To recap Act 1 of this real-life medical drama:  Sitting in the passenger seat of the ambulance to Children’s Hospital, I recall the series of events that led to my teenage son’s experience in the Emergency Room.  For months,  my son "G." complains of a “funny feeling” in his chest.  After months of inconclusive doctor’s appointments, I take him to the Emergency Room while the “funny feeling” is in progress.

Act 2 opens in the present, me and my son in the ambulance.  

As we race through the night, siren blasting, I remember how calmly I decided to go to the Emergency Room.   The camera focuses on my pensive face.  I am amazed at the memory of the past few hours.

Flashback to a few hours earlier, me in my own car at an intersection near home.  My face again.  No words ran through my head, no plans, no anxieties, just a clear image of my teenage son's heart, doing whatever it was doing inside his chest, and of what we might be able to find out if I took him to the ER now, while the incident was occurring.

I turned right.  Drove to the Emergency entrance of the local hospital.  Pulled out my cell phone and called my husband.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You won’t be home until midnight," he says.  We both know from experience what a long night in an Emergency Room waiting area can be like.  With three sons, we’re veterans of ER trips for all kinds of minor emergencies – fevers, stitches, sprains, broken bones.  One weekend when G. was only two, two of our three sons got stitches less than 24 hours apart.

“Yeah, probably.  We’ll have to get the Christmas tree tomorrow.  But maybe we can find out what this is, once and for all.  Bring me a book to read in the waiting room when you come, will you?”

But the book would not be needed.  At the Registration Desk, all my son said was “Chest pain.” We were swept into the triage area, without ever seeing the waiting room.

The triage nurse hooked my son up to a pulse machine.  As he explained the funny feeling, I sat behind her, watched her ponytail wag and her fingers tap the keyboard.  The words marched across the screen, “Affect normal.  Speaks in complete sentences.”

Buzzz!   Close-up of the pulse monitor.

My own heart stopped.  The digital readout said:

280

(I knew from my exercise classes that a normal pulse is 60-100.)

“Oh, that can’t be right,” the nurse dismissed it with a wave and a laugh.  “The machine must be broken.  I’ll take his pulse by hand.”  She placed her fingers on his wrist.  I started to breathe again.

And then her face dropped.

Return to the present, the ambulance radio, playing “I’ll Have a Blue Christmas Without You.”  The choice of song feels a little too heavy-handed.  A chirping sound coming from my knapsack tells me my son has a text message on his cell phone but I ignore it.

Flashback to the ER.  I can't remember how we got from the triage station to the exam room, where all those people came from, what happened to my son’s clothes or how all those monitors got hooked up to his body.  I just remember standing back to make room for a stampede of scrubs, flinching at the strong odor of medicine, and looking into my son's wide brown eyes.  I reached one hand toward the exposed skin where the hospital gown slipped off his shoulder.

“Don’t touch the patient!” a voice commanded.

I obeyed.

There was an oxygen mask on my son’s face.  A needle pierced his arm – once, twice, I think maybe three times.  A very young nurse in pink puppy-dog scrubs coached him as if he were a mother giving birth, “Great job, buddy.  You’re doing great!” 

The nurses were piling blankets on my son’s shivering body when my husband walked into the exam room with my book in his hand.  I saw the emotions drain his face. 

Digression from the medical drama format:  Surprisingly, I realized later as my son’s cell phone chirped again in my bag, I couldn’t remember a moment when I thought my son might die.  I could not remember saying a prayer.  I could not remember any thoughts in my brain at all – It was as if my head was not there.  All I remembered was the crackle of plastic wrappers being torn off sterile medical tools, the sense of the hard floor supporting the soles of my Crocks, and the ping-ping-ping of the heart monitor, my heart awake to the beat of his heart.

The young Asian doctor whose name I never got gestured to me and my husband.  We found ourselves in the hallway. “He’s stabilized now,” the doctor’s voice emerged from the clatter, “But we’d like to transfer him by ambulance to Children’s Hospital.”

We nodded.  Of course.  Of course that was what we wanted.

 “But,” my husband said, “it’s possible this is nothing serious.  Right?”  His voice was urgent.  “Right?”

“Oh yes, very possible.”

And I was neither relieved nor worried, just there.  This was the fact.  The doctor rushed away.  My husband and I turned to each other, dividing the responsibilities, as we’ve done nearly every day since we became parents.  As if everything was normal.  He’d go home, walk the dog, pack up some clothes and toothbrushes, and he’d meet us at Children’s.  I’d ride in the ambulance with our son.  We hugged.  A hug with no words, just warmth.  He left.

As I returned to the exam room, the nurse in the puppy-dog scrubs stopped me.  “I hear your son is going to be transferred to Children’s.  I just wanted to tell you that he could not possibly be going to a better place.”

I thanked her.

“You look like you could use a hug.”

And there I was in her arms, my nose pressed up against the starched puppy-dog scrubs, wondering, “Do I?” and yet, the comfort was welcome.

Back in the exam room, my son's face was white.  His iTouch lay on the blanket that covered his lap. 

“Mom – Did she say -- Did she say I’m going to a better place?”

With a whoosh it hit me.  “Gone to a better place” had another meaning.  And then I was gathering him in my arms, with his electrodes and IVs and wires, with the ping-ping-ping in the background, “Oh no, honey, she didn’t mean that other place!  She just means Children’s Hospital!”

Return to the present.  Now, sitting in that ambulance, aware with every ping that my son is alive, alive, in this very solid earthly place, I recognize the taste he’d just had at age 14 of his own mortality.

That's when the panic hits me. “I can’t believe I let him go canoeing in Canada last summer – hours and hours from the nearest ER!” my mind screams.  “I can never let him go camping again.  I can never let him play sports.  What if my other two sons have this – whatever it is?  I’ve taken his health – all my children’s health – for granted!”

Back in the cardiologist's waiting room, I'd looked at the parents of the really sick kids.  Is that me now? 

My son’s heart can flutter as rapidly as a hummingbird’s. 

What does that mean?

Stay tuned for Act 3, the conclusion of this drama, and the diagnosis! 

TUESDAY OCTOBER 13 on Open Salon.

(Updated date for posting of Act 3)