I’m not even aware of my legs giving out until I’m on my knees within a few inches of her body. I take her cold hand in mine and bring it to my trembling lips. “Please come back to me, Emmy. I can’t live without you, sweetpea. You’re my whole world,” I tell her tearfully. “Please, God, don’t take her! Don’t take her from me!”
“Get her clothes off,” Cole says quietly. “Then we’ll cover her with blankets.”
When I glance up at him in question, he’s looking at me. In his eyes are the pain and loss and utter devastation that hovers around the corners of my heart. And in these few seconds, I know why. I know why he is here. I know why he won’t leave. I know why he can’t give up.
His daughter. My daughter. Blood of our blood. Death doesn’t change that kind of love. It doesn’t really separate parent from child. Not in the heart. Not in the soul.
I set to work on getting Emmy’s clothes off her without disrupting Cole’s life-saving cycles of pumping her heart and filling her lungs with air. I don’t know how long has passed when the knock sounds at the front door, followed by a harsh, no-nonsense voice, announcing, “Emergency Services.”
From the moment I open the door, I’m in a nightmare. I watch men in thick jackets and white shirts assess and treat my daughter, exchanging words like “near drowning” and “hypothermia.” I watch from behind the bars of my own personal hell as the two men place tiny pads on my child’s chest and feed electricity into her heart, watching for a viable rhythm to appear on the small screen. After the second attempt, I hear the reassuring blip. I hear a strangely haunting howl and I feel arms come around me. It isn’t until Cole turns my face into his chest that I realize it was me.
The two men work as efficiently as one, preparing my daughter for transport, continuing every measure to save her life, her brain, her organs. To bring her back to me in as much the Emmy state that she ran away in as possible.
I watch, heartbroken and horrified, wanting to help, wishing I could. Yet knowing there’s nothing I can do except stay by her side and pray that she wakes up.
The ride to the hospital is a blur. Speeding and sirens, monitors and vital signs, warm IVs and warm blankets. I vaguely remember Cole saying he wouldn’t be far behind, but the memory is as fractured as my mind seems. As my heart feels.
I torture myself with thoughts of my life without Emmy, with memories of her most precious moments, with questions about her recent fixation on me being happy without her. Could she somehow have seen this in her future? Could she somehow have known that God would take her from me?
The thought sends me into silent sobs that wrack my entire body. From my perch beside Emmy’s stretcher, I fold over at the waist, pressing my forehead to hers, fighting off the hopelessness and nausea that pulls threateningly at my insides. She’s not dead, I remind myself. And she’s not going to be. Her heart is beating now. Her chest is pumping with her rapid, shallow breaths. Those are signs of life. Life. She can still make it.
“Emmy, it’s Momma,” I whisper, smoothing the backs of my fingers down her cold cheek. “You are strong, baby. So strong. You have to fight to stay with me. Listen to my voice. Feel me touching you. Know how much you are loved. More than any little girl in the whole world. We have too much left to do, sweetpea. We have sandcastles to build, stories to read, cartoons to watch. And Christmas will be here soon. I have so many things for you. I want to watch you open all your presents,” I tell her, thinking that I will buy her the moon if she’ll just come back to me. “Breathe, baby. Breathe and heal, get warm and cozy, and then you come back to me, okay? Okay, Emmy?”
Tears drip from my lashes into her damp hair. I would give her my blood if it would help, my life if she could use it. If she’ll just wake up and ask me for it, I’ll give her anything her heart desires. Anything. Anything at all for my little girl.
????
They let me stay in the corner of the emergency room bay as they work on my daughter. I’m relieved when I hear things like “sinus rhythm” and “clear lungs” and “core temp is rising.” They toss back and forth a thousand terms that I don’t understand as they hover over my daughter’s still body. All I can do is watch. And listen. And pray.
When she is declared stable, the doctor comes to talk to me. I give him my attention in a way that reminds me of watching a television show–thinking with only half of my brain and listening with ears that hear as though I’m standing at the other end of a tunnel.
I struggle to process what he’s saying, latching onto bits and pieces here and there.
Dry near drowning.
Hypothermia.
It doesn’t appear she was submerged very long.
Her body slowed blood flow to her limbs first.
Arrhythmia.
Perfusion.
Oxygenation.
Compromised.
Reacting as you did probably saved her life.
Breathing on her own now.
The next eight hours are critical.
Pediatric intensive care.
Talk to her.
Hope she regains consciousness soon.
Take you upstairs with her.
I thank him.
I think.
Calls are made. Report is given. The same keywords used.
A nurse dressed in all blue asks me to come with her. She and another nurse wheel Emmy to the elevators. I follow along behind them.
She’s taken to the pediatrics wing and we walk along a hall painted in soothing greens and yellows, and bordered with bears dancing on big red balls. I glance in each door that we pass. I see exhausted parents, some crying, some not as they watch their critical children sleep. They vary in age, the children, but the one constant is in the eyes of their parents. Dejection. Desperation. Frantic worry. It’s there in every room, hovering like an unwanted guest.
We turn into the room that will be Emmy’s. They ask me to have a seat in the chair in the corner as they move my unconscious child into a different bed and transfer her various tubes and cords to another monitoring station.
When the commotion dies down, I’m left with one nurse, probably ten years my senior. She approaches me with a kind smile, squatting down at my side as she speaks.
“May I call you Eden?” she asks. I nod. “Alright then, Eden, I’m Vera. I’ll be watching over Emmy tonight. Would you like to come and tell me about her?”
I do. I walk with Vera to Emmy’s bedside and I tell her all about my child as she assesses her from head to toe, gently uncovering small sections of her body as she checks things and then covering them back up. She asks me questions, questions that one mother might ask another. Questions that bring tears to my eyes and panic to my heart. This can’t be it for my Emmy. It just can’t be.
With Emmy covered and settled in her cheerful room, one soft light shining over the corner where I’ll be sitting, Vera takes my hand. “She’s going to be fine, Eden. You just spend your time talking to her, being comfort and strength to her. I’ll take care of the rest. Can I get you anything? Something to eat or drink? Coffee?”