Transparent Tuesdays

Issue 245

You guys,

“Layla, wake up!” I yelled from the passenger seat, watching her head fall to the side of her car seat. “You have to stay awake, we’re almost there.”

Layla whimpered in response. Her eyes blinked closed and her head slumped again to the side. We were on our way to the emergency room. I didn’t know why it was important for my 2-year-old girl to stay awake but I knew that it was. I looked at Sam. His hands gripped the steering wheel as we sat at a red light.

“It’s fine,” he said, staring straight ahead. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Two hours earlier we were hanging the outdoor Christmas lights when Sam and I had an argument we’ve had many times before. It’s the same thing every time. We’re in the front yard and Sam says, “You got the kids?” and I say, “Yea, they’re fine.” We have no sidewalks. It’s a residential neighborhood and there are small children everywhere, and yet there are still cars that speed down the block. I once saw the driver of one of these cars flying down our street. She looked like a teenager. Her eyes were down the whole time. We tell the kids they can’t run into the street. We tell them they need to look both ways before they cross. We tell them. They know. Then George will dart toward the road as a car’s coming. Sam will sprint toward George and yell for him to stop. It all happens and is over so fast. George stops at the edge of our lawn, Sam reaches him, car passes, Sam and I argue. “I thought you said you had them!” Sam will say. “I did!” I’ll say. “He knows not to go in the street!”

It is not the point. It is never the point. George could be distracted by a ball or a butterfly. The driver could be that high school girl, speeding with her eyes down. It’s not about trusting the kids. I need to be there, no matter what. Every time we have this argument I say I understand and I agree, but it keeps happening. Because every time it happens I assume the best instead of the worst.

This time, George and Layla were in the driveway, between our two cars, playing together on the tricycle, pushing each other. I had just told them not to go in the street. “We’re not,” George had said. “We’re just going on the curb.”

There is no curb. The driveway dips right into the street, but I knew he meant he wouldn’t go past the dip. Sam walked toward the front porch and saw a car coming up the street. “Can you get eyes on them?” Sam said. “There’s a car coming.” The kids had been playing fine between the cars. I had just checked in. If I kept my eyes on them the Christmas lights would never get hung. I kept walking toward the open garage, to grab more strings of lights, and yelled, “Guys, don’t go in the street!”

Then Sam was sprinting toward the end of the driveway. He yelled something. I ran to meet them. The car had slowed down. Our neighbor from down the street. Another mom of young kids. We smiled and waved at each other as we made eye contact. Sam stood with George and Layla at the foot of the driveway. He looked at me after she drove past and said, for the whole neighborhood to hear, “You said you had them!”

If we were inside the house, away from onlookers, I would have yelled back. Instead I glared at him. “They weren’t going in the street,” I said. “They were fine.”

“You are so dismissive,” Sam said, stalking towards the other palm tree to start wrapping it in lights. “How many times does this need to happen? You’re unbelievable.”

I stood in front of the palm tree as Sam started wrapping the base of the tree and worked his way up.

“No,” I said. “They’re crooked.”

Sam flung the rest of the string to the ground. “Then you do it.”

Every year we are determined to have fun when we hang the outdoor Christmas lights, and every year, this is the way it goes. We moved to the front porch, where we always wrap the three porch columns in white lights. We had wrapped and re-wrapped the same string of lights around the same column four times and each time the end came up short. No matter what adjustments we thought we were making it made no difference. “Why does this keep happening?” Sam said.

George played in the front yard while Layla moved her tricycle to the front porch. She got stuck when she tried to move it past the ladder. “Layla, you can’t go past there,” Sam said.

“Here,” I said, as I grabbed the red tricycle and lifted it over the gap between the ladder and the house. There was nowhere for her to go with her bike but she was content for the moment so I went back to untangling lights.

Sam finally completed the first column. “Can we get back on the same page?” I said, which is often the way we start to resolve an argument. Sam responded with the next line in our script: “I would like that.”

And then it happened. I didn’t see anything but Sam said, “Layla just fell. Get her.”

I took two steps to the left and saw her sprawled out over top of her tricycle. She must have attempted to ride it down the front porch cement steps. She went over top of the handlebars and landed on her face, on concrete.

