Part 3 (2/2)
”I don't care!”
”Abigail. Get down here. Now.”
”Daddy,” she said wretchedly, ”I'm scared. And I hurt my ankle. And I can't leave Anna, Daddy. I promised I wouldn't leave her.”
”Okay.” He rubbed one hand over his face, sweating despite the cool of the evening. ”Hang on. I'm coming up there.”
We positioned the ladder, extending it as high as it would reach, and Jack and I held it steady while Kevin scrambled up. I heard him talking to Abbie in his low, calm Daddy voice, and after a moment, she let him help her down. It was dark now, and Abbie's bare legs were visibly shaking. When her feet were finally on the ground, I allowed myself to exhale.
”Kevin, did you see Anna? Is she breathing? Could you hear her?”
He shook his head grimly, striding toward the veterinary truck. I had to run to keep up with him.
”Kevin, I should call 911. Should I call?”
”I'll get her,” he said. ”Let's just stay calm.”
He hitched a high-powered flashlight to his pocket, looped the rope over his shoulder, and headed back to the tree. With the twenty-four-foot ladder fully extended, Kevin was able to climb up and peek over the edge of the opening if he balanced on his toes on the very top rung-a sight in itself that stopped my heart.
Oh, G.o.d, please. Keep your hand on him. Keep him steady...
Running his hand along the jagged edges of rotting wood, Kevin still expected to find Anna relatively close to the hole. He was thinking that once he was at eye level, he'd be able to see her, and she'd be able to take the rope.
”Anna? Anna, Daddy's here. Everything's okay.”
He looked up into the hollow of the tree above the hole, which gave him a sense of what the inside of the tree was like, but to look down, he'd have to climb higher. Kevin reached out with one arm and tested the branch where Abbie had been standing. When he s.h.i.+fted his weight to it, the branch moaned softly, and I covered my face with my hands.
”Oh, G.o.d! Please, be careful, Kevin!”
”Sit tight,” he called to me, leaning into the cavity. ”Everything's under... control...”
I heard his confidence leave him.
As Kevin beamed the flashlight down into the chasm, he saw what Abbie had seen. He'd grown up outdoors, climbed his share of trees, but he'd never seen anything like this. It was like staring down a dry well. Kevin's stomach dropped as his brain processed the truly dire straits Anna was in. He leaned in, but the corridor angled away from the light. There seemed to be no end to it.
”Anna? Can you hear me?”
He paused, straining to hear something. Anything. The only sound was the light wind in the leaves overhead.
”Okay, Anna.” Kevin kept talking in that strong, soothing voice. ”Okay, we got this. Daddy's here. Everything's going to be okay, baby.”
I don't know if he was trying to convince her or himself or Abbie and Adelynn and me as we huddled s.h.i.+vering on the ground below.
Abandoning the ladder altogether, Kevin hoisted himself onto the wide branch and leaned most of his upper body into the hole. Trying not to dislodge chunks of the brittle rim, he stretched tentatively into the hole, like he was leaning into the mouth of a monster. He angled and tilted the light until he caught a glimpse of pink.
”Jesus...” Kevin took in a strangled breath. ”Jesus, help me.”
Anna was curled motionless in the dirt, in a fetal position, entombed in the bottom of the narrow wooden corridor. She looked lifeless and impossibly far away and very, very small.
Kevin dropped that great big rope that he'd thought was surely adequate for anything that could possibly be going on over here. I watched it spiral down to the scrub gra.s.s, as useless as a garden hose in a forest fire.
”Kevin? What's happening?”
”Christy. Call 911.”
His voice was calm, but I know this man. I couldn't see his face, but I could feel his gut-deep fear.
”Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
The answer rushed out of me. Calmly. Firmly. Emergency room mommy. No panic, but no wasted words.
”Stay on the line with me, okay, ma'am? I'm dispatching the volunteer fire department now. I want you to stay on the line with me until the first responders arrive.”
”All right.” I nodded at no one. ”Yes. Okay.”
I stood there, rooted to the spot, my cell phone frozen to the side of my face. In the background, I heard the dispatch radios and phones spreading the alarm. The operator came back, relaying questions from the paramedics, and I recited Anna's age, height, weight, blood type.
”Does your daughter have any existing medical problems?”
I made a soft, choked sound that was neither a laugh nor a cry. Or maybe it was a bit of both. ”Yes. Yes, she does...”
ONE GETS THE HANG of explaining things after a while, but that first year, it was like trying to lay out the meandering plot of a soap opera. First came months of misery without any meaningful diagnosis or treatment. Then came a year with the GI specialist who saw Anna more times than I can count. He doggedly stuck with the ”this mom tends to overreact” theory until the abdominal obstruction occurred. Even then, the pediatric surgeon we met in the emergency room had to practically twist his arm.
”But you just saw her yesterday and scoped her and sent her home. Now I've got her, and she is one hundred percent obstructed. I'm seeing it on the X-ray, confirmed on the sonogram. It's confirmed. She's in serious trouble.”
Kevin and I sat in ashen silence, listening to the ER doc on the phone in the hallway.
”Look, what the little girl always does or the mom always says-that's irrelevant. This is now, and she needs this surgery right now or she's not going to make it. Please. Help us help her.”
His voice fell to an agitated murmur. It seemed like some tense words were being exchanged.
”What does all this mean?” I whispered to Kevin.
”She has a blockage of some sort in her intestines,” he said. ”They have to go in and release it surgically.”
I didn't really understand what that meant yet-how seriously life-threatening this was-but I knew this was major, major surgery. Kevin's face had turned to a stern mask. I could tell he needed to think for a minute. Anna needed him to think. It was generally accepted that I was Chief of Little Girl Maintenance in our family, but Kevin spoke the language of diagnostics and biology. I depended on him to translate for me sometimes. But speaking the language of scalpels and surgeries could be a blessing and a curse. Ignorance can be bliss, truth can be brutal, and helplessness is simply foreign to Kevin's nature. He sat there contemplating, elbows on his knees, fingers tented in front of his face, until the pediatric surgeon came back into the room.
We were presented with choosing between waiting for the highly regarded specialist who knew Anna's history or placing our trust in this ER doctor we'd known for all of forty-five minutes.
Without hesitating, Kevin said, ”Do the surgery.”
It terrified me, but to the left of that terror, there was a weird sense of relief. We knew now what we were up against. We'd named the dragon, and we knew how to slay it. We could do the homework, make the decisions, and see her through this. Once she got through this surgery, she'd be fine. Kevin even says, ”I'm a surgeon at heart. A chance to cut is a chance to cure.” That definitive, black-and-white solution was so appealing to both of us at that moment. In the years that followed, we'd have given anything for such cut-and-dried options.
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