After a big lunch, and time for the children to play, Austin and Jaime drove back to the city. Zoe had set the table and bought Mexican food for dinner, which they all loved. While they ate, Jaime reported on her day with her cousins, uncle, aunt, and grandparents, and her account of the day made both her parents laugh. Little by little they relaxed. After dinner, Austin stayed to talk to Zoe for a few minutes. They didn’t speak of the ear tubes again, but Austin knew that from now on, something would be different. The person he trusted most in the world had lied to him, and he knew that no matter how hard he tried, he wouldn’t forget it, and he would never fully trust her again. He was no longer rabid about it, or even angry. He was just sad.
Chapter 11
Despite Zoe’s good intentions with the ear tubes, from September until Christmas, Jaime was constantly sick, with illnesses she picked up at school from the other kids. Nothing serious, colds, flu, bronchitis, croup where she barked like a seal each time she coughed, and a stomach bug. She was absent as often as she was present. She was even sick over Thanksgiving. She didn’t get another ear infection, but she had everything else. She was sick for all of Christmas vacation and had roseola, to add insult to injury, which wasn’t serious, but unpleasant. All their Christmas photos showed Jaime in pajamas with a red rash on her face. She spent most of the time in the bath, with Zoe putting calamine lotion on her afterward. As an only child, she had had no exposure to other children and their maladies until then, except at the playground. Austin called it the Disease du Jour, and Cathy tried to encourage them. She said it was totally normal for her first year at preschool. The school expected it too.
They had a nice Christmas anyway, although they couldn’t go to Austin’s parents as usual, which was disappointing. Jaime wasn’t well enough to go, and his parents didn’t want to catch any of her maladies. Santa Claus showed up right on schedule and left everything that Jaime had asked for in a letter she had mailed to him on December 1. She even got a pink bike with training wheels which Austin assembled for her at midnight. They took it to the park for her to try out, with a matching pink helmet, on the first day after her roseola had disappeared. She got to go ice skating with her parents at Rockefeller Center on the last day of Christmas vacation too. Santa had brought her new skates, and had been extremely generous with her. She said it was the best Christmas of her life, and in fact, the only one she remembered. Santa had left her a letter too, which Zoe wrote in red pen, telling Jaime how proud he was of her, and Mrs. Claus and the reindeer sent their love.
The atmosphere between Austin and Zoe had relaxed again. He had forgiven her for the ear tubes incident, and realized it was well meant, and she had solemnly sworn not to lie to him again. He believed her. He thought she had learned a lesson. It had taken them a month to get close again. But the holidays had been very special, and even Jaime’s roseola and cold hadn’t ruined them.
Jaime reported on all of it to her friends at school, and told them about the cold and rash she’d had, which several of her classmates had had before her, which was how she’d gotten it just in time for Christmas. She got ten solid days of school in, when she woke up one morning with a raspy voice and said she had a sore throat. When Zoe checked, she had a blazing fever, all of which had come on quickly with no warning.
Zoe went to work late so she could take her to see Cathy, who did a quick test, and said she had strep throat. They did a culture too, which would take longer, and she prescribed a broad spectrum antibiotic in the meantime. Her throat was so sore Jaime could hardly swallow. Zoe sent Fiona out to buy popsicles for her, and Zoe took the rest of the day off from work so she could care for her herself. Cathy warned her to be careful she and Austin didn’t catch it, since it was highly contagious. Austin had had a recurring cold since October. Every time Jaime got sick, he did too. Preschool was proving to be tough on both of them. Zoe was hardier, and seemed to have better immunity, since she saw kids at work every day, and she had only caught one cold since the epidemic of illnesses that had felled Austin and Jaime. She warned Austin when he came home that night not to kiss Jaime or he’d be sick again, and he groaned at the prospect.
“Why didn’t someone warn us that children are dangerous? They’re germ farms. How could she get sick again? She just went back to school.”
