Fast Car

July 1988 - I had fallen into a routine of sorts.

I was staying with my gracious in-laws who lived in Ogden, Utah - where Jessie had been born prematurely on that awful day - July 5th, 1988. I don't remember how many days later - so many doctors, so much bad news, so many horrific new discoveries - that she was life flighted to Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah - a bit of a drive south.

She had gone into renal failure and they wanted to do emergency surgery and close the PDA (a valve in the heart - lung system that should close right at birth, but sometimes did not - as in the case of Jessie) and while in there mucking about with her heart - repair the moderate sized VSD (Ventricular Septal Defect) she had. The PDA was probably the most casual of her problems, but it needed to be closed and so they were taking her by helicopter to the best surgeons to operate on a teeeny tiny heart. While getting her ready for transport, the paramedic in an off hand remark mentioned that sometimes they close when they get the kiddos at a higher altitude. The handsome young man smiled at me and said "We can always hope".

I was waaaay beyond hope by that day - day seven or eight or nine - I had lost count. Too many birth defects, too much guilt - too much "What did I do to her?" rolling around and around and around in my brain like a never ending roulette wheel.

Well, her PDA did close in flight and thus no emergency surgery. Her open-heart surgery that was guaranteed to happen would happen another day, at another hospital in another state. Good news - probably the first we had experienced since my water had broken at my parents cabin on the Fourth of July.

So as I said I fell into a routine of sorts.

Every sleepless night I would sneak into my in-laws WONDERFUL phone booth downstairs next to the room I was trying to sleep in. It was an actual enclosed booth in their family room - so I could call the hospital and check on my baby - unheard by all those trying to sleep. They had told me that I could call as often as I needed - so I did - when ever I was freaked out or worried I would call, check on her O2 stats, her billirubin levels, so many pieces of information and they would patiently give it to me.

I don't remember what time I told myself that I could get in my car and go spend the day with my daughter - 5:00am? 6:00am? 7:00am? It eludes me now - but I would get up - having stared at the ceiling most of the night (when not hunkered down, sitting in that small phone booth talking, telephone clutched tight in my hand and held tight to my head, as I spoke to one nurse or another), shower, get dressed and try to steel myself for what was to come.

The sitting with my baby in the hospital?


No.

That part was easy - if you (unsuccessfully) ignored all the other sorry, horrific stories of beautiful, flawed babies that were her neighbors.

I am digressing for a moment - but just to show you how you should NOT get involved with the beautiful neighbors in a Neonatal ICU. There was a boy - a BEAUTIFUL, beyond beautiful boy next to Jessie. He was older than the newborns and the nurses seemed to know him and his mom was a nurse. Overhearing conversations I learned that he could somehow not digest food so was not going to survive if they could not figure out a fix. They had tried many things and nothing was working.

One day, they packed him up to take him home. The nurses all came in to give him a hearty goodbye and tearfully hugged the mother goodbye. They had given his smiling beautiful mother a heart rate monitor that I was used to seeing and I wondered why?

After he was gone, I ventured a question because he was so beautiful and I had fallen in love with him. I had spoke with him often - loving to hear his beautiful giggle. This must be good news! He was going home, I said. Why the heart monitor?

The nurse that I asked smiled at me with eyes that looked so sad and so wise and so, so, so very old and said - "Sweetie, they are taking him home because we cannot do anything more for him. They are taking him home to die. The heart monitor is so that if he should start to pass away and they are not right with him, they will be alerted and get to his bedside to hold him while he passes away."

I SO could have done without knowing that. Thus my advise - NEVER ASK. His obituary was posted on a bulletin board some time later ...

But - as horrific as all that went on in that Neonatal unit at Primary Children's Hospital, the drive there was .... tortuous.

Why?


Because I could not turn off the DAMN radio!


If you can recall the summer of '88 - there were two songs that were HUGE, beyond huge hits. And it was a GUARANTEE that I would hear each as I drove from Ogden, Utah to Salt Lake City, Utah to sit with my baby all day.

The first: Bobby McFerrins: "Don't Worry Be Happy" - every time it came on I felt as if he were mocking me. It just was not the song I wanted to hear. And - go figure - it didn't help. I tried some days to take it to heart - but it just didn't work - thus the mocking tone after a few of these drives.

The second one scared me more than anything had scared me up until this point in my life - and that TOTALLY INCLUDED all the news we were getting about our firstborn.

The song: Tracy Chapman's: "Fast Car" Every time it came on, I started to sob, and to shake and to tremble and to try my HARDEST to turn off the sound. I only succeeded in turning the radio off one time - not a personal best by any means. Why was this so disturbing?

Here I was - in my car, driving fast to a place filled with unanswered questions. What was my future going to be like? Was Jessie going to be a vegetable? Perfectly normal after all her birth defects were repaired? Was she, as they suspected mentally retarded? I could not deal with this, I was not prepared for this, I was more terrified than I have ever been in my entire life and as the song ended with her beautiful, melodious, seductive voice singing:

You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so you can fly away
You gotta make a decision
You leave tonight or live and die this way

EVERY TIME, every stinking time, my hands gripped the steering wheel, my arms locked in place and I dreamed - sometimes for a minute or two, sometimes for just seconds of how ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL it would be to just keep driving south on I15.

Just keep driving. Leave all this scary stuff behind. Or stay - and live and die this way. Those were my choices.

Well, I am pleased to say that I NEVER did just keep driving - even to turn around and come back - I always took the appropriate exit to reach Primary Children's Hospital. Depending on when the song came on, sometimes I had to sit in my car for a while to wait for the sobbing to stop - but a woman sobbing in the visitors parking lot at Primary Children's Hospital was not an unusual site, so not to worry.

I am still here - twenty three years later.


So - why am I writing about my "Horrible Summer of '88"?


Two words: Colbie Caillait

DAMN HER!

I listen to Satellite Radio when on the computer which with me is most of the day and they have guests come in and are interviewed and they are expected to end the interview with a song - an original, fun song. She decided in all her wisdom to do a mashup of The Script's "Breakeven" and Tracy Chapmans: "Fast Car" - thus I am haunted again - although, not so much when I hear them play this mashup.

But lately, the real song comes to my mind and torments and tantalizes me. Today I decided I needed to do some 'Overload' therapy and I bought Tracy Chapmans "Fast Car" from iTunes and listened to it over and over and over. I thought that if I listened it a hundred times - got it out of my system - that that feeling of fleeing to my car and just driving away would go away. It's not working.

Life is different here in February of 2012 than things were in that July/August of '88, but things are not good with me and seem to be slip sliding downhill and that feeling of fleeing is back. The difference?

I cannot, no matter how fast the car is ....




.... escape myself.





Damn.