Momnesia

Finding a Balance Between Control & Murderous Rage

AUGUSTA, GA - It is the call no one wants to get.

"Get home now," my husband gasps on the phone.

"What's wrong?"

"A dog bit Emmie. Tore up her face. Get home now."

"Is she okay?! How bad is it?! Have you called 911?!"

"There's a lot of blood. They're on their way."

 I hear a pathetic moan from Emmie. She is in a lot of pain.

"I'll be there as fast as I can!"

I talk to myself the whole way. Calm down. You don't know if it's that bad. You can't break down. Drive the speed limit. Text attorney. Call ahead to the hospital. What can you do if you rear-end that person? Nothing, so back off, dumbass.

A fire truck blocked the driveway. So I drive over the curb and tear through the front yard.

Emmie sits in Scott's lap. Both their shirts are covered in blood, like gruesome little red bibs. Emmie moans and cries, shaking, pained, terrified, possibly in shock. A bandage covers her face from eyebrow to lip; another across her chin. They are already seeped with blood. A firefighter stepped away, warily, as I hop out of the car and survey the scene.

"How is she? Where is the ambulance? What happened? Talk to me."

I pick Emmie from Scott's arms, sit down and cradle her to my chest. I can't see the wounds. I can't see her eye. I look at Scott, who reads my panic. With his finger, he wordlessly draws a line under his eye, points to his upper lips, and draws a line on his chin. I am relieved, slightly. She hasn't lost an eye. This can be dealt with.

Emmie wails and warbles and tries to tell me what happened: "Mama, a bad dog bite me! My blood came out! It was on da floor! I hate dat dog!"

"She's stable," the fireman says. "The ambulance is on its way, but it could take them a while to get here."

What the hell is the point of emergency services if we could be at the hospital before the ambulance arrives at the house?

"Let's just drive her ourselves," Scott says.

I nod and start towards the car. Wait. I can't drive her like this. And I can't sit in an emergency room with a bleeding child and wait my freaking turn.

"Honey, they'll see her faster if we come in by ambulance."

"The ambulance should be here in a second," the fire fighter updates us, one ear to his radio. Perfect timing: it pulls up behind him. Two EMTs get out.

As I watch them anxiously, I notice the neighbors outside in their yards, watching the scene. For a moment, I feel... trashy... embarrassed... like "COPS" or "Dog the Bounty Hunter" or "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" is filming on my lawn. I shake it off and focus.

The EMTs are loud and inappropriately jovial. They remind me of Santa Claus headlining the comedy stage of a summer retreat in the Poconos in 1963.

But I am so grateful to them.

"Which hospital?" the woman asks.

"Which hospital should we use?"

She nods once, decisively: "MCG. Kids are what they do."

"Let's go."

Emmie lies still on the stretcher, her eyes closed. The female EMT buzzes around her, taking her temp, BP, and checking all of the other acronyms and initials. Emmie is serene. I check to see if she is unconscious. She's not. I'm incredulous. It's as though she's gone into some kind of Zen trance. Then, after a few minutes, Emmie opens her eyes.

"Um, could you please stop that?" she asks the EMT.

After a shocked second, the woman bursts into laughter. "Sure, honey."

The EMT roots around in her storage bin until she comes up with a stuffed animal. She offers it to Emmie, who silently shakes her head. The EMT looks at the Emmie, and then back at the animal: It's a stuffed dog. She guffaws: "I guess she don't want a dog right now!" I manage a polite grin, but really have to restrain myself from chucking her out the back door.

Emmie is quiet and still until they roll her into the ER, and then she shoots up with tears in her eyes: "Are dey goeend gib me a shot?"

God, that's the last thing she needs. But probably. And then some.

Then she spots Scott's parents, who both, separately, have beaten the ambulance to the ER. She wails her story again. Scott's mom is on the verge of breaking down. I don't blame her. It looks awful. I don't know what's going to happen to Emmie, I just know that Miss Patsy can't faint right now. We only need one emergency to deal with. So, politely but selfishly, I tell her that she will freak Emmie out if she breaks down. She nods and visibly tries to pull herself together. It is an effort that I deeply appreciate.

Emmie is running a fever for no discernible reason. The bites are deep and wide: under her eyes across her nose, and on her upper lip and chin. They find no fractures. They suspect no other injuries. Stitches, definitely. But no surgery.

I've texted a friend who's husband is a resident at MCG. She texts me back. Her husband calls the chief. He comes down to check over the situation. Examines her again. I ask for plastics. They give us oral-maxillofacial. I am unhappy. The staff does not blink when I politely threaten to take her to another hospital. They've seen this mom before. The friend's husband assures me that they are every bit as good, "even if they're dentists," he jokes. "They actually do a lot of training on facial reconstruction."

Huh. I'd never have thunk it. Well, let's go, then.

