Let me reassure you, everyone is okay. The race finished with a totaled Infinity G-37S. I’m waiting outside the ER entrance just now, it’s 10:45 pm. This is the moment when the angel (Sara without an “h) showed up. ” I got a hug. A prayer or two. One human connection.
As parents, you’ll learn fairly quickly, that there is nothing you can do to stop or interfere in your kid’s trainwreck. Advice and anger. Tell your kid what “would be good,” and they will do the opposite.
The runaway train has been stopped. I’m waiting for his mom show up with the boy. It was an hour and a half ago that I got the call from her husband, “38th Street ER, she said you were meeting them there.”
I am starting to feel a bit disoriented. How am I waiting for my son again? How is my ex-wife contributing to the drama by taking so fucking long to get here? I’m sitting just outside the ER entrance. It’s a slow night. The heat is managable.
Text just now from my ex-wife, “We had to stop for Gatoraide.”
Of course, they did. Might take them another half an hour to get here. It’s a loud and somehow peaceful evening. Maybe it’s the shock we’re all in. The cranes, sounds, and lights of the construction is like a bad Philip Glass symphony. Chilling towers hissing. Massive booms and crashing of unloaded demolition materials at the nearby site. The massive hospital complex mid-remodel is a dark Lynchian scene. Perhaps it’s just me.
The first entrance of the hospital says, “Go to the Emergency Entrance.” Start down that road and the EAST entrance is blocked inside by a placard. “Admitting only through the Emergency Room after 10 pm.” Walking further into the inner bowels of the hospital emergency driveway. Two hoodie-wrapped people are are sleeping on the bench under the big A-logo of the health network. A long and lonely walk, to a long and lonely night, sitting vigil outside the ER waiting.
Sara without an “h” sang on two songs of the new Buzzie record. She didn’t seem to recognize me. We were out of context, it was late a night, she too was lost trying to find the ER entrance. Her mom is in hospice. The only way in or out of this hell hole of construction and traffic patterns designed for ambulances is walking half a mile down the emergency vehicle driveway.
The people are the reason for this place. Comfort and clear signage are not.
“What’s his name?” Sara asks, walking backward with her 1,000-watt smile, to the ER. “I’ll pray for him.”
An hour and a half later we are in room 10, the nurse is doing some prep work to do blood draws and put in an IV. My son is squirming, complaining, and panicking on the narrow gurney/bed. They don’t try to make you comfortable here. This is not a place of comfort and rest. This is a moment, of “stay awake, stay with us. Which arm do you want me to use?”
It’s a lot of tearing of paper packages for needles, connectors, vials, rip rip rip, bing. The machines and wing of ER are binging from within the room and more from the open hallway door. I close my eyes. Soaking the sound, the gravity of the moment, and my son’s pleas and cries for water. “My mouth is so dry.” Food. “I’m starving.” And “I might pass out. Just want to let you know, I’m feeling really bad. I might pass out. I’m having a panic attack. I can’t do this. I’m feeling dizzy.”
Some car malfunction has taken my wife out of the ER. She watched as the security guards pulled a knife and full Glock clip from my son’s backpack. They gave the weapons to her. The automatic doors hiss closed. She is going to see about the trouble with the car door. Two hours earlier, her husband mentioned the disrepair of both their cars, “I don’t think either of them would be reliable transportation to Hunt, to the treatment center.
“I’ll drive him there if that’s where we end up.”
The nurse completes his blood draws and hooks up an IV back of saline. No relief. The car crash caused a minor head injury. In cases of head trauma, they withhold pain meds and sedation. A hotter hell of his creation. I cannot feel any air in the room. My son has asked for his airpods. He’s fumbling with them and mumbling, whimpering, to himself, kicking and twisting his feet against the discomfort.
My ex-wife has been gone now for an hour. I text her. “It’s time for you to come. Now!”
I walk out into the hall and close the door to my son’s room. He wails. I move a little further down the hallway. The discharge is retriggering. Not old memories for me, but immediate and present pain. My son. My baby. Alone on the bed, connected to electronics and fluids. He has been caught.
“Coming,” my wife texts about ten minutes later.
She comes through the door a ghostly pale. We share a hug and a smile as I walk her to room number 10. I pause for a moment in the hall, holding her around the shoulder, “We caught him.”
“We did,” she said. We open the door to my son’s room, mom is here, and the tears and sobs shake his body. Mom is here. She can’t make it right. But you’re going to be okay. I text my daughter from the hallway, I want to give the two of them time. “He’s okay. Being attended to by some of your future colleagues. Don’t worry. We got him. He is safe.”
I wait in the hall for a few songs on my AirPods. With Jacob Dylan singing “When You’re On Top,” I take the hike back to my car and drive home. In an hour, my ex-wife texts me, “I can take the overnight shift at the hospital. You should go get some sleep.”
“Thank you,” I text back. “I fell asleep in my car,” I lied. I was home in bed shivering in my own thoughts and prayers.
It’s 7 am. I texted my ex-wife, “Coffee and breakfast tacos at first sign.”
*Here we go.*
the one and the zero: > next | index
checkout the playlist for all audible chapters
