It all Happened so quickly

It all happened so quickly. One minute she was fine and the next distraught. My generally calm and cheerful baby changed in an instant and with that the day turned on its head. It’s funny how the brain recalls these moments. Like a series of brightly lit scenes in a play. When I wrote about it later, I couldn’t form a cohesive story, just these little “scenes” that had etched in my mind.

• The trip to the neighbours to feed their pets where T began to get upset.
• The swift escalation of T’s cries to ones that seemed pained as she seemed to struggle for her breath.
• The way she flapped her arms in distress as I tried to comfort her.
• Trying to make myself heard to the GP’s receptionist and leaning closer and closer to the glass panel separating us as T wailed frantically.
• The GP’s calm face as we were quickly ushered into her room and she began a forensic examination of T’s body, turning each of her jerking limbs over in her hand, one by one.
• The GP’s measured but slightly tight voice as she picked up her phone after what felt like the longest minute and said. “I’m just going to call an ambulance”.
• Her set expression as she dropped the phone back into its cradle and quietly pressed a button that caused the room to fill with doctors.
• The hushed busyness of the doctors as they sprang into action administering antibiotics into T’s thigh and waving an oxygen mask in her face.
• T wailing as she gripped the oxygen mask in her small pudgy hands.
• My fruitless efforts to calm her down by singing as the medics re-inspected her body for marks, questioning me if I had seen them before. Had I? My mind drew a blank.
• The arrival of the paramedics. They walked so calmly into that crowded little room you would think they were arriving at church.
• T’s wails as they strapped her into the ambulance’s baby harness complete with foam head brace.
• The learner driver who must have been bricking it as they hurriedly pulled over at an awkward angle as we blue lighted past.
• T’s blood splashing down the side of the bed and onto the floor in fat red blobs as the A&E doctor attempted to draw T’s blood and she screamed inconsolably in my arms.
• The bright eyed and kindly nurse who seemed to take T’s plight personally and accompanied us around the hospital to the X-ray and continued to try and cheer her up.
• The brightly coloured stencils on the white ceiling tiles of the paediatric ward’s admissions room.
• The red and black lines of the xray tracing a line across T’s stomach and chest.
• The cramped room T and I were shown to that would shelter us for the night. Taking up at least a third of the space was a Victorian-style metal crib which looked like something out of those pictures of orphanage in history books.
• The floury baked potato produced by a kindly nurse that coated my mouth in a kind of grainy film when I attempted to eat it.
• My attempt to dress T with her ginormous bandages arm. It almost looked like a boxing glove.
• The gentle paediatrician who painstakingly examined T all over while trying to repeat himself multiple times as I couldn’t hear him over her crying.
• The flask of hot tea proffered by a smiling nurse with a safety lid that I didn’t understand how to work and managed to pur tea down my white blouse on the first sip.
• The moment, after hours of crying, that T finally latched and drank a little milk. I must have been tensing for ages before that as I felt my shoulders drop. Relief.