The Boy Next Door

Trigger warning: Contains descriptions of medical intervention as well as the death of a child. Please read with care.

I didn’t know what day it was.
If it was even a new day,
or just a terrible continuation of the last.

The PICC line was in,
resting just on top of her heart.
I was trying to remember
if there were nerves attached to the pericardium.
If having this little purple tube
threaded into her chest
was hurting her.

She couldn’t tell me.
She was unconscious now.

We had been moved to the larger room next door.
This one was just four steps from the nurses’ station.
The last room was eighteen steps.

The baby-faced nurses were trying to assure her father
that the move was “just to make room for more equipment,”
as their faces turned ashen,
their eyes glazing over with professionalism.

I appreciated the effort to comfort my ex-husband,
letting him keep clinging
to the last few threads of “maybe our daughter will pull through.”
Allowing his heart
to stay bound together a little bit longer.

But I knew.
Mothers always know.

This was not the “things are looking up” room.
This was the battle station.
This was the room with cupboards bursting
full of bags and tubes and OR lights.
The room with extra oxygen lines,
redundant outlets,
floor space for crash carts.

More resources. More support.
This was not the room where hope is expected to flourish.

I knew the nurses could read it on my face.
The knowing.
The resigned terror.
The refusal to flinch away.

I watched as they gauged him,
trying to work out how much he would panic
as they began the next steps.
If he would remain calm
while tracheotomy trays came out,
sterile cardiac trays,
feet of tubing and rolls of gauze
meant to keep her little girl limbs from flailing
when the seizures arrived.

Fathers are not known to be passive
when their daughters are in danger.
They are not known to react with emotional restraint
and minimal action.

I cleared my throat and said I would take first watch.
If our daughter so much as twitched,
I would send for him.
He needed to sleep.
He gratefully slipped away
to find a hospital sofa.

I gave the nurses a small twitch of my lips,
the closest thing to a smile I could manage.
A non-verbal: I’ve got you.

They had to go settle a new child,
a boy about the same age as our daughter,
just admitted to our old room.
The eighteen-steps-away room.

I pressed my palm to our shared wall,
offering a prayer,
sending as much love as I could
through four inches of plaster and pipes.

Then it was back to my never-ending staring contest
with neon threads of light as they bounced along a screen,
telling us which organs were trying to offset
the strain of the poison,
which were failing,
which we had left.

I don’t know how much time had past
when I lost the staring contest.
Our assigned Resident’s bright sneakers
had just darted past the gap
between the curtain and the floor,
running to the room next door.

The eighteen-steps-away room.

It is never a good thing
when there is running in hospitals.

I try to reason it away.
Someone left their pen.
Someone dropped their badge.
Someone—

The blue light starts blinking in the hall.
The tenor of the beep begins.
One excruciating second
between the cool blue of the flash
and the worst sound on the planet.

Code Blue.

More sneakers pound past.
Something heavy thuds against the other side of the wall.

I tell myself it is not the crash cart.
It can’t be.
Not today.

I stare harder at the neon threads,
praying my baby is not aware
of what is happening a few feet away from her.

She doesn’t stir.

More feet in the hall.
This time in sandals.
The boy next door’s parents.

I hear our Resident’s voice come through the wall,
holding steady as he says,
“Clear,”
before the electric thrum of the AED.

I pray that their door is more soundproof than this wall.
No parent should hear this.

I check that ours is firmly closed,
that no sound seeps from where it shouldn’t.

I try to focus on our side of the plaster.
I can’t.

That’s the thing about parenthood;
you can’t turn it off.
You can’t know a child is in danger
and be non-reactive.
Not when it isn’t your child.
Not even when there is nothing you can do to help.

“Clear” again.
Discharge.

The pst-pst-pst-pst of the LUCAS comes crashing through the wall,
quickly followed by the sound of adolescent ribs splintering
underneath 300 newtons of force
as the machine tries to beat his heart for him.

A full minute goes by.
The blue light keeps blinking,
the alarm still sounding,
my child is still in her dreamless sleep.

I silently plead with whatever deity is listening
that the curtain is drawn over their glass door.
That this boy’s parents aren’t seeing this.

Restarting a heart is a violent process.
I’m sick in the sink.

Another minute passes.
Followed by another.
Followed by another.

I hear our Resident’s strained voice:
“Time of death: zero two three seven.”
I sink to the floor.

Thirty more seconds go past.
Our Resident’s familiar bright sneakers
are the first ones back in the hall.

I do not listen.
This is not mine to hear.

The pink sandals give out underneath the woman they carry.

Our Resident’s white coat pools
as he crouches next to her.
The mother that he just had to tell
that he could not save her son.

I don’t make it to the sink this time.