoubtedly sleep through all of this. There was evidence that Travis could probably sleep through the nuclear holocaust.

“Everything!” Lucy sobbed, choking on her tears before she snapped her mouth shut. Her lips grew pale and twitchy.

“Lucy, baby, what is it?” I asked, but she didn’t say anything. She just pursed his lips, swallowed, and shook her head. She was going to vomit. I could already tell. I pulled her out of the bed and hurried across the hall to the bathroom. We sat by the toilet just in time for her to lose her last meal without making a mess of everything. I brushed her hair back with my hand as she retched into the bowl. “Dean!” I called out, trying not to seem panicked, but calm was quite a far reach away from me right now.

“What?” he called back.

“Call Gabe!” I shouted. “Lucy’s not doing well!”

Gabe was as reliable as ever—got there in ten minutes flat to hold down the fort while Dean and I rushed to the emergency room. With Lucy spiking a fever, it was no surprise they had her seen immediately. Not to mention, our titles usually allowed us to slip past the waiting room step if we really needed to. I usually wasn’t one to press for special treatment, but Lucy was burning up and sobbing uncontrollably.

Since it wasn’t technically an emergency, Dean and I were allowed to stay with her. Nurses were in and out, checking vitals, pressing cold compresses to her head. Long after they gave her some kind of medication, Lucy settled and eventually lulled off the sleep. Color seemed to return to her face, and she looked rather peaceful in comparison to what she’d been just a few minutes ago.

Sighing, I slumped back in the chair a little. Dean squeezed my shoulder. “It’s gonna be fine,” he assured me. “Probably just a stomach bug.” But it wasn’t. It wasn’t just a stomach bug. I’d never seen a stomach bug make a child shriek like that. She’d been listless minutes ago, too pained to speak without wailing, too sick not to choke on her own air.

A man in a white coat came in, carrying a clipboard. “President Cassidy. President Giroux,” he addressed us both, and Dean and I lifted our heads to face the man with slicked back hair and green eyes. “She’s going to be okay.”

Another heavy sigh fell from my mouth, lifting an unbearable weight off my chest. “Thank you,” I whispered, rubbing my brow and closing my eyes for a second.

“From the looks of things, it’s just the flu,” he continued. “Very easy to treat, very manageable. We’ll want to keep her until the morning, obviously, just to make sure we’re right and that she’s stable, but you should be able to take her home after that.” He looked between Dean and I for a moment.

“And after that?” Dean asked.

“I’ll give you a scrip for medication before you leave in the morning. Other than that, lots of rest, lots of fluids—“ I was starting to hate those words. They’d worked so well for those headaches that hadn’t vanished. “And I suggest something we call the BRAT diet—bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast—at least until her stomach settles. You can give her ibuprofen for the fevers, too. She should clear up in about a week or so, but it’s really just a matter of waiting it out.”

With a murmured thank you, I tried to convince myself that this was a good thing. Waiting meant it was going to go away on it’s own, but I was never one to sit back and watch things unfold. I’d always been one to jump headfirst into the action, so I found it difficult to take her back home that morning, where I laid her back in bed, convinced her to eat a banana, and gave her the prescribed medication. She fell asleep after that, and she’d spend the next few days like that, I presumed. Waiting for things to get better. Just like Dean and I were. Waiting for the good news we were hoping for—that she was going to be okay, that this really was just a flu, not something worse. Not the horrible things my mind was fixed on.