Fiction

By Lynley Capon

MAYBE you have them too, days when everything you plan doesn’t happen, and everything you don’t plan, does. The Friday I recall wasn’t the 13th of a month, but felt like it.

It was a cold, grey morning, and I entertained thoughts of lighting a cosy fire once I’d finished making the beds.

My two-and-a-half-year-old son decided it was time for his medicine. Somehow, he’d removed the medicine bottle’s lid. Instead of confiscating the bottle, I foolishly told him to take it to the kitchen where momentarily I’d measure out his dose onto a teaspoon. He vanished down the passage, and I finished my bed-making.

Arriving in the kitchen, I saw my darling child gulp medicine from the bottle. I snatched it away. At a glance, I determined that the level of the contents had dropped substantially. Panic seized me.

Calm down! Ring the medical centre. Explain what happened. “Come in immediately” was the order.

While driving downtown, I glanced often into the rear-view mirror to check that my son in the backseat looked alright. Once we arrived, a nurse gave him a vile-smelling, murky liquid to drink. “To make him sick,” she said. Soon he began to vomit, and didn’t stop for awhile. How pale he looked!

A doctor examined him, wrote on official paper, handed it to me and directed us to the hospital. I groaned. “Not the hospital!” Yes, as a precaution, my son needed observation for at least two hours.

Kindly, the nurse suggested that I take someone else along – my mother perhaps? Yes, I’d call on Mum.

At my parents’ house, I let myself in, meeting my mother still in her dressing gown. She looked groggy after taking a potent cough mixture in the night. I explained my presence at that time of the morning, 11 a.m., surely a respectable hour.

After listening, my mother expressed concern for my father who lay on the lounge sofa, having sliced across the top of his fingers with a chainsaw 30 minutes earlier. I found him there, quiet, ashen and visibly shaken. His cuts had been bandaged, but blood seeped through.

“Mum, you and Dad come to the hospital with us,” I directed. My father’s fingers needed professional attention.

As bemused victims of fate, we waited in the Accident and Emergency ward. When our turn for treatment came, one nurse took my father off one way, and another guided my son, with me escorting him, to the children’s ward.

Lunch time passed, and I decided to check on my father. I left my son in the nurses’ care, so I thought.

My father remained in treatment so I returned to the children’s ward. I missed a few heartbeats when discovering that my son had gone on a wander too.

Where do you look for a small boy in a large hospital? Feeling anxious, hungry and faint, I headed for Accident and Emergency again.

After several turns down corridors, I came face-to-face with a nurse holding my precious child by the hand. I almost cried in relief.

At last, a paediatrician signed off on my obviously healthy son. Leaving the ward, we met my parents, also ready to depart. A meticulous doctor had sewn 25 stitches into my father’s fingers.

Thankfully, we reached home just as my other children returned from school. Soon the kettle whistled, promising hot coffee.

Then one of my friends rushed into the house. “What should I do?” she wailed. “My daughter’s missing!”

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