September 22, 2014tempestpilot

“Well!” I said, standing at the door with our backpacks, “Whatever happens, it will be an adventure.” Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled.

I braced for the worst, wrangling three children through airport security, but they were fine. The rental car was so lux it made us all giddy, turning on butt warmers and scrabbling around in all the seats. We picked up a fourth child, one of the large boy’s best friends, and drove for two hours into the night, along the switchback cliffs – and the baby slept. It was a vacation miracle. I opened the moon roof and watched the stars and felt love for the universe.

Our cabin was perfect.

And the knitting spot was divine.

We met friends at the bay, I lunched with the new librarian over Thai food, and there were lobster sightings with the snorkel. The newest fad in these parts are handmade whips. Bull whips, made of duct tape and rope and whatever the hell. A modern take on the kind that were in fashion 80 years ago, when my great-grandfather had his eye taken out by one. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. This can not last. Trends are no good unless they get you laid, and there will be no hanky or panky amidst the threat of eyeball loss. In the meantime, it’s a perfect time to shoot someone, because nobody will even notice with all the noise.

We were overrun by pre-teens, and it was beautiful.

And then Zenny slipped and fell and smacked her head.

She was walking in the carport, following our friends’ dog with an outstretched hand, and hit a wet spot on the concrete. She went down and threw out her hands, but her head hit the ground in just the same spot as the last time. I ran and picked her up, and she started crying – which was reassuring until the scream froze, her eyes dilated, and she went rigid, jerking. I called to Mike, he ran to the landline to call 911 (there is no cell phone service), and we waited. It’s a bit of a drive from the health center, and there is just one ambulance. She went from staring and stiff to limp and unconscious, and we called to her and gently tried to wake her until the EMTs arrived. They stuffed us in the back of the ambulance and tore along to the airfield, strapping her to a board and trying for an IV until she was alert and screaming. While waiting for the helicopter to get in, they told me I couldn’t ride with her. I bent over her and murmured soothing things while she gripped my fingers, then they had her out of the ambulance and into the helicopter and I was standing barefoot on the airfield, sobbing. I took a shitty picture as they went, feeling stupid, but whatever – bad things need documentation, too.

One of my old library patrons who works at the airfield looked hard at me.

“… Holly?”

“Yeah. You probably don’t recognize me, because I wasn’t usually sobbing at the reference desk,” I hiccupped. He gathered me up and I cried on him.

They herded me into the office, I called my mother on Oahu, who texted Mike in the Dead Zone (texts work with wifi), and he rushed to pick me up. We drove for two hours into the night with no cell reception. My legs started drumming and my hands kept moving up to gather my hair, twist it, let it go. I wanted to climb out the moon roof and run to the hospital. I did breathing exercises and tried not to think about bleeds, swelling, secondary seizures, or brain damage. I skidded into the ER and could hardly tell them why I was there. “MY BABY. HANA. HELICOPTER.” They brought me in.

And she was ok. One of the nurses shushed me when I reached for her, because she had just gotten her to sleep after her CT scan. The doctors were embarrassed that the helicopter had left me. They hadn’t even gotten her name; her ankle bracelets said “baby girl, 1 year”.

They discharged us when the scans came back normal. “Well, she’s very likely fine, the seizure was probably caused by post-concussive bruising from her previous fall. Anyway, we don’t have a pediatric neurologist on this island, so you’re just as well at a hotel as you would be here, really.” That is encouraging.

The only hotel that wasn’t full was the stupid fancy one. We showed up with our eyes like boiled eggs, and I threw out bloody gauze in the receptionist’s trash and asked her to cut the hospital bracelets off. She looked like she was considering calling the hospital to see if they had an escapee. Still, it was a nice suite.

Our friends drove the boys down in the afternoon, and we flew back in the evening, crawled into the house, and collapsed. My mother poured a glass of wine down my throat.