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February 28, 2009

The Changeling

Herself comes downstairs on Monday morning but when I look at her I can she that Herself is gone and in her place is something almost like my daughter but with pale, pale skin and charcoal smears under her eyes. It is the ghost of Herself. It is a Shade. It gives me The Look and I say, "Oh, honey. Did you take your medicine?" "I took Advil," it says in a whisper and I say, "Go back to bed."

On Sunday afternoon I'd had a premonition of this visit: Herself's sudden, intractable crabbiness--extreme even for her--and I tried to prepare myself for what might be coming, though too bad that at that point it did not occur to me to try to prepare Herself, to give her a preventive dose of Advil, or Imitrex, or Migranol, or Relpax, or Treximet. No; I just held my breath and thought, "Maybe not this time."

I call the school and say, "I hope she'll be in tomorrow" and I try to believe it, though I don't believe it because there was something about that Look that said, "Now you're in for it." All day long the Shade of Herself lies in bed, in the dark, blinds closed and curtain drawn, a pinched look on its face. Every few hours I try a different drug, or drugs, and none of them do a thing.

On Tuesday the Shade comes downstairs in the morning dressed for school, hair brushed. I look at it and say, half laughing, "You're kidding, right? You think you can go to school today?" The Shade looks at me and knows that I know what it is, and bursts into tears. "Go back to bed," I say. After a while I get dressed and go into the office. I call home. No answer. I think how stupid I was to leave home, how stupid, but I stay at work anyway. I call the doctor and say, "This is day two and nothing is working; what should I do?" and the nurse says, "Take her to the ER."

When I get home the Shade puts on a robe and comes downstairs, even more pale than it was that morning. Herself is gone entirely and when I look into the eyes that used to be hers, I see enormous pupils and nothing else. "Do you want to go to the ER?" I say, meaning "I want to take you to the ER," and it says, "No." So I don't. I wait, thinking, "Tomorrow she will be back." The Shade gets into bed with me early in the morning, and lies quietly next to me and sighs, softly.

When I get up I call the school again. I go upstairs. "I can't sleep," it says. "And when I do I have horrible dreams." I don't know what to say back. I can't say, "I know," because I don't. I can't do anything that will make a difference or make the pain lessen even a tiny bit. I can't do anything at all but worry and check every couple of hours to make sure the Shade still breathes. "I'm sorry," it says to me, in tears. I make an appointment with the pediatrician and get the Shade out of bed and dressed and into the car. An examination, a strep test, and an hour and a half later we are released back into the sunny day with a clean bill of health and the pain that will not go away.

That night the Shade comes downstairs for dinner with Moo and me, and doesn't eat. I turn off the lights but the Shade wears sunglasses anyway. It sleeps with me the whole night and I wake up every couple of hours and clasp its hand, just for comfort, and it clasps my hand back.

On Thursday morning I call the school say "Not today," and I say to the Shade, "We're going." And I make it get dressed, get in the car with me, drive to the hospital. We sign in, sit in a room that is gradually filling with sick people. We are finally called and a nurse weighs the Shade, takes a pulse, blood pressure, says, "You missed this whole week of school? Wow, will YOU have a lot of work to make up!" and I want to slap her. "Stress," I hiss, "is a trigger." And we go back to the waiting room and do not get called again. After three and a half hours the Shade says to me, "I want to go home." And so we do.

The Shade has dinner with Moo and me and because I made the most comforting comfort food I can think of (pasta and potatoes), it eats. We sit in the dark and the Shade wears sunglasses, and gets up abruptly and goes upstairs. I clean the kitchen and go up to check, and the Shade is sitting on Herself's bed, staring at nothing. My heart jumps and I say, "What's the matter?" Then I see that the Shade is crying. Sobbing. "My. Head. HURTS. I can't stand it."

I get it out of bed and undressed and into the bathtub, where I run water as hot as I can stand it and wash the Shade's hair, gently, and give it a bath. Afterwards I comb its hair, gently, and think about how long this could last. I am very, very tired but I feel guilty falling asleep, though I fall asleep anyway.

The next morning I call the school. When I go upstairs, the Shade is lying in my bed wearing sunglasses, watching television, a pale invalid. I go back downstairs and work. Mid-afternoon the Shade comes downstairs; the sunglasses are off. "Hey," it says. It sits down in the chair opposite me and looks at me and when I look back I see Herself. She is home. She has been gone for almost five days, for one hundred and six hours, but she is home now. "I'm hungry," she says, looking past me into the kitchen. "Can I have a sandwich?"

Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)