In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

At two o’clock in the morning last week I woke up gasping for air. My chest seemed to have no inclination for response to my body’s ragged demands for oxygen. I stood staring at the pale face in the mirror trying to remember what to do next, but panic turns out to be an easy conduit down to blank thinking. None of my long-ago emergency First-Aid class protocols came to mind. And to be honest, for the first time in years, I was frightened.

I nudged my husband, trying to tell him what was happening. He was instantly alert. I have a history of lung and heart stuff. He’s a zero-to-sixty-with-no-stops-in-between kind of guy. Plus, he no longer drives, so we took ourselves out of the loop and called Daughter #2, the St. Mark’s Hospital system trainer for ER nurses. Within five minutes she and her husband were at our door. (They live so close, we can see their house from our back door.) “You need oxygen,” she said. “You’re pale, skin is clammy. We’re taking you to the closest Instacare.”

The four of us loaded into my car and headed out the door. By then it was 3 AM. Despite the fact that both my daughter and her husband had to be at work in less than four hours, neither of them showed the least concern about the hour or interference with their sleep. There was no one in the waiting room when we arrived (apparently no one liked the hour any more than any of us did), so we were seen immediately. Lots of tests—heart, Xray, blood, etc. Eventually, I sent  Daughter #2 and her husband home to start the work/school routine.

“Just call me when they have all the results,” she said. “I’ll be back to pick you up.”

After a couple of hours, the serious concerns all came back negative—even the COVID one. My breathing had eased somewhat, and the doc concluded that I had accumulated so much mucous between my throat and lungs that I was literally choking (and sometimes coughing) myself out of air. He gave me some steroids, a med or two, and released me.

I called Daughter # 2 at 4:30 AM for a ride home. Twenty minutes later, she called me back. Her first words were, “Don’t panic. Everything’s going to be all right.” Not a reassuring greeting.

Leaving her husband home to get their two youngest children out of bed and on their way to school, she’d gotten ½ way to the Instacare to pick up her dad and I when my car had started making horrible, threatening noises. She pulled into the nearest parking lot—a McDonald’s which appeared to be open all night. It didn’t take much effort to discover that the right rear tire on my Toyota had exploded. Later, my long-time mechanic husband would tell me he’d never seen anything like it.

A problem-solver by nature, Daughter #2 woke her sister-in-law, an administrator in the local school district, explained the situation, asked the sister-in-law to climb out of bed (a couple of hours earlier than her normal workday), and head over to the Instacare to pick up the stranded parents. Then she called her brother, Son #4 (also a couple of hours earlier than his normal wake-up time), to come help her deal with the exploded tire.

Forty-five minutes after that, the sister-in-law with my husband and I in tow, passed the McDonald’s where the car repair was just being finished up. We pulled into the parking lot next to Son #4’s truck. “All done,” he said as he loaded the jack and assorted tools back into his truck. Son #4 is infamous for his grouchy exterior, but he’s also famous for “showing up”. Every time. For every need. This night was no exception.

So there we were—five adults, all related to one another in one way or another, hanging out together in the dark well before dawn—all of us sleep deprived and musing at the absurdity of the situation. (And I was intermittently coughing violently). For a moment I thought about buying us all breakfast burritos since we were conveniently stalled at American’s favorite fast-food breakfast stop, but the non-retired three of us had to head home and get to work. My husband was exhausted, and I felt lousy; we both needed to go back to bed.

I looked at the four people (five if I included my son-in-law at home herding his children into another day) next to me who may have groaned when they were called to my aid in the middle of the night but climbed out of bed and came anyway. Tears filled my eyes unexpectedly. In that moment it was difficult to imagine anyone richer than I.