Every Parent's Worst Nightmareby Colette Gray-Langford The 2:00 a.m. phone call that you think is an obscene call (and it proved to be) from the chaplain at St Francis Medical Center tells you that your daughter, Summer, has been in a car crash. Twenty years of nursing kicks in: "How bad?" "She came in Code White!" Twenty years of nursing kicks out: That 's not bad. "We'll be right there." You dress and drive safely to the hospital. You walk in and are ushered to a small room where her boyfriend, Dave, is sitting and crying. Twenty years of nursing tells you: "If she were all right, he would be at her bedside." The doctor walks in, a man you've know for years, "We haven't had a blood pressure for 40 minutes but we have a heart beat." Twenty years of nursing tells you that's not good. "I want to see her!" He says he'll be right back and leaves. That watery feeling hits your gut and you need a rest room now. He returns to tell you they lost the heart beat and are doing CPR. "I WANT TO SEE HER!" We are ushered into the trauma room and see her laid out on the gurney. A lone nurse is doing "pity" CPR . Twenty years of nursing tells you your funny, smiling, curly-haired daughter is no longer in this bloody broken body. "Please, stop!" He does, but the hissing of suction machine continues and you ask the other nurse to "Please, turn it off." You stand by the body in disbelief, This can't be your daughter: the neck brace, the spine board, the IV sites, the cutting of her uniform, the bruises to her face, the blue eyes that do not close now even in death. You leave the room and walk into the hall filled with her fellow officers. You try to be nice but suddenly the hall is too small. The hospital is too small. You race for the door into the cool night air with the first drops of a fresh rain falling, a rain that will not stop for three days because all of heaven is crying for the death of your daughter. The rest of the day is a blur and all you want to do is crawl back into bed and wake up from this nightmare. But you have people to call and family to tell, "I have bad news, very bad news." The family and friends come and somebody from DUI Victim's Center named Mary Ann calls.
When night does come and you can go to bed, you do not wish to sleep because it was not "just" a nightmare, and with sleep the horror can return and your guard will be down. I do sleep and dream of a trauma room and hissing sounds and a curly-haired young woman laying on a gurney with blood running from her head. But standing beside me is Summer dressed in white and a golden glow around her curly-haired head and dancing blue eyes. I know the healing has begun. Post Script
Three years later I attend my third "Candlelight Vigil of Remembrance and Hope" at the DUI Victim Center of Kansas. Twenty-three years of nursing sends me to put my arms around another mother whose worst nightmare has been realized. May her healing begin and her daughter come stand beside her in a dream. |