They run an IV with antibiotics. Emmie is not happy with this development - but instead of screaming and fighting like many children, she has a peculiar instinct to try to reason with the medical team: "It hurts! Please stop! It's not nice to hurt me, so you hafta stop!"

But shortly, the procedure is over, and once the IV is inserted and taped, Emmie become fascinated with what they're doing with her. Heart monitors, saline drip, blood pressure cuff... she takes it all in, delighted, smiling. "I feel it cold, mama!" she tells me, when they start the saline. I remember the sensation from giving plasma.

Once they have everything organized and ready, they run ketamine, and she goes limp, her eyes open, her mouth slack. It's disturbingly as though she is dead. I almost lose it then, but I breathe deeply and try to keep myself centered. My father-in-law puts his arm around me. I'm lucky to have family in town. I'm lucky to have loving in-laws. I wonder if I deserve them.

They wash the wounds and stitch her face. I can't watch. It's not the sewing that bothers me. It's the pulling of the flesh. It's freakish, and I can only imagine how much it will hurt her tomorrow. I sit across the room, occasionally going out to check on my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law, Allison, who has thoughtfully brought a fuzzy pink blanket and an adorable stuffed elephant from her house for Emmie. She's expecting her first child, so I'm hoping this experience doesn't freak her out.

Scott arrives. He stayed behind to deal with the police, animal control, and neighbors. I am irrationally angry with him for taking the time to change his shirt, but it was soaked in blood.

Emmie is hilariously responsive in sedation. She hums lazily. She sticks her tongue out at the doctor. She follows commands with some prodding. The staff is endlessly entertained. And I want to punch them every time they laugh. It's not fair, but it's how I feel. I try remember that they see this every day, that this is a job to them, and that - frankly - this kind of thing is probably pretty exciting to them. I can see how it might be. So I try to keep my ridiculous anger from showing. They stitch the large gash across her right cheek and up her nose. They stitch the tooth punctures on her upper lip, the tear in her frenulum, the gash on her chin.

During this, Scott and I retreat to discuss what happened. It seems the neighbors at our new place have a little girl close to Emmie's age. Emmie was talking to her across the weirdly short chain-link fence that separates our yards. Without a sound, the dog casually walked across the yard, jumped up on the fence, and took a chomp out of Emmie's face. Emmie told me later that the dog didn't bark, growl, or snarl before it happened. It didn't run. Effectively, it gave none of the warning signs that I had discussed with her when dealing with domesticated animals.

Hell, we didn't even know that they had a dog. Their entire backyard is paved over, for god's sake. Have they never seen The Dog Whisperer? This is not an environment that creates a happy, well-adjusted canine companion.

Back at the hospital, they tie off the sutures, cover everything with sticky tape, and leave her with us to recover. We let the rest of the family in to see her. She begins to come around immediately, trying to talk through swollen lips and clutching our hands.

Within 10 minutes, she's speaking clearly enough to be understood: "lub you," "bad dog," and "Nona." She gives me and Scott "mooches" with her terribly swollen lips.

At 15 minutes, she vomits, and apologizes for it. Shortly after, she's clearly experiencing the side effects of the medication: "Daddy, you got TWO faces?!"

Within 45 minutes, she's eating a popsicle and complaining that she can't see "Phineus and Ferb" because of someone's head. It's obvious to me from this experience that if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, Emmie would be just fine. She'd have a dozen people to care for her.

We're cleared to go shortly after they decide she's not going to suffer any adverse reactions to the drugs or procedures. I look at the clock: six hours. It felt like two hours, max.

Easily 15 people worked on Emmie. I only remember three names: Dr. Hunt, the chief; Dr. Lopez, who coordinated the care team; and Stephanie, the smiling nurse with the great way with children. I hope that the other 12 people know that they are as appreciated.

Saturday, it became obvious that Emmie's not excited about dogs, anymore. She complained a little about being tired, but never wanted to nap. And we kept her from a friend's birthday party, trying to keep her quiet and calm for the day, as the doctor ordered. My parents came down and stayed with us all day, bringing food, and my in-laws came over for a while later, decorating our apartment with Halloween trinkets and staying for dinner with everyone. Emmie had birthday cake and ice cream for dinner, and I don't care.

But today, we expect to return to life as normal. We're going to try some different things to see how she does. She'll spend some time with Scott's grandparents. She might go back to school on Monday. We want to minimize the message that this is the kind of situation that should impact the rest of her life.

And, yet, it might. She has some treatments ahead of her to reduce the amount of scarring. She'll inevitably be asked repeatedly about the incident. Obviously, we won't have a great relationship with that little girl's parents, since they tried to convince the police that she fell in some thorn bushes. And maybe her modeling career won't take off as expected (that was a joke). And, yet, she may be really well positioned to deal with it. Any kid who can Zen her way through an ambulance ride can deal with those kinds of issues, I think.

Thanks, everyone, for all of your kind thoughts and prayers via Facebook, e-mail, and other outlets. We appreciate it more than you know.