It’s the sun’s last curtain call. The sky is pinking up. Rose sits on our swing, munching an 8-inch green bean. Chickens swirl like water around her feet, flowing into their coop for bedtime. Col is on the second story of the unfinished playhouse, playing another round of “the apple game” with his cousin Peter, in which apples are launched back and forth from the ground to the playhouse (accessible by ladder). I am yanking weeds through layers of rain-wet soil. We are about to head inside for vanilla ice cream and pear sauce.
Crash.
Silence.
“Col?”
Silence.
Cory, Dan’s brother, rushes to the playhouse. He shouts “Col!” as if he’s found Col doing something surprising and awful.
Col is brought to my arms. His breathing is labored, as if the air is viscous. Col’s eyes are unfocused, his body limp. He is unresponsive, somewhere else. I cradle him, staring into the blankness of his face. Keep breathing, I beg. His head rolls back. Ladder. Crash. No. Cory calls 911 while my brain screams not this, not now, not like this. Come back, baby. Come back.
Dan comes outside and reaches for Col, laying the limpness of his son over his shoulder. We see the back of Col’s head for the first time: matted with sticky bright red blood. Dan’s eyes are wild animal terror. My heart is a metronome cranked to its highest setting.
Dan cradles Col’s head, blood seeping into his shirt. “I’ve got you, baby. Your daddy’s here.” My heart is clenched like a fist. Col twitches. His eyes blink and squint. “What happened?” Col asks.
Two ambulances arrive. Col is able to tell a paramedic – huge and uniformed like a super hero – his name and address. “How long was he unconscious?” Oh, that’s the word for it. Unconscious. My son was unconscious.
The paramedics bandage Col’s head. Neighbors come out of their houses. Col is loaded onto a gurney.
Rose asks, “Is he going to be okay?”
“Yes,” I answer, climbing into the ambulance.
From here, we drop into the system like a pinball. The paramedics squeeze Col into a stabilizing full-body suit; they call the ER to prepare for our arrival.
The ambulance barrels through the night. Relief and gratitude begin easing out the fear. I am left with the knowing that there is nothing more important than our lives. Not ambitions, nor any amount of money that ever has been or will be in my possession. It is this same love that would do anything for these children that is the vulnerable skin of parenthood. How are we supposed to do this? To love these flesh-and-blood people? I’d like to order the Teflon-model kid, because I cannot, under any circumstances, lose a child.
Col has eight new stitches, cinching up the 3-inch gash to his head, and a concussion. He is nothing but lucky. In typical undramatic Col fashion, he lies quietly on the non-injured side of his head, answering “pretty good,” to our frequent inquiries on how he’s feeling. If I pry, he’ll admit that his head hurts, “a little.” We’re all just so giddily grateful to see him, we fall over ourselves bringing him books and food and kisses.
He’s slowly piecing things together.
“There was a yellow bar in the ambulance,” he remembers. “Was that for extra family members to hold onto?” And, “It’s strange how we were all at Trimble, and then later I fell,” he muses, spying the tip of the “Things Can Change Irrevocably in an Instant” iceberg. He now knows the word “unconscious” and “concussion” and that he is one incredibly lucky boy.
Reach Rachel Turiel at sanjuandrive@frontier.net.Visit her blog, 6512 and growing, on raising children, chickens and other messy, rewarding endeavors at 6,512 feet.
