The Unhappiest Place on Earth
Late Friday morning my mother called to nag me about this or that. As we were chatting she got another call, clicked over and then clicked back.The other call was from my wife. She thinks that my daughter has swallowed a screw and wants my mother to take them to Children's hospital.
Suprisingly, I didn't immediately panic. I waited a few minutes before calling my wife because I didn't want to delay their departure for the hospital.
My wife has been wanting to place some coat hooks on the inside of my daughter's closet door. She bought the hooks and has been waiting for me to give her my mini-drill so she can put them up herself. The hooks come in a small plastic package with two screws each. She had two packages of hooks.
The hooks and their packages were sitting on the top of a dresser near my daughter's crib. Sometime during the morning my daughter rolled over to the side of the crib, reached her arm between the verticle, fence-like posts that make up the sides of the crib, stretched her little arm and pulled the package of hooks into her crib.
The wife heard her coughing from the other room and came to check up on her. My daughter had one screw in her mouth, and two were laying in front of her. One was missing.
The screws were wood screws, they were very small (about .5 inches long) and very sharp. She could easily have swallowed one.
My daughter was breathing normally and otherwise fine, so if she did swallow the screw, it at least made it into her stomache.
My wife assured me that she would call when they got some news from the hospital, I started to feel the onset of panic, so I drove over and met them at the hospital.
I walked in through the emergency entrance, looked around for my wife and mother (no sign), and approached the check-in desk. Laying in plain view on top of the desk was a clipboard where everyone who is admitted must sign in. All of their names are clearly visible to any onlooker. I could have read any of the names on that list and said I was here to see that person, and they would have let me in.
I told them I was there to see my daughter, they gave me a sticker to wear on my jacket and unlocked the doors leading to the patient care area.
They didn't check my ID or anything. They have a full list of patients available for anyone to see, and don't use any security checks for visitors. Unbelievable.
Anyway, my daughter's room was on the opposite end of the hallway. I passed room after room of somber parents with sick or hurt kids. The tubes and equipment and color scheme and long faces piled on my back, weighing my down. I've never understood people who want to avoid the horrors of hosptial work by choosing pediatrics. Nothing is more depressing than a sick or dying child.
I walked in to my daughter's room, hating the thought that my daughter has "a room" at the hospital. She was dressed in a hospital gown and looked pathetic and wonderfully adorable. My wife and mother were there and were smiling. A doctor was checking her mouth and asked if I was the dad.
I said yes and my daughter looked up at me. I smiled to her, but she didn't smile back, she was too busy keeping an eye on this strange women trying to poke into her mouth with a flashlight. Whenever the doctor came too close, my daughter switched into a sobbing mode that would even melt C. Montgomrey Burns.
The doctor told me right away that no screw was found, but they would double-check the x-ray. She also added that my daughter hated being x-rayed and fought every step of the way.
When I got home that evening my wife and I searched for the missing screw but never found it. I feared that the doctors had missed it on the x-ray or that it didn't show up for some reason. So, I watched her closely over the weekend, but nothing metal and pointy has come out the other end.
We'll probably never find the screw, but that's better than finding it in her belly.
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