January 9, 1997, 2:40 p.m.
Brennan lay stretched out high atop the pediatrician’s oak examining table. Even at age four and a half he reached across the entire length. Half-reclining on his left side, facing me, perhaps watching me, he leaned on his left elbow and tossed every few seconds to reposition away the pain in his thin, long legs.
“Hi, Brennan, back again?” the nursing assistant said as she walked in, set down her tray of supplies, swiped his finger with the pungent alcohol swab, and pricked his middle finger with a tiny lancet. He watched, as if observing a science experiment, as the red drops defied gravity and rose up the capillary tube. He didn’t cry.
After the assistant wrapped on a miniature Donald Duck Band-Aid, I asked if she could tell me what his lab results were from his last visit, two weeks earlier.
“I didn’t bring him in,” I said. She nodded and went out to check for me. Moments later, she slipped in and quietly closed the door behind her. She hesitated and then recited, “His white count was 6.5, and his hemoglobin was 8.6.”
“8.6?” I said, composed but incredulous. I knew that his white count was fine, but normal values for hemoglobin were at least 12 to 13 grams/deciliter. Anything lower meant anemia; a hemoglobin below 9 was serious. I looked straight into her eyes as the nurse in me tamped down the rising panic of a mother’s worst fears. “Why weren’t we told?”
She gave a sympathetic shrug and dashed out of the room.
I stared at the closed door. I wouldn’t let myself consider the significance of the low value, so I focused on the lack of disclosure. Anger was easier to face than fear. Why hadn’t they told Laurie, our nanny who’d brought him in just before Christmas? I’m certain she would have told me. Did they think it might be an error? I was afraid to believe that it could be real. I tried to breathe, to stay in the moment, ignoring the diseases shouting their textbook headlines. Just that morning I had considered infectious disease; I couldn’t imagine a common virus causing sporadic fevers and intermittent pain. All I could do was wait for the new results. I stood next to Brennan, my hands gently resting on his legs. I took a deep breath and asked, “How are you doing?”
“Okay,” he said with a blank expression.
I’d like to imagine that I was channeling energy from the universe to help his body heal or at least to disperse the pain in his legs and give him strength to tolerate it. I wanted my touch to reassure him, to tell him I was there for him. I wanted to be present for him, as I envisioned a concerned mother might be, thinking about how he must feel. Instead, my nurse mind churned with uncertainty, collecting and sorting the ambiguous facts and data, trying to tessellate events of the past two months into some coherent picture.