“Cathy says everybody has it,” she reassured him. He blew Jaime a kiss from the doorway but didn’t go into her room, and Cathy had told Zoe to warn him to wash his hands frequently and take his vitamins. She was beginning to feel like Florence Nightingale, Zoe teased him.
“More like Nurse Ratched,” he said, teasing her back, and kissed her as he went to wash his hands.
The broad spectrum antibiotic Cathy had prescribed was very effective, and in two days, Jaime was bouncing all over the house, wanted to bake cupcakes, was fever-free, and said her throat felt all better. She’d eaten all the popsicles. Zoe kept her home for two more days, and then sent her back to school, fully recovered. And miraculously, Austin had managed not to catch it.
That night, Jaime reported in detail about her first day back at school. They were going on a field trip to the Museum of Natural History the following week, and she was going to be Person of the Week, with a poster where everyone in the class had to say nice things about her and the teacher would write them down. And the big news of the day was that Mr. Bob, the teaching assistant, had strep throat too. Austin felt sorry for him.
“Poor guy,” he commented. “You couldn’t pay me enough to be a preschool teacher, I’d need a resident doctor to get me through it. How long do you suppose this will go on?”
“Cathy says two years,” Zoe said, laughing at him.
“Oh God, don’t tell me that. Can’t we fast-track her into high school? I may not survive till first grade.”
Jaime was in particularly good spirits the following week when she was Person of the Week, and came home with a poster, with a self-portrait she had done in crayon in a pink dress, and the comments the teacher had diligently written on it, of all the nice things Jaime’s classmates said about her. “They weren’t allowed to say bad stuff,” Jaime explained, “like when I had an accident at school and wet my pants.” Austin and Zoe loved listening to her. She was a whole person with her own ideas and opinions now, and expressed them well. And she had lots of friends at school.
She had been healthy for an entire week after the brief bout of strep throat. Austin asked Zoe if she was still on the antibiotic, and Zoe said she had stopped it after four days. She said Jaime didn’t need it anymore since the sore throat was gone and she felt fine, and Zoe didn’t like abusing antibiotics, in case she got immune to them and they wouldn’t be effective in the future when she needed them. It sounded reasonable to Austin, and Jaime seemed fine.
Jaime ate a big bowl of pasta and meatballs that night, which Zoe had picked up at a nearby restaurant on her way home from work. She was dealing with assorted crises at the shelter and didn’t have time to cook, and Austin had four new cases, and was swamped, so takeout from local restaurants worked well for them. Sashimi, sushi, Thai, Italian, Chinese, roast chickens from their favorite deli, and pizza in a pinch. The spaghetti and meatballs had been delicious and Jaime ate a lot of it, and so did they.
Everything seemed fine, until Jaime woke up in the middle of the night crying that her stomach hurt. She threw up shortly after, all over the room, and then screamed that her stomach hurt even worse. It was four in the morning, Jaime was crying, and Zoe was trying to clean up her room when Austin came in to see what was happening. Jaime said she had a terrible stomachache, and Austin looked at Zoe, exhausted.
“Should I call Cathy?” he asked her.
“I hate to call her at this hour,” Zoe said, as she took the towels to the laundry room to soak them, and when she came back, Jaime was crying even more. At first Zoe thought it was stomach flu, but this seemed worse, Jaime was writhing in pain, which she had neve
r done before.
“Maybe we should go to the ER,” Zoe said, trying to assess the situation.
“At least we haven’t been in a while,” he said sleepily, but he was starting to get worried too. Jaime’s face was very pale.
Zoe gently tried to touch her abdomen, and with a question in her mind, she touched her on the right side, and Jaime screamed in agony. Zoe glanced up at Austin and they both had the same thought at the same time. Appendicitis, with her abdomen tender on the right side.
“I’ll get dressed,” he said without further comment, and was back in two minutes in jeans and loafers and a heavy sweater, and Zoe dressed just as fast. They wrapped Jaime in a blanket and Austin carried her. She continued to cry all the way to the hospital, and she was doubled over in pain when they walked into the ER, which was bustling with activity at five A.M.
