I had never been more scared in my life. I kept saying that. It seemed like every day brought upon a new “scariest moment of my life”. Shelby had called the doctor from the road and he had said we needed to get to the emergency room immediately. He said there were two different causes that could be effecting – both dangerous but one more serious than the other. Now Shelby and I had to sit in the hallway, huddled together waiting for the results from the tests.
“I-I don’t know what to do, Nick,” Shelby shook her head and stared blankly at the wall ahead. “It seems like she’s either throwing up, losing her hair, being overly tired or now having a high fever. What’s next?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled and rubbed my eyes. I had a bad feeling we’d be having a lot of these late night emergency room visits and that didn’t sit well with me at all.
“Mr. and Mrs. Carter?” The doctor came out of Lanie’s room. I figured we’d have to correct him on that – everyone around here thought we were still married. “I just finished with her tests.” He sat down next to us. We stared at him awaiting the worst. “I have some good news and bad news.”
“Bad news first,” Shelby muttered and took my hand in hers. I squeezed it tightly and stared at the doctor. What could be worse?
“Well, I’m afraid Lanie’s going to get these fevers often, as long as you keep her on the anti flu medication she’s on,” he explained. We frowned. “We’ve had Lanie on the medication to reduce her risk of getting the flu or being nauseous. It’s really helping, as far as I can tell. However, the only problem is, she’ll get these high fevers quite frequently. The reason I asked you to bring her in immediately and treat it as an emergency was because with our cancer patients, being on chemo really hurts their immune system and they have a higher risk for infection. When there’s infection in our patients, it’s very hard to find and usually not easy to treat,” he sighed. Shelby swallowed and nodded. “But from the tests we’ve run on Lanie already, there’s no sign of infection.”
“Thank God,” I muttered, glad to hear the good news for once. “So she’s going to be okay?”
“She is,” he smiled. “What I want to suggest to you is, every time she gets these high fevers, put her in a lukewarm bath and, if she’s comfortable with it, put ice packs on her body. A lot of the children patients like to have a cool washcloth on their forehead and their neck. Sometimes that helps the fever to drop as well as make it more comfortable for them to sleep. Also, I’d advise to give her children’s Tylenol – one every four hours.” He directed and wrote down all the directions. “I want you to call the hospital every time you discover one of these really bad fevers – if they’re over 100.5. Check in with the nurse, they’ll record the time and date as well as the temperature and we’ll monitor it.” He explained.
“Okay, thank you,” Shelby sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “Is it too soon to have her home again? Do you think we should keep her here for another week?”
“Mrs. Carter, as far as I can see, your daughter is responding very well to the treatments. She’s experiencing many of the side effects, but that’s fairly normal, especially in small children. I think she’ll be more comfortable in her own home. But if you and your husband don’t feel comfortable, you’re more than welcome to keep her here,” he smiled politely.
Shelby nodded. “Thanks.” She looked at me.
“I’ll give you two a minute to think it over. Feel free to go see Lanie. She was falling asleep when I was in there,” he smiled and walked away. That damn smile again. Couldn’t he be a bit more solemn about the whole situation?
“What do you think we should do?” Shelby sighed and leaned back against the wall. “I mean, I love having her in the house but I was really scared tonight, Nick. I mean, what if she gets an infection and she gets one of these fevers and she dies or something?” Dies. That was the first time I had heard that word from Shelby’s mouth ever. We had never used it to describe anything.
“Shelby,” I said firmly. Part of me was angry she threw that in there. My baby was not going to die. I wasn’t going to let it. “We’ll do exactly what the doctor says. We’ll call every time there’s a high fever and they’ll record it. If it isn’t gone in an hour, we’ll bring her back in.” I said. Shelby shook her head and rubbed the tears out of her eyes.
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea. I mean, what if something happens…” she trailed off.
“Could you think positively for two seconds?” I sounded rude and bitter. Maybe it was because it was nearly four in the morning. Or maybe I was tired of putting up a front and pretending everything would work itself out – because in reality, I knew there was that possibility it wouldn’t.
“Jesus, I’m sorry, Nick,” she spat out angrily. “Sorry I’m worried about our only daughter – the only person I can depend on in my life.” I felt like telling her she could depend on me, but was it the truth? Would I always be around? The past few days I had been thrown into this life with her and Lanie. I wasn’t used to it at all and I wasn’t sure if I’d be around forever.
“I don’t want to fight. Let’s just go get her, okay?” I sighed and rubbed my hands over my face. This whole going without sleeping was taking a toll on me.
“Fine,” she muttered and stood up to go into the bedroom. We watched as the nurses continued to gently massage Lanie’s skin with cold washcloths. Her eyes were closed but her chest was moving up and down with each breath. “Is she asleep?” Shelby whispered. The one nurse smiled and nodded.
“We never thought she’d fall asleep, but she did,” the nurse grinned. “She’s so precious. Her birthday’s coming up, we see.” She pointed to her charts. Shelby nodded her head as a smirk appeared over her lips. “All the nurses and doctors on this floor love her. She’s such a sweet girl. We want to have a little party for her sometime.”
“She’d love that,” I smiled and walked over to the bed to kiss her forehead. “She was telling me last night how she misses all her friends.”
“We’ll have to work something out, then,” the nurse grinned. “I’ll leave you two with her. Are you going to take her back to your home or stay here for the night?”
I looked at Shelby and she looked at me. I knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to stay there at the hospital. I almost got the feeling that she didn’t trust herself around Lanie. Like she was afraid Lanie would break or something if she touched her. Sometimes I felt that way. Cancer seemed like such a horrible disease, one wrong move and we could kill her. I knew that it would take some time to learn that Lanie was still a human and still needed us to be around, now more than ever before. Even though I wanted my daughter and her mother home with me in my house where I felt comfortable, I knew Shelby felt most comfortable there. “We’ll stay for the night.” I nodded and Shelby smiled at me.
Author's Chapter Notes:
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