Charlie said without a trace of irony (As I’m reading this post to Laurel, she pointed out that she also doesn’t have a trace of iron(y). You’ll have to read on.) this morning and with a smile on his face. Here’s what preceded those words:
I got up at 6:00 to go to the bathroom. The basement is circular, so I walked from the bedroom, through the garage and into the kitchen hallway to the bathroom so as not to disturb Laurel who has been sleeping on the living-room sofa. As soon as I closed the bathroom door, I heard glass break and a series of crashes/things falling over. I walked into the mostly-dark kitchen and found Laurel on the floor with her head slumped against the wall. (Ok, now as I’m reading this part to Laurel, I paused to say, “I hope that doesn’t sound like your head fell off.” She said, “Yeah, the paramedics came and said they could just sew that on here. They didn’t need to take me to the hospital. A hospital is for people with things like the flu or stomach problems.”) “LAUREL!” I screamed. She didn’t open her eyes or move. As I leaned over her, she came to and tried to stand; but I told her not to until I could move some of the broken glass out of her way. She gingerly stepped over the shards while holding onto me. Then she said softly but panicked, “I can’t see! I can’t see!” And she passed out again. I didn’t have my glasses on, and most of the overhead lights don’t work in this apartment, so it took me several seconds to find my phone in the living room. As I called 911, Laurel regained consciousness in the kitchen and walked into the living room where she sat on the sofa. I gave her info to the dispatcher, told Laurel not to stand up, and hurried to the bedroom to get ready to go with her in the ambulance. I wanted to tell Charlie what was going on, and I kept shouting his name; but he wouldn’t move. I finally went over to him, and he sat up with tears in his eyes. I guess he had been too scared to respond. The firetruck arrived only two or three minutes after I hung up with the dispatcher. One of the firefighters assessed her – taking her vitals and talking to her – and determined she didn’t need to go to the hospital. I told him that she’s recovering from the flu. He asked her if she’s a vegetarian. She told him she’d just started a few weeks ago, and he said that was probably part of the problem. He told her to consume lots of protein and fruit juice today. Her temp was down to 99.2, and she said she felt much better. “I just needed to pass out, and now I’m fine!” she said. Once they had gone and we felt confident she wasn’t at death’s door, Laurel joked about it. “You should have drawn on my face while I was passed out,” she said.
We also talked about icing her down (which I didn’t do but may have had to if her fever the other day hadn’t dropped quickly from 105.4).
I told her, “I would have had to put you in the tub and crack the two ice cube trays on you. But that wouldn’t have been enough, so I’d go buy two 40-lb bags of ice and carry them up the hill. The ice would mostly have melted by the time I got back, and I’d pass out from exhaustion. Meanwhile you’d be in the tub with some ice cubes on you and a cell phone handy. If you called the paramedics from there, it would look you had been a victim of that organ-theft thing.”
“Ooh yeah,” she said. “I’d write a note that said that just to freak them out, and then I’d mention that by the way, my mom’s passed out. You might want to take a look at her.”
So I guess that’s our weird way of dealing with stress. Charlie’s good wishes in the face of all this were priceless. 🙂