The hospital and beyond

Dad met us at the hospital. His face was damp and he seemed a bit out of breath as he teased me,
"Hi honey. Were you just upset I didn't say goodbye this morning? There are easier ways of getting my attention you know." He patted me on the head. I hated when he did that.

My first ride in a wheelchair was down the hallway, with Jim pushing me and my grandmother walking beside me.
"Everything's going to be fine, sweetie. They're just going to do some tests to see what happened."

It had been explained to me a bit, in the car ride over. I had fainted, but worse than that. I had been unconscious, but they didn't know why. We didn't know why my legs were so wobbly. All I cared about was if the tests were going to hurt.
"I don't think so. Don't worry."

Turned out that Dr. Caliene, our family doctor was working in the emergency room that day, and my mom rushed to him when he appeared. I caught something about "lips were blue" but couldn't get the rest.

I was then wheeled into a room and didn't see my parents for two more hours. I don't remember much about the tests. I was alone for a long time, in a white room with a metal and plastic divider that kept me from seeing the machines I heard. I still had on my own nightie, but not the bathrobe anymore. I had a thin white blanket with small blue diamonds on it, but I was still cold. I did hear my dad's raised voice outside the room at one point, but I couldn't tell what he was saying. They gave me some medicine to make me sleep, and when I woke up, I was with my parents again. My dad carried me to the car, and let me lie down in the back seat.

Later, my mom filled in the blanks.

My sister and I had been up early playing with Lego's that morning. Amy and I were both making a house, but that's the last thing I remember. Amy said that I turned my head sharply to "look at the clock" and then fell over on the floor and started "kicking."

"Mo-om! Becky's breaking my Lego house!"
From her bedroom, "You girls are both supposed to be in bed. Don't make me come in there!"
"Mom! Now she's spitting!"
"Rebekah Blank Blank! You stop that right..." and she cut short. She was so angry that we weren't listening to her that she had come in our room to scold us. I wasn't spitting, I was drooling. And the kicking was a seizure. My lips were blue and my face was white. She told Amy to go into the dining room and she tried to wake me up.

I wouldn't wake up, and she called the emergency number (this was before 911). She told the person that her daughter wasn't responding. The emergency crew was on their way, and the person at the other end of the phone tried to calm mom down, and help her until they arrived.

Now. Next door were our neighbors, the Goodes. Aunt Kathy, as we called her, was the mom, and Uncle Bob was the dad. They had four kids whose names all had the same ending: Debbie, Jessie, Timmy, and Jody. Uncle Bob was a sheriff, and they had a police scanner at their house. Aunt Kathy had heard the call go out for our address. And, in Emergencyspeak, "not responding" means something other than "not waking up." So, she took it upon herself to call my father at work and tell him that one of his daughters had stopped breathing. Sweet neighbor, right? Of course, my dad couldn't get through to my mom when he called, because she was still on the phone with the dispatcher.

He was a bit frantic. He was the one who called my grammy, who lived about a mile away, and she got herself over to the house about the same time as the paramedics.