Normal life attempted to intrude into our ongoing nightmare.  Our daughter had met her first serious boyfriend, and he had driven up to Boise to meet us.  Instead of finding her parents at the cabin in the woods, she tracked us down in a sterile, whispering examination room.  The poor kid she presented to us, Carlos, extended his hand to my husband, and miraculously Chad raised his own in a handshake.  (By the way that is the last thing Chad remembers today, that handshake.)

The two of them arrived at nearly the same time the ER doc returned to the room announcing that we were going on another ride downtown.  Chad’s chemo doc was on-call at the main medical center, and wanted to assess him in person.  Catherine and Carlos decided to meet us across town, and for a fourth time in one afternoon, turned evening, the two of us were loaded onto an ambulance.

Nearing the downtown medical center, the driver, a very nice young man, kept up a light banter with me.  Pulling up to a traffic light I realized we were behind my girl and her new beau.  Why, I’ll never know, my hands were shaking and I wanted to vomit, I asked the driver to give them the siren.  He complied, and we all waved ourselves silly, vehicle to vehicle.

Inside the main ER the verdict came in, Chad was to be admitted overnight for tests.  The last place either of us wished to be–a hospital–looked like home-base for us, at least for the night.  Orderlies rolled Chad into a side elevator to the fourth floor.  We followed in the public lift.  It was while looking for his room number, that I came face to face with a former student.  She was an aide on the floor.  Automatically smiling, I put my hand out to shake hers.  The girl having none of that, threw her arms around me in a big comforting hug.  That gave me no comfort, she must have known of his dire condition.

Punched up with more Dilaudid, my husband managed to talk to his Chemo doctor clearly, lying in his new surroundings.  He admitted that he hadn’t used the bathroom except to urinate for three days.  I heard her murmur, “fleet” again, quite clearly, but without enthusiasm. “Life flight for an enema,’ darkly crossed my mind.

The two kids sat down in the deep window sill of the room, all eyes, slowly acclimating from their new mutual attachment, into the reality of our medical abyss.

Finally, after passing a number of emotions across her face, the oncologist ordered a CT scan for my husband.  She then told us that it would be late before the procedure took place, and that we should go and get some rest.  Her words surprised me.  Darkness had crept in while I was distracted.  It was already ten at night when our worried little entourage was dismissed from the hospital.

The doctor promised she would call me when she knew something.