blathing_from_a_hospital ovenbird Today brings new complications. There's sharp pain at the site of her broken bones. There's an electric tingle running through her arm. I Google it even though I know you should never Google it and all the results say this change in condition requires medical attention because it could mean nerve damage or it could mean that the bones have slipped out of position. It could mean any number of horrible things and I would like it all to stop now. Just stop... There's no one to pray to. I have no control. I'm a lost and terrified mother bird trying to shield her fledgling from hawks and snakes and the salivating mouths of hungry raccoons. There's acid boiling in my stomach and broken eggshell in my lungs. Please don't let her suffer anymore, I silently ask the air, the mint green walls, the scuffed floor tiles, the fluorescent lights. It makes no difference but I let hope rattle around in my skull. Her small voice echoes in there too, “will it hurt, will it hurt, will it hurt?” I don't want her to know the truth–that everything hurts. Our animal bodies are here to hurt. There's no way out. But sometimes, if we're lucky, we find another aching body to fold ours into and the hurt mixes with love mixes with relief mixes with grief and you can pour it all out on the ground and watch the earth eat it. I give my child my hand to hold (the way mine has been held) and I know that, despite everything, we're lucky to know the feeling of fingers tangled with ours, bones like roots anchoring us to everything. 250907 ... ovenbird I'm here again. With the other child this time. Trying to figure out why his body is covered in hives and it hurts to breathe. I'm sitting here terrified that we'll come out with something worse than we came in with so I've outfitted us both with surgically rated N95 masks. Thankfully the waiting room isn't busy. Just minor tragedies–an old man with blood on his shirt, a woman who reports that her vision suddenly blurred at work. No one is coughing and that makes me feel a tiny bit better. We visit triage then sit in the waiting room. It's not so different from other days I suppose. Every day I wait to see how my body will fail while I live as well as I can into the moments allotted. Right now I wait with my son, his body wrapped in a hospital gown, his fingers peeling the foil from a cup of apple juice while life leaves its painful welts, as it does, in its fury. 251105 what's it to you? who go blather from