“It means we’ll treat him, but you will be responsible for any co-pays and any services your insurance provider doesn’t cover. Sign here.”
I sign. I’d sign away my soul right now if it would get my son seen faster.
We wait.
Three hours in that waiting room, watching injured people and sick people cycle through while my son’s skin seems to turn more yellow by the minute.
Finally, finally, they call Leon’s name.
A nurse leads us back to a bed in a curtained-off area. Not a room, just a bed surrounded by thin fabric that does nothing to muffle the sounds of the ER. Someone is wailing nearby. An alarm is beeping. The nurse takes Leon’s vitals with brisk efficiency and starts an IV for fluids. Leon flinches as he feels the needle, but he’s too weak to scream now. He just cries silently, tears streaming down his face, looking at me like I’m supposed to make it stop.
“The doctor will be with you soon.”
Soon turns out to be another hour, and by then Leon has cried himself to sleep.
It’s nearly midnight when a young resident in rumpled scrubs appears. She looks almost as tired as I feel.
“I’m Dr. Hardy. I’ve looked at the blood work from the urgent care clinic.” She’s gentle, at least, when she examines Leon. “We’re going to need to run more tests. I want to admit him overnight so we can monitor his liver function.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“We’re not sure yet. His liver is inflamed, and that’s what’s causing the jaundice. It could be a virus, it could be autoimmune, it could be a few other things. We’ll know more after the tests.”
“Is he going to be okay?”
She hesitates. Just for a second. But I see it.
“Let’s see what the tests tell us.”
They admit Leon to the pediatric ward at two in the morning.
But when we get upstairs, there are no rooms available. We’re ushered into a bay with four beds, separated by thin curtains that do nothing to block out sound. The other beds are occupied—a toddler with something attached to his head, a girl around Leon’s age with her leg in a cast, and a boy who looks about seven hooked up to an IV.
The toddler cries. Constantly. A piercing wail that cuts through the darkness every time I start to drift off in the chair next to Leon’s bed. The girl with the cast moans in her sleep. The seven-year-old’s parents are both here, the mother on one side of the bed, the father on the other, and they murmur to each other in low voices, occasionally laughing softly at some shared joke.
A couple supporting each other.
I have no one.
I curl up in the hard plastic chair beside Leon’s bed, holding his small hand, and I watch the minutes tick by on the clock above the door.
Tuesday is a blur of blood draws and tests and waiting.
Every few hours, someone comes to take more of Leon’s blood through the IV port. Between the tests, I try to sleep, but the ward is never quiet. The toddler wails. Parents come and go. A two-year-old in the hallway throws a tantrum at six in the morning. The nurses change shifts and talk loudly outside the curtain like they’ve forgotten there are sick children trying to rest.
At some point, Rosa appears. She brings me a change of clothes and my toothbrush, and she holds me while I cry.
“Have they told you anything?”
“They’re still running tests. They keep saying they’ll know more soon.”
“He’s going to be okay, Mina. He’s a strong kid.”
I nod, but I can’t stop staring at Leon’s face. His skin is properly yellow now. Not just a tinge. Actually yellow, like he’s been dipped in dye. And his beautiful amber eyes, Cristiano’s eyes, are surrounded by a sickly gold that makes them look like something out of a nightmare.
Rosa stays for an hour, then has to leave to pick up her kids from school.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promises. “Call me or Mom if anything changes. I mean it, Mina. Anything.”