It was silent for a moment as I grabbed her and spun her around to face me, then she was crying. Her teeth were bloody and more blood seemed to be coming from her nose. I held her towards Sam and he took her.

I’m always frozen in these situations, unsure of what to do. There was too much blood to know where the source was or how bad it was. Sam and I talked to her, asked if she was okay, and her eyes rolled back in her head. Her head lolled back with it, and just as quickly snapped back to upright. “Layla, Layla, are you okay?” Her eyes went back again. We rushed into the house. “Get a wet paper towel,” Sam said, the shoulder of his sweatshirt blotched bloody.

George trailed behind. He wasn’t ready to go inside yet. “George, inside now!” I yelled. He stopped in the garage and wailed. “Don’t yell at me!” he said. I picked him up and plopped him down inside the door.

“George, it’s okay, buddy,” Sam said, as George ran to Sam’s side. “You didn’t do anything wrong. We just all need to come inside.”

“Mama yelled at me,” he cried. I ran to the sink to rinse a paper towel and then back over to where Sam sat at a kitchen chair with Layla on his lap and George at his side. I bent down and quickly kissed George’s head. “I’m sorry I yelled.”

I dabbed Layla’s lips with a wet paper towel and her eyes rolled back again. This wasn’t good. I called the doctor. It was 4:30 PM. Layla stared at me the whole time I was on the phone. “Layla what hurts?” Sam asked. “My lip,” she said.

She’s responsive now, I told the nurse. She’s alert.

We still had to go, now. Urgent care closed at 5:00. It was ten minutes away. I threw some Lara bars and gummies in my purse, grabbed the diaper bag and the kids’ water bottles, and we were in the car.

“I’m hungry,” George said, holding tightly to two Magnatiles. “You can have a snack when we get there,” I said.

Sam drove, talking to Layla the whole time, until she stopped responding. I climbed into the back seat, wedged myself in between the car seats and sat in the trunk. I held Layla's hand, told her we’d be there soon.

Sam pulled into the parking spot and I ran with Layla in my arms to the swinging front door. “Why are you running, Mama?” she asked.

The lady at the front desk made a call to the back. Sam explained what happened and she relayed it over the phone. “She needs imaging,” she confirmed. “We don’t have that here. You have to go to the ER, up the street.”

They wouldn’t take us. We had to go. We all walked back to the car. This time I stayed in the front seat. This time we couldn’t keep Layla awake.

I ran to the front door of the emergency room with Layla passed out over my shoulder. A woman greeted us and called us over to her desk. She asked questions. Sam answered them. A nurse appeared next to her and looked at Layla, then at me. “How long has she been asleep,” he asked. His name tag said Dillon.

“She fell asleep in the car,” I said. “Not long.”

Passing out seemed a bad sign but I also knew she was exhausted. We were on Day 3 of potty training. Layla had taken approximately 63 trips to the potty that day. She also didn’t nap. Then she smashed her face.

“Can you try to wake her up?” Dillon said.

I sat in the chair on the other side of the desk and spun Layla away from me, so she was sitting on my lap. She blinked her eyes open and leaned back on my chest.

“Hi Layla,” Dillon said, peering at her between two computer monitors. He was clean cut with a round face. Some people have a special way of being with kids. Dillon was one of them. I imagined him at a children's birthday party holding court with a swarm of kids at his feet. He looked only at her. “Where does it hurt?”

“My lip,” she answered.

“Your lip?” Dillon said. “Okay, good. Can you open your mouth for me so I can see?”

She opened her mouth wide and held it open. Champ.

We were taken back quickly. Nurses stood and smiled and coo’ed at the toddlers passing through. Layla kept her head buried in my shoulder. Another nurse checked her teeth. Everything was intact. Then a doctor came in, said she didn’t think she needed a CT scan. She didn’t even need stitches. Layla walked out an hour later, eating gummies and saying goodbye to her new friend, Dillon.

Later that evening Sam and I stood at the kitchen island while both kids lay curled up with blankets on respective recliners in the living room, watching The Snowy Day on Netflix.

Sam sighed. “What a day,” he said.

“I’m sorry I was dismissive about the kids playing near the street,” I said. “You were right.”

“Thank you,” Sam said. He opened his arms and I walked into them. “I’m sorry I cursed at you.”

—

Until next week,

Charlie