Besides more waiting and taking on blood-bulking fluids and super antibiotics through her clear vein tube, Drie did naught but feed the tiny girl and rest all day Friday.
Her doctors came through from time to time to discuss her situation and make decisions with her, letting her know that she’d not be going home unless she didn’t mind letting the awful infection she was getting over have a good chance of coming back. Her anxiousness to leave the hospital was quickly changed to a resolute desire to do anything in her power to get as healthy as possible before she left.
We got her showered and set for the day and I went home to fix all that had gone awry since we left in a whirl early Wednesday morning. I worked on the soot-plugged wood stove and the gas heater that Asher had placed a piece of wood and a golf ball into the day we left. It burst into flame at around three o’clock in the morning when the wood stove had cooled, sending my mother-in-law into a flurry of panic and child evacuation before it burned down of its own accord. Two-year-olds are sowers of nervous breakdowns.
I went into work to check conditions generally and to let my coworkers know that all was on the mend. They were all very supportive and generally glad that the week was over, they had endured the week not only without me around, but mostly without our principal, whose wife endured hip replacement surgery over last weekend. There might have been more like joys, but I wasn’t around to know of them. I was having my own fun.
After that excursion, I got a few things at the store for the family and some for the Drie after which I picked up the family for a visit to their mom. Asher began running around saying ‘momma’ and ‘baby,’ while everyone else searched high and low for the sneakers he always puts in separate hiding places at inopportune times.
Eventually that got sorted out and we got over to see Drie, all else but Hyrum with semi-presentable clothes, he with the dross and detritus of three days of four-year- old adventure all over his shirt and faded, holey jeans. Every thing went well in spite of cards stacked against us. The kids and the mom were happy, though disappointed that the time of casseroles and an absent, beloved mother hadn’t come to the quick close that they had been hoping for.
I took them home and took care of a few other to-do's so that I could come back here to the hospital room and sleep on a silly little cot next to my beloved and her newest offspring. All of this is yet worth it, because after everything Drie has had to go through, Anwyn is still here and happy to be learning to smile and coo and yawn for food. And Drie is feeling much better, on top of it.