Stuck in the Box

No one told me the hardest part of any medical emergency would be the waiting. There’s a period of time after the accident where you have to sit in Schrodinger’s box. Everything is fine, and in the same moment, everything is terrible. You can try to convince yourself things will go one way or the other, but you have no choice but to wait for someone to lift the lid and set one of the possible realities into stone.

I didn’t know something was wrong right away. He fell. It wasn’t even a proper fall. He tripped over my foot while running down the hallway. Kids fall. They even bounce most of the time. Why would anyone think he would need more than a hug and a few kisses? 

The doctors in the emergency room didn’t think he did. They humored us with a CT scan and tried to send us home before the results were in. They acted surprised when we insisted his slurred speech and difficulty walking and holding items in his right hand wasn’t the norm for our boy. He was only three. Three-year-olds don’t have clear speech and fine motor skills. Most parents thought their children were more amazing than they were. It was normal. 

I squared my shoulders, ready to yell demands, but my husband touched my arm and whispered into my ear. “Let’s leave and take him somewhere better.”

We were making plans to leave the hospital and find someone who would listen when the CT specialist rushed in and told us not to leave yet. He needed to talk to the doctors about something on the scan. 

I had one foot in the box while we waited for them to come back, but I still had things I could do to make the situation flow as smoothly as it could. I had phone calls to make, and a child to entertain.

There was a shadow on the scan. It was probably nothing, but we could have him transferred to a children’s hospital almost two hours away for better testing if we wanted to. Of course, we wanted to. What kind of question was that?  

The ambulance ride to the next hospital was awkward at worst. He was asleep in the back, and the driver kept trying to make small talk while I just wanted to take a nap and a snack. It had gotten so dark while we were in the hospital there wasn’t much time left before it got light again. I was starting to miss that meal we would have had if we hadn’t been sitting in the emergency room. It was easier to think about my hunger than the fact I had two feet in Shrodinger’s box. 

We wheeled him into another emergency room and waited for someone to come give us some answers. We were given possibilities but nothing definitive. That was alright for the moment. At least these doctors believed us.

He would need an MRI to get answers. We needed to wait until they found an opening in the schedule and he couldn’t eat until after the results in case the scans showed he needed surgery. Surgery. On his brain. I was waist-deep and holding on to the edges.

An opening became available and we started a long walk through the back hallways of the hospital. The colorful lines on the floors and walls seemed to make sense to our escorts, but I was lost after a couple turns and the elevator ride.

I couldn’t stay with him for the MRI. A nurse would help him through things in my place. She had a mom voice: gentle but firm. She gave him a tablet to play with and his loyalty was won. 

The procedure would take an hour. I would have to wait in a different room until they came to get me. I gave him a hug he hardly noticed except that it made it harder for him to play the game and they wheeled him one direction while taking me a different direction. The door between us closed and so did the lid of the box.

The first hour wasn’t so bad. I needed to charge my phone. Outlets with charge cables stood at attention at the end of each row of chairs. I plugged my phone in and found things to read online while my heel clicked against the floor with each second that went by not knowing. 

The hour passed. No one came to get me. My heel clicked faster. Was he okay? Had something else gone wrong? Where was he? I needed answers but when you’re stuck in the box, every outcome is equally possible.  

After fifteen minutes I asked the woman behind the glass if she had an update. He had been moved to the ICU. I didn’t know the phrase ‘my stomach dropped’ was so literal until that moment. I knew what the ICU was like. We’d been there before, nearly three years to the date earlier when he’d been a baby. Then I’d known why he was there, but she couldn’t tell me. She gave me directions and my legs shook with the effort it took not to run. 

Running wouldn’t have made a difference. He wasn’t there. The nurses weren’t sure where he was. The room he was going to be given was right across from their station, but it was empty. I had to go wait in the hallway outside the ICU area. Only parents with children in the ICU were allowed in, and I didn’t currently have a child there. 

The box had never been that dark before. The feeling of not knowing what was wrong or even where he was…  It was like standing blindfolded on the edge of a bridge and being told to pick a direction to step. How do you move knowing that the wrong choice will send you falling?

Except this was worse. On the bridge, you know the possible outcomes. You have a choice. This was utter powerlessness. The fates had hold of my arms and nothing I did could affect which direction they would pull. 

I paced. I checked through the glass doors that separated me from the ICU to see if he was in the room. I sat and played with my phone, scrolling through articles I didn’t actually read. I checked again. Did Schrodinger’s cat feel like this while it waited in a duel state of being both alive and dead? Did it have any idea what would happen when the lid lifted? Was my boy destined for something as bleak? 

It took another hour before the hospital staff was able to transfer him to his room. A new doctor met me at the glass door. He introduced himself and took me to his office.

“Has anyone told you what is going on yet?” 

“No.” 

“Your son had a stroke,” he said, peeling the lid off the box to reveal our new reality. “He’s doing well and won’t need surgery.” 

The waiting was over. Everything wasn’t fine, but everything wasn’t terrible either. We had the answer we needed to step out of the box and move forward. Things were going to get better.