Regular Life

Thursday ended with Shannon staring at her computer screen, tears streaming down her face. “Ben’s hiding in his closet,” she said. Ben likes to do that when I get home so I can “find” him.

Then Shannon looked up at me and sobbed, “He could have died.”

Just home from work, I set down my laptop bag and walked over to her. “But he didn’t, and he’s fine now.”

Somehow that didn’t seem like a profound thing to say in light of the afternoon’s events.

Thursday at work, I’m sitting at a table in our building’s upstairs lounge enjoying my baby carrots and turkey sandwich. It’s noon.

My mobile phone startles me with its vibration and then emits a sound reminiscent of a doorbell. It’s a weird ring, but I picked it and I like it.

“Benjamin got bit by fire ants at the park,” Shannon says.

“You mean ’stung’ by fire ants.^* What happened?” I say. And, no, I never learn.

Over Benjamin’s cries in the background, she explains, “He was playing and they got in his shoes. He’s having some kind of reaction. Can you call the doctor’s office for me and then call me back and tell me what they say we should do?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m with Mrs. L. I ran out of gas on the way to the playdate and she’s taking us to our house to get our gas can.” No, “Mrs. L” is not her real name.

“You ran out of gas again?”

I’m going to paraphrase my wife’s next dialogue. “Yes. Just call the doctor’s office for me, please, and tell me what they say.”

“Tell me what it looks like, because they’re going to ask me,” I say, and she does.

I dash across the hall to the Internet-connected computers in one of our training rooms. I dial Benjamin’s doctor’s office. “The doctors won’t be back from lunch until about 1:30,” the nurse says.

After my brief secondhand description, she asks, “Do the spots look like little wheels?”

Wheels? WTF?

“I don’t know. I just know that they’re red and now they’re spreading all over his body. On his waist, his arms, everywhere.”

“If he’s reacting strongly, then take him to the ER.”

I call Shannon back and give her the news. “It’s getting worse, Mark, and A-Cute Kids doesn’t open until five,” she says.

“Then you need to take him to the ER, and I’ll meet you there.” Each of us is about 10 minutes from the hospital.

I toss in my last bite of sandwich and last two baby carrots as I rush down the long corridor to my cubicle, and then inform my co-worker that I’m out for an emergency with my boy.

I grab my point-and-shoot digital camera.

I arrive and park in ER visitor parking because it seems pretty legit. Shannon’s distinctive blue purse catches my eye from the backdoor of a tan Suburban in the ER loading area. I jump out of the car, tuck my camera in my front pants pocket, and jog in that direction.

The lady at the triage counter buzzes us right in after I fill out a couple lines of basic information. Benjamin is brave as she checks him for fever and gets a better look at his rash. Triage tells Shannon where to take him while I finish the admission paperwork.

“They’re in hall three,” Triage tells me. “Just down there to the right.”

I dash down the hallway, noticing the distinct lack of hospital smell. They need to tell somebody else what they’re doing to get that effect.

Shannon and Benjamin are sitting on a gurney outside an exam room. Triage literally meant they were “in hall three.” A red-headed nurse with freckles stands next to a brown-haired woman who is holding an ear-nose-throat inspection light up to Benjamin’s open mouth.

“Now, I need you to say, ‘Ah.’”

Benjamin doesn’t say anything.

“Come on, son, say, ‘Ah,’” Shannon and I intone.

“Get me a tongue depressor,” Brown Hair says to Redhead. She does and with an oversized Popsicle stick in his mouth, Ben finally utters the sound pediatricians everywhere must tire of hearing.

“Okay, good, thank you,” Brown Hair says. She and Redhead walk away.

“They squirted a syringe full of steroid liquid in his mouth,” Shannon says. “They’re supposed to be coming back with a shot of something.”

I kneel down and rub Benjamin’s back. “I’m sorry this happened to you, son. You’re doing great.” Ben just lies there, uncharacteristically quiet and still.

I excuse myself to the nearby restroom. While I’m in there I hear Benjamin say, “No,” just before he starts to cry. There goes the shot. Less than a minute later his crying stops. Shannon tells me later that it was epinephrine.

Mrs. L calls Shannon and says she has fetched lunch for us. I go get it and thank Mrs. L profusely, only to have Triage tell me that they don’t allow food even in the waiting room because, “With some people out there already feeling like they’re going to vomit, it’s just not a good idea.” I take the grilled chicken sandwiches out to my car and head back to Benjamin’s gurney.

“I already ate lunch, so you go ahead and go eat,” I say. Shannon does.

Ben looks up at a sign on the window behind his head. “H3,” he says.

“Yes, that’s right, because you’re in Hall Three,” I say.

I realize that I still don’t know exactly how he got into the fire ants. He has become very good at spotting suspect mounds. “Can you tell me what happened?” I say.

“I was playing on the playground and fire ants got in my Crocs.”

“Did you run to find Mommy?”

“No, everybody ran to me,” he says.

“Oh, because you were crying?”

“Yes.”

“Where were the ants?”

“I was playing with a stick from the woods, but I was on the playground. The ants were just inside the mulch,” Ben says. That’s a direct quote. I realize my son’s not going to sound like a little boy much longer. Except for the high voice.

I rub his back again and stand as close as I can to the gurney. Our spot is cramped periodically by hospital staff rolling new arrivals from the ambulance bay.

Nurses, physician’s assistants (PA’s), and doctors rush in and out of the room with the H3 on its window. The curtains are drawn across the window and the door to block the view. A young woman emerges from the doorway crying. The patient inside moans loudly in pain.

I fully expect but never hear the word, “Stat.”

Benjamin starts to feel much better in the minimum 30-minute observation time after his shot. Shannon and I, still hungry for some Hollywood medical drama jargon, keep calling it, “Epi.”

His condition much improved, Benjamin gets as restless as any boy about to turn five and asked to sit still on a hospital gurney without any snacks or toys. He starts sticking his feet in our faces for fun.

The doctor drops by and clears Benjamin for departure. “We just have to fill out his discharge paperwork,” he says.

Twenty minutes later, I ask his PA if we can leave yet. “A nurse will do the paperwork with you,” she says.

Roughly twenty minutes after that and a couple more of my inquiries, Benjamin says, “Ask her, Daddy,” as a nurse approaches.

“Ask me what?” she says, beaming a smile at Benjamin.

I smile and reply, “If it’s time for him to be discharged.”

Within five minutes, she rounds up the papers and picks out a dual-pop green Popsicle for Benjamin. Nice work, son.

I haul Shannon and Benjamin out to the pharmacy and to Mrs. L’s house, to get Ben’s prescriptions and our gas can. There’s enough in it. We go to the van, where I have to walk around a fire ant colony to pour in the fuel, and then I follow Shannon and Benjamin to the gas station.

We part ways and I head back to work. Later, when I arrive home, Benjamin is up to his usual hide-and-seek antics and Shannon is a shambles after reading all about anaphylactic shock.

And that’s about where we started this story. The boy has had two very good days since then and as I type this he sleeps sweetly in the next room down the hall.

^* As I researched the red imported fire ant, the prominent insect sumbitch here in Texas, I found that Shannon and I both were right, but I was more right. Fire ants in general “only bite to get a grip and then sting (from the abdomen) and inject a toxic alkaloid venom called Solenopsin, a compound from the class of piperidines. For humans, this is a painful sting, a sensation similar to what one feels when burned by fire — hence the name fire ant — and the aftereffects of the sting can be deadly to sensitive individuals.” The article I linked is a fascinating description of red imported fire ants and the amazing methods they use to survive harsh conditions. But around here we still hate them.

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