Austin sat down holding Jaime, while Zoe spoke to the nurse at the desk and told her that her daughter had severe stomach pains, and then suggested appendicitis. The nurse nodded and said that the pediatrician on call would be with them in a few minutes. He was admitting a six-week-old with pneumonia, and Zoe went to fill out the familiar forms. A nurse’s aide took them to an examining room they had seen before as soon as she got back.
“This is where I got my pink cast,” Jaime said, remembering. It had been a landmark in her life, and whenever she got hurt, she asked for another one.
The doctor walked in five minutes later, and was a resident on call that night. Zoe reported Jaime’s symptoms and said that she was experiencing acute pain, particularly on the right side, and this was much worse than the stomach flu she’d had two months before. And as though to illustrate it, Jaime let out a scream, followed by a long whine, and was crying.
He talked to Jaime for a minute and then to Zoe again. “Has she complained of pain lately?”
“No, she hasn’t.”
“Nausea?”
“Yes,” Zoe confirmed, and Austin frowned.
“When was she nauseous?” He was surprised. “She ate a huge dinner of spaghetti and meatballs last night.”
“Which she threw up eight hours later. She’s complained of nausea a couple of times in the last few days, but nothing came of it, so I didn’t think much of it, until now.”
“I think we have a hot appendix here,” the resident said seriously, and Austin felt his own stomach turn over, worried about his daughter. “We may not have time to lose, we don’t want it to perforate. I’d like to get it out fast, these things can move quickly.” He was very definite about it, and Zoe nodded in agreement.
“I agree,” Zoe said quickly, she didn’t want to waste time either, and suddenly Austin intervened.
“I want a second opinion before we move on this. Is there an experienced surgeon in the house?” He was cold and calm and serious. He didn’t want to be railroaded into surgery by a panicked resident with limited experience.
“Of course,” the resident said, visibly offended, and left the room to page a surgeon on call.
“If it’s her appendix, we need to act fast,” Zoe whispered to him.
“Not that fast. That guy looks twelve years old. I’m not agreeing to surgery till someone else tells us it’s the only option.” It was five-thirty A.M., and he wanted to call Cathy, but he agreed with Zoe that they should wait another hour.
The resident returned ten minutes later with a doctor roughly Austin’s age, and he scowled as he looked at the chart, after greeting Austin and Zoe with a cursory glance. “Wait a minute here, folks. Let’s go about this sensibly,” he said, looking at the resident. “I want an ultrasound so I can see if her appendix is hot or not. It could be anything, intestinal flu, colitis, something she ate.” He looked at Austin then. “I had a six-year-old boy come in last year, and we saw a tiny turtle swimming around when we X-rayed him, he had swallowed it. Kids do weird things. I had a four-year-old who had ingested a Lego. Let’s get an ultrasound now.” There was a sonography lab on the same floor as the ER, and the four of them rolled down the hall to it with a nurse, with Jaime on the gurney, crying. She was frightened and in pain.
They set up the ultrasound for her, and the surgeon studied the sonogram with the technician, as Zoe and Austin stood to one side. She was convinced they should operate immediately, before Jaime’s appendix burst, and she risked septicemia which could kill her, she told Austin. But the surgeon turned to them and shook his head.
“No turtle,” the surgeon said to Jaime, and he turned to her parents. “Nothing shows on the sonogram. Her appendix isn’t inflamed. Has she eaten anything strange in the last twelve hours?”
“Spaghetti and meatballs,” Austin answered for her.
“A bad oyster? Seafood that might not have been fresh? She has no known food allergies,” he mused, and thanked the sonography technician. “I’m not taking a kid into surgery for an appendectomy with nothing on a sonogram. We may have to observe her for a while. I want to keep her in the ER.” They rolled her back to the exam room, and Zoe looked panicked and whispered to Austin after the surgeon left the room.
“What if he doesn’t know how to read the sonogram, and her appendix bursts?”
