That was a long time ago, now, and yet I still remember the tiny bird and his blue tinged wings. I remember how small he’d felt in my hands. I remember how damaged and hopeless he was, and I remember the sorrowful look in his eyes as he lay cradled against me, his life slipping away. I remember it all too well now, as I hold my sister against me in the back of the ambulance, clinging to her, refusing to let the EMTs take her from me, because she feels the same as that small bird. Like her life is slipping away from her and there’s nothing I can do about it.
“Sir. Sir, you really need to put her down now, sir. We can’t monitor her properly if you don’t.” The woman with the paramedic’s jacket zipped tightly up underneath her chin holds out her hand to me, imploring me to cooperate with her eyes as well as her words. “We need to take a proper look at her, Mason. She’s going to be right here the whole time.”
Above us, the siren on top of the ambulance wails urgently, frantic and bullish. White spots dance in my eyes. Millie’s legs jerk over and over again as she seizes, her tiny toes curled unnaturally tight against the soles of her feet. The EMT breathes slowly, hand still held out to me, eyes locked on mine, and I see something in her that gives me the strength to let go of my sister and place her down on the gurney next to me. I feel like I’ve betrayed her in the worst way as the woman, a stranger, begins to check Millie’s vitals.
“Pulse is shallow. Pupils dilated. Non responsive.” She swings around, pinning me to the wall of the ambulance with her surgical gaze. She seems far too calm as she says, “Has your sister been diagnosed with any pre-existing conditions?”
“Fuck, yes, of course she has!” I slam my hand against the wall beside me, trying to breathe, to stay in control, but it’s so fucking hard. “I explained everything to the woman who took the 911 call. She has Lennox Gastaut Syndrome.
The EMT nods through my angry words. “I’m sorry, Mason. They give us as much information as they can, but we have to check. We have to be sure before we can administer any treatment. I promise you, we’re going to take care of Millie, but right now you need to give me a rundown of her history, okay? As quick as you can. Is she taking any prescription medication?”
This makes me laugh. Millie’s been downing a cocktail of multi-colored pills twice daily since she was a baby. I reel off the list of Millie’s anti-seizure meds that I work my fingers to the bone to pay for, and the EMT nods some more as she checks Millie’s airway and pinches her hard on her arm.
I’m used to this. I’m used to people poking and prodding at my tiny, tiny sister, but it never gets any easier. I know she’ll be black and blue by the end of this episode. That’s best-case scenario. Worst-case scenario: she’s hospitalized for days. She gets pneumonia like she did last year, where she had to spend eight days in an induced coma so that her body could heal. She misses school and her friends. I have to leave her there in the children’s ward, despite how much it kills me to say goodbye to her every morning, because I have to go to work to pay for her healthcare.
The bills are always more than my paycheck. I always seem to manage to scrape enough cash together to cover her, though. I’m terrified that one day that won’t be the case. Maybe one day she’ll get sick and I won’t have worked enough hours at the garage. I won’t have put in any overtime. I won’t have curried favor with Mac, and he’ll have given his extra work to David or maybe even Marcus.
The EMT rifles in her jump bag, looking for something. She produces a hypodermic needle and a glass bottle filled with clear liquid, and she smiles. “This is clobazam. Should make your little sister feel more like herself soon enough.”
It won’t, though. Millie reacts badly to clobazam, but there’s nothing else that will bump her out of the seizure. She’s going to be throwing up for hours when she emerges from this fucked up state; the last time this happened, I had to hold her all night while she cried and fucking puked everywhere. It was better than this, though. It was better than seeing her eyes unfocused and vacant as her whole body shook and threatened to rip itself apart.
I watch as the EMT efficiently administers the contents of the hypodermic into the crook of my little sister’s elbow, and I cover my mouth, waiting, hoping that Millie sucks in a deep breath and snaps out of this shit right now.
Come on. Come on. Come on, please…
My heart is tripping over itself, staggering to get me through this moment. My peripherals are a blur. The only thing I see is Millie—her perfectly formed head kicked back, the tendons in her neck straining under her skin like cables pulled taut, her hands, a quarter of the size of my own, twitching, fingers opening and closing involuntarily. Come on, Millie. Come on, baby girl. You can do this. You got this. Come on.
Nothing happens.
“I’m going to give her something else, some sodium valproate, Mason. It’s okay. It’s normal for people to need a little kick sometimes.”