See that face?

It's my youngest child and fifth son, Atticus.

A few days ago, I almost left the hair salon with half a haircut when my husband called me and said that our littlest boy had to be admitted to the hospital for a possible surgical drainage of his lymph node, caused by an unknown infection.

"What hospital?" I asked. It was foolish; but only two weeks ago, one of the closest friends I have had left that hospital -- but on a stretcher, her brain function reduced to reflexes after an event that somehow involved a loss of oxygen. It was also the hospital where, five years before, nurses and doctors worked like Titans to save the life of my older son after a complicated appendectomy.

Atticus likes my husband better.

I'm not kidding. He simply likes my husband better. But there was no way I was going to let my husband stay with him during a possibly extended hospital visit.

My husband is a good sleeper.

Atticus would have gone crawling down to the nurses' station, collecting impetigo germs at every foot (of course, Atticus can walk, but was too weak to do so.

When Atticus was born, one of the older kids bizarrely asked me, "If he died, would you feel the same way as you would about one of us?" It was as though Atticus was a true caboose, an add-on to the train and thus, somehow, less necessary to the whole. For a moment, I almost wondered if I would. And I never thought of that again.

I thought of it when I arrived at the hospital, to see Atticus' hand wrapped tight in gauze to hold in IV needle. I gathered him up. Although he usually struggles a little before he gives in -- Chris is his mommy - he was too weak to do that. He simply lay in my arms.

He lay in my arms for three days, too tired even to cry. I learned more about the poignant death of Anna-Nicole Smith than I knew about the deaths of my grandparents. Massive doses of antibiotics gradually brought down the swelling that made Atty appear to have three chins, two of them swollen and red.

On the day he ate a bite of pudding, I cheered. The nurses cheered. They were the same nurses who'd helped nurse Marty back to health years ago. And they were just as devoted.

We came home in time for his big sister's eighth birthday. Atticus was still, for a day, too weak to walk. But I had an answer to that random question asked me fifteen months ago. My heart has many rooms and if it were ever divided, it could not stand.

yours,
Jackie Mitchard

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