“I don’t know,” Austin said, running a hand through his hair. “I’m calling Cathy.” He walked away to call her on his cellphone and Zoe stayed with Jaime, who was still in excruciating pain.
Austin called Cathy on her cell, apologized for waking her at an ungodly hour, and told her what was going on. “They thought it was appendicitis at first, and so did we. She’s screaming in pain. The hothead resident wanted to operate immediately, and Zoe agreed with him, Jaime is tender on the right side. Zoe still thinks it’s appendicitis. They called in a surgeon and he ordered an ultrasound. He says her appendix looks fine and isn’t inflamed, so he’s not going to operate. No one knows what this is, Jaime looks like she’s in agony.”
“It could just be a bad case of stomach flu. There’s a lot of it going around. I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she promised and showed up in fifteen. She conferred with the surgeon, and the resident to spare his ego, and then the surgeon turned to Zoe again.
“Has she been sick recently, or on any medication?”
“She had strep throat, and was on an antibiotic,” Zoe answered, and as she said it, Cathy looked like a light had gone on.
“Wait a minute! Did you finish the course of antibiotics?” she asked Zoe. “All seven days?”
Zoe looked mildly sheepish. “I gave it to her for four days. I didn’t want to overdo it.”
“You can’t do that with an antibiotic,” Cathy chided her. “What may have happened is that you got the strep subdued but didn’t knock it out, and when that happens, the strep can travel, and go to your stomach lining. It’s not dangerous but it’s excruciatingly painful, and the timing is about right. I think that may be what happened.”
“Bingo.” The surgeon smiled at her. “Good detective work, Doctor. I’ll bet that’s it. It’s just as painful as appendicitis,” he explained to Zoe and Austin.
“What do we do for that?” Austin asked them, looking hopeful and somewhat relieved.
“Put her back on the antibiotic,” Cathy answered him. “She’ll be better in twenty-four hours, out of pain in a few days, and fine in a week. And all seven days this time,” she said, looking at Zoe, who wasn’t convinced of the theory.
“Don’t you think it would be safer to take her appendix out now anyway, in case you’re wrong? If it bursts, it would be dangerous. I’d rather play it safe here,” she said firmly and Austin looked shocked.
“With surgery?”
“Her appendix shows no sign of inflammation,” the surgeon said sternly, “there is no valid reason to take it out. And what would you rather have? Surgery or an antibiotic? I don’t know about you, but I’d go for the pill every time.”
“Jaime’s mom jus
t wants to be cautious,” Cathy translated for her. Zoe was coming across as hysterical and unreasonable, but Cathy knew her well. She was an ultra-caring mother who would go to any lengths to protect her child. “We’ll keep her here for a few hours, and start her on the antibiotic. I think she’ll respond to it very quickly. She did well on it before,” Cathy said calmly.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” the surgeon said. “You don’t need me, then,” he said and left the room, and Cathy stayed with them for an hour, and then left them, and Austin walked her out.
“Thank you for coming. Christ, Zoe would have had her in surgery if you hadn’t come in.”
“The surgeon wouldn’t have gone along with it. People with a little medical training react like Zoe. They think they know all the obvious answers. But the real diagnosis is usually something more subtle than that, like in this case. I’m sure the strep has gotten into Jaime’s stomach lining, which hurts like hell.”
“Well, all’s well that ends well. I’m glad she didn’t have her appendix out for nothing,” Austin said, relieved.
“Me too.” Cathy smiled at him. “You can always call me, at any hour. Glad I could help.” As always, he appreciated her calm demeanor and cool head. She was great in a crisis. And they had a lot of them.
“You came up with the right answer.” The conservative one, as usual, which was why he liked her as a doctor. Zoe was willing to go along with more extreme measures, but he wasn’t, not where his daughter was concerned, or even for himself.
He went back to Zoe and Jaime then. She had just been given the antibiotic. They let her leave the hospital at noon. She was feeling a little better.
“I hope Cathy is right,” Zoe said in the cab on the way home.
The Dark Side Page 13