Caroline and her Dad at the Spinners game
(5 of 6)
I learn something else during this short walk. You absolutely cannot play the game that goes, if the ball had just been six inches higher it would have missed her, or six inches lower it would have hit her in the shoulder. Because the follow-up thought is, if it had been two and a half inches up and to the right, it would have struck her in the temple. The thought makes me shiver, and I nearly faint. I shake it off and continue toward home plate.
Instincts kick in. Always be polite. Before gathering Kevin and our things, I poke my head in the radio booth to thank Chaz Scoggins for the tickets. "I've got to run," I say. "My daughter caught that foul." He probably doesn't know, yet, what I'm talking about. He probably thinks my daughter caught a baseball and, therefore, why am I leaving?
The cruiser is waiting for me and as soon as I say, with customary pride, that I'm Caroline's Dad, the lights begin to flash and we wheel about in tandem. We cross the canal and travel. . . . well, I have no idea how far we travel. A mile, maybe. I do know that as we turn into the Saints Memorial parking lot I realize that this is yet another hospital that has gone under and been reborn. "This used to be Saint John's," I say to Kevin.
"Right," he says. "I don't know when it changed."
The cops tell us to park in an ambulance space, and we take them up on the offer. We sprint inside just in time to see Caroline, still trussed, wheeled past on a mobile bed and into a room. "Look," Kevin say, not squeamish but trying to consider what's best. "You don't need people here. Let me get out of your way." He goes to grab a cab, and though I know Caroline adores Uncle Kevin and would always want him around, I let him go—not least, because he's right.
Neck X-rays, negative. Head X-rays, negative. Caroline is blubbering throughout, but a trouper. She's coherent, wiggling her toes upon command (everyone commands it: parents, doctors, nurses). She says, many times, "I want to go home." We try to reassure her, but what can you say?
Another picture for the memory bank: In a dark room in Lowell, Luci and I, in iron aprons, stand on either side of our first-born child as she holds one of our fingers in each of her little hands and is gently slid backwards into the CAT-scan machine, whose rays begin to dance before her eyes. "Don't talk, Sweetie," I say to her as she moans. "Just a minute more."
CAT-scan, negative.
"She's had a concussion." I offer this diagnosis to Luci. "I think she's had her first sports concussion." I tell her that I got one playing football, that my sister Gail got one skiing. Luci hugs Caroline and rocks back and forth on the edge of the bed. The doctor comes to talk with us and confirms that, in the best of all worlds, this is going to be a concussion, nothing more. "There's no internal bleeding, no break in the bones. It's amazing, really, that a professionally hit ball could go that far and hit her square and not do more damage."
Professionally hit? I refrain from saying "Single A short-season," though I do think it—which I take to be a pretty good sign. My real sense of humor, not that macabre mindplay I suffered at the ballpark, is returning. The doors to the room swing open and those two nice EMTs come in, bearing a gift. "The game ball," one explains, and for the first time I think: Hey, some kid grabbed the ball that hit my daughter on the head! That's okay. We've got this game ball signed by the Single A short-season Spinners. A keepsake, even if it is precisely as hard as the one I denied Caroline at the Souvenirs shop.
"When you get upstairs in the kids' ward, the tiny nurse about this size is my wife," says the large EMT, gesturing. "She'll take care of you."
"Thanks."
It is decided that Luci will return to her mother's in Chelmsford to be with Jack and Mary Grace when they awake. I'll stay in the hospital with Caroline. We get our room at 1:15 a.m., and Caroline insists that I share her bed. It's pediatric-sized, with a firm board at the end, so my legs can't hang over; I have to draw them up. For this reason and all the obvious ones, I get no sleep. Caroline sleeps in fits, waking to vomit occasionally (a usual aftershock of concussions), to tinkle, to cry for Mommy or for Piggie, her constant companion who, unfortunately, is at Grandma's, equally desolate. Caroline hugs the red Spinners bear as tightly as she can, but it is lacking as a substitute.
I watch her all night long. I watch fretfully for signs of twitching or abnormal breathing, gratefully for her living presence. I say my prayers over and over. Long ago I promised not to pray any more for insubstantial things—a Red Sox win, for instance, even a crucial Red Sox win—but to reserve any entreaties for the truly important stuff. I reflect now, as I gaze at Caroline with a love deeper than that I experienced when she was born, that I've been doing a lot of asking in the last year, what with all these hospital visits. A lot of thanking, too—and never more fervently than now.
The next day Caroline and I sleep and talk and watch TV and sleep some more. Mommy comes in mid-morning, and we wonder to the nurse if Caroline can go home. The neurologist visits and says not yet.
"That nurse, Eileen," I say to Luci. "I think I went to high school with her. I think it's Eileen Ledrew. She once had a date with Mike Larkin. A drive-in date, as I remember."
"You should ask her," Luci suggests. But I'm not up for conversation with anyone but Luci or Caroline just yet, and so I don't ask.
"Go get a change of clothes, honey," says Luci. "Go reassure your dad."
"I will," I say.