Sick Day

When a kid gets sick, it’s usually a huge bummer for just about everyone involved. They miss days of school, and parents need to devote time to them (and even miss work if it’s bad enough) and run the risk of contracting whatever their kid has. Sometimes children enjoy the fact that they’re not in school, but their abysmal state of mind and body is often enough to make them wish they could be doing anything but lying in bed.

For me, the typical experience of your kid coming down with an illness is something I never got to experience.

My son Elijah never got seriously sick as a baby, save a runny nose or upset stomach a time or two. This was likely because I took care of him exceedingly well, since doctor or hospital visits were the antithesis of convenience for us; we lived fairly isolated right outside of a huge forest with only a few sparse neighbors. It was easy for me to care for him almost constantly, though, since I worked from home as a writer. I guess I was pretty lucky he didn’t come down with anything that young. I’m not sure I could have, as a single mom, dealt with worrying if he’d be okay or survive through a cold or fever.

When he started going to school, though, it was practically inevitable that he’d come home one day with some bug or something that’d wreak havoc on his body the next day. I knew it wouldn’t be the end of the world if this happened, since he wasn’t such a feeble infant anymore and I could still easily spend time nursing him back to health. My dread was eased a little in acknowledging this.

Finally, Eli woke up one Thursday morning sounding congested as all hell and with a high fever, and just one look at him would scream “keep him home” to anyone. Needless to say, he was going to be missing school that day, which I begrudgingly notified his teacher of. I did the things any mom would do to make sure their kid made a speedy recovery: gave him some over-the-counter medicine, confined him to his bed to rest, and made sure he was drinking lots of water while he was awake. It’s fair to say stress was gripping me that day, since I hadn’t really had to deal with a full-fledged sick kid before, let alone my kid. I understood there wasn’t much I could do anyway, other than pray he healed quickly on his own, so I left him alone in his room most of the day, checking on him periodically. I was greeted by short, unconscious breath each time.

In the late afternoon, I took what was meant to be a quick break from work to check on Eli again; it had been about an hour and a half since I last did. Peering into his darkened room through a crack in the door, the limited light flowing in through the curtained window allowed to me to see that he wasn’t in bed. A quick scan of the rest of his room confirmed that he wasn’t anywhere to be found.

At first, I figured he had simply wandered out of his room to find me or go to the bathroom. Checking the bathroom revealed his absence from there too, and so, with a tinge of franticness, I began searching the other parts of the house. I eventually ended up looking behind and under furniture and in places I knew Eli would never otherwise go, all without success. After scrounging around the whole house maybe twice completely, I ran outside and wasted no time beginning to call Eli’s name and look for him.

At this point, I was thoroughly panicking. Why would he have gone outside? He’ll hurt himself out there! These thoughts and others raced through my flustered mind as I jogged around the outside of the house hoping to just find him sitting down playing with leaves or something. Coming up empty-handed again, I started running even faster and almost breaking into a sprint deeper into the woods behind our house.

I continued running for probably thirty seconds before my eyes swung over to a small, moving figure amongst the trees. It was Eli, walking toward me! I hurried over and kneeled down, making sure he was alright. To my relief, he didn’t have any cuts or wounds; he looked fine. This is the part that worried me, though. He looked fine. Better than ever, really. I felt his forehead to see if he still had a fever, and…

Cool as a cucumber.

I grabbed Eli’s hand and led him back to the house, and on the way, I asked him why he wandered off like he did. He said he just felt like it and wanted to play in the woods a little, which was normal enough behavior for him. His voice was no longer nasally either, which led me to believe his congestion was gone, too.

The whole situation was scaring me in a very, very weird way. Once we got back to the house, I took his temperature with the same thermometer I had taken it with that morning, and it read a perfect 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. I was stunned. How had his illness seemingly disappeared? What happened during the past hour and a half?

Worrying that there may have been something even more wrong with him, I drove him to the doctor’s soon after. Worst-case, the doctor would tell me that there was some bigger sickness at play, and that we’d need to take serious action or even surgery or something. Best-case, Eli really did just get better in less than a day. When we arrived, the doctor did the usual doctor stuff: checked his breathing, looked in his mouth and ears, listened to his heartbeat.

Final diagnosis? He was fine. The doctor couldn’t even tell he had been sick at all, even though just hours before, he was as miserable as could be. I kept telling the doctor there must be a mistake, to check again, but I got the feeling that he thought I was just trying to get a doctor’s note to keep him home from school. After paying for the visit, I left, none of my fears assuaged.

We drove back home and when we got there, Eli asked if he could keep playing outside. I agreed extremely reluctantly; I still had no idea what state he was really in, but I didn’t know what the right course of action was. I went back inside as Eli ran off. I didn’t think I could keep working like I was earlier, so I just sat on the couch in awe at the entire situation that unfolded.

Eventually, I got up and went back to my office to continue working. Eli came back inside after a while and sauntered into his room, I assume to play with his toys until dinner. Right, I needed to make something for dinner. Right as I was about to get up and see what was in the kitchen to prepare, there was a knock on the door.

I walked to the door, wondering why someone was here, since I wasn’t expecting any visits or deliveries. Opening the door, to my shock, there stood a police officer with a pained look on his face. Immediately fearing that Eli had done something bad earlier that I wasn’t aware of, I greeted him and asked him why he was here; he didn’t answer at first.

Then he slowly told me something I still can’t believe I heard.

He told me a neighbor was out walking in the woods and found the dead body of my son.