One Sick Little Girl – Part I

Part One – Silent Sirens

 It was 1995, or 1996.  I was about 10 or 11 years old, and not yet interested in all things medical.  When my sister fell ill to what the doctor described as a common but aggressive bout of the flu, I didn’t ask any more questions.

It was February, and my sister, Gemma, had just come home from a school camp.  She’d only been home a few days when she started to feel sick.  My mum kept Gemma out of school the day she fell ill, mainly because she was running a fever and vomiting – had been since the early hours of the morning.  I went off to school.

When I came home about 6 hours later, Gemma had been vomiting so violently that the force of it had ruptured a blood vessel in her eye, and the sclera was completely red.  She was very fatigued, and complained about muscle and joint pain, and a stiff neck.  She complained about the light hurting her eyes and giving her a headache, but Gemma was prone to suffering photosensitivity with her migraines.  There was a strange rash of small bruises on her arms and legs.  The doctor had sent Gemma home.  It was the flu, he said.

Gemma went to bed without any food or drink.  A few moments after her head hits the pillow, she’s asleep.  My mum always says that she knew something wasn’t right that day.  I think she still beats her self up about it, because she should have followed her instincts more.  I don’t really see it that way, because that night my sister had to sleep on a mattress beside my parents bed.  If my mum hadn’t insisted on that, Gemma would be dead.

During the night, Gemma became disoriented and delusional.  Her fever soared higher than it had earlier that day.  She couldn’t keep down so much as a mouthful of water, let alone a pill.  My mum sat on the side of her bed, watching over Gemma as she slept.  Gem deteriorated through the night, and her headache appeared to be worse than any migraine she’d ever had.  She complained that the pain was getting too much to handle.

“I want to die, just let me die,” she said, crying.  “I wish I was dead.”

Sometime during the night, she became incoherent, which is not unsual in high fever. 

At around 3:30-4:00am I woke to a knocking sound.  It was like somebody was thumping the wall in a consistent rhythm.  At first I lay there listening to it, until I realised there was a voice, too.  It was Gemma, and she was making a sound somewhere between a whimper and a moan.  I walked to my parents’ room, and the first thing I remember seeing was my mum, sitting on the end of the bed and looking as distressed as I’ve ever seen anyone.  When I looked down, I saw Gemma.  Her body was arched unnaturally, and apparently in the throes of a painful tetany.   Her eyes were gone, replaced by blank white.  The sound I could hear from my bedroom was her head, thrashing against a drawer as she seized.  Her neck was a vast network of tendons and vessels, tensed painfully and seemingly ready to snap.

That’s the snapshot I have in my head, still.  It’s funny how none of my memories of that day are contiguous.  Some of them are as clear as though they happened yesterday, while others are already lost in the fog of my memory.

Flash to my parents and I carrying Gemma down the stairs, her body as hard as a rock.  In the light of the stairway, I can see her skin is riddled with small dark bruises that I would in later years recognise as disseminated intravascular coagulation, which is literally thousands of blood clots that form and use up all the body’s clotting factors, leading to haemorrhage in the skin.  A very bad sign. 
By the time we reach the bottom of the stairs, she’s limp, and this scares me more.  We try to get her into the backseat of the car, but she’s tense again, and her body thrashes around recklessly.  Without much time, we just stick her feet out the window.  Somehow, I’m sitting in the back with her, stroking her head and rubbing ice on her lips. She’s cold and turning blue, but I talk to her, trying to get a response.  Mum and dad are in the front, beside themselves.  I don’t even know where the ice came from.  This is all surreal.

The drive to the hospital literally took only a minute, as we lived close to a private hospital in those days.  All of a sudden, there’s a nurse and a wheelchair.  Dad and the nurse struggle to get Gemma’s flaccid body into the chair.  There’s vomit on the floor, and worse.  I know it’s Gemma’s, but I don’t remember how it got there.  Flash to me in a big white room, which is evidently the reception area, empty, except for a nurse behind a desk.  She’s asking me if I want a drink, as though she’s not actually a nurse, but a drink vendor.  I refuse, and ask her where everyone is.  She smiles falsely and tells me that they are with the doctors.  I’m not wearing anything except an oversize plain white tee-shirt.  The nurse fetches a scratchy white blanket for me, and a crackly white pillow.  She tells me to go and lay down near the TV.  I lay there watching an episode of General Hospital, thinking how insensitive it is of them to be showing this while my sister is sick.  I’m watching the patient on the show code.

Something happens, and the nurse rushes off into the room behind the big double doors.  I’m disoriented, and afraid to be left alone, so I wander the halls of the hospital.  I come across an old man, and he’s walking towards me. 

“Can’t sleep, eh?” He says, enigmatically, it seems.  Then I realise I am dressed only in the tee-shirt, and must look like a patient.  A nurse appears, and takes me back to the waiting room.

All of a sudden, I’m in the car.  Dad is there with me, and we’re driving back home to get clothes for Gemma.  The sun is starting to come up, but in my memory, it’s dark.  One minute later, we’re home, and the sun is up.  There are still lights on at home, and there is ice sitting in the bathroom.  It hasn’t even melted yet.  Dad – a nonsmoker – is throwing his third cigarette butt into the toilet bowl.  By the time it sizzles, he has lit his fourth cigarette, and we’ve only been home for five minutes.  Both of us are numb by now, and throw jeans and G-strings into a bag.  Along with lots of nighties. 

The next thing I know, I’m in the car again.  We must have picked mum up from the hospital, because she’s in the passanger seat again, trying to hold it together.  I touch her shoulder and she falls apart.  I run my fingers through her hair and tell her that everything’s going to be fine; that she doesn’t need to worry until we know there’s something to worry about.

Actually, by this time, there is something to worry about – I just don’t know it.  Watching the ambulance drive ahead of us, so slowly, I ask my mum what’s happening.

“They say there’s something wrong with her brain.  They say that when we get to the hospital, everything is going to happen very quickly.  They think she’s only got thirty minutes to live.”

The ambulance continues toward the hospital at a funereal pace; lights flashing, siren silent.  It’s then that I notice the police cars flanking the ambulance.  Their sirens are silent too, and their lights also flash as they slowly escort the ambulance in the light of the morning.

To be continued.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)