Leather and Vomit

The following was originally posted January 11, 2009 at http://www.parentclick.com/BlogPost.html?id=880:

It's the lucky parents who have experienced the unique sensation I did last night.

Again and still, it's sickness that's plaguing my older children. They're taking turns this time, spinning the wheel on the game of Life, only moving backward, with colds or bronchial or ear infections digging in to make their (and our) lives miserable.

Last night it was Jenna, as I write just three days short of 18 months old, whose cough had been on an uptick for the past week or so. It started with a brief chuckle, and turned into a raging thunderstorm of breath and mucus, culminating last night with a cough-till-you-puke session, at which time we decided a return to the doctor was necessary.

On 5:00 on a Saturday evening, your options are usually limited to the emergency room or an immediate care facility, and since it wasn't too severe we decided on the latter.

I looked up the nearest care center, made a quick call to confirm they were still open, and Jenna and I hit the road. She was coughing non-stop, and it was taking its toll. She had that unmistakable look on her face that kids get when they're not feeling well, the woozy, tired look, as if they'd run a marathon, then gone a few rounds with Mike Tyson.

I found my way to the clinic, cutting through the sleet and the twilight in the family cruiser. I unloaded Jenna's carcass from her seat, and she gripped me through the leather coat her mother had bought me for Christmas some four years ago, before either of us were parents.

We entered the clinic and approached the closed window, behind which a woman who had the same disinterested look on her face most of us get around quitting time, and said through the glass "just sign in and we'll be right with you."

I sat Jenna on the counter (to my left; I'm left handed), and picked up the pen, trying to stay in front of her while I wrote. Behind me was a middle aged woman.

I got Jenna's name down on the form when she decided she wanted to signing in as only she could. She opened her mouth, and let fly with a geyser of Jell-O and stomach acid, dousing the clipboard, my leather coat, shirt, and pants, as well as her pretty pink parka, her pants, and tiny socks (in my haste, I hadn't put her shoes on). I heard her vomit splatter on the lineoleum by my feet.

The woman behind the glass looked up. "Oh," she said, suddenly more interested, before a half-chuckle escaped from her lips. Jenna choked out scented sobs between coughs, and a nurse popped from the back with a trash can, then a small pink tub to hold in front of Jenna should she decide to let fly again.

Another nurse came out with gloves, a mop, and other cleaning supplies, and the woman behind the glass slid the window open and handed me two wet wash cloths, one soapy, the other not.

I sat down, cradling Jenna as I filled out the forms. People continued to come in; a tall kid in his late teens, probably a high school basketball player, and a few minutes later a teenager (19 years old, as she announced her date of birth to the woman behind the glass) with a little girl and an older woman in a bright white (and expensive-looking) sweater that had to be the teen's mother.

Jen and I sat there drenched in her vomit well aware of the odor we were producing. The people in the waiting room were not looking at us in that way that people don't look at you when you're clearly the most interesting thing in the room. I looked around; the woman in the sweater had her expensive sweater's collar pulled over her nose. She obviously doesn't handle throw-up well.

It was only about 10 minutes or so before they called us back, but when you're drenched in Puke au de toilette it seems like three times that. Jenna was done throwing up, but her demeanor hardened as it does when she is most vulnerable. She became irritable, determined that these weird ladies were not going to touch her, not for temperature or weight or to give her a lollipop.

She snuggled against me, and whined when the nurse tried to listen to her breathing. She swiped defiantly against the stethoscope on her back and eeked out the Universal Interjection for Child Unhappiness--"UNH!"

She was the same for the doctor,who quickly diagnosed her with the same thing she had before. He offered some samples of a breathing treatment (Riley has a nebulizer that he's been using), and a prescription for cough syrup.

It occurred to me as I was sitting there vomit-caked that this is what love is all about. It's messy, sometimes it smells funny, and you have to wade through a whole lot of embarrassment for it to be worthwhile.

But man is it worth it.

Postscript: as I wrote this, Riley came to me with the GeoTrax trains he's been bugging me for two days to switch the batteries in. The trains are almost identical; one is yellow, the other red. He wanted batteries in the yellow train. It took about five minutes to find the yellow one is broken.

He quickly produced a third train needing batteries. "How about this?"