Tell Sarah I Love Her

Tell Sarah I Love Her

27 years later and I still wince when I remember the pain. I was only 5, so the claim that it was the worst pain I had ever experienced up to that point in my life might not sound that bad, but I assure you that the number of times I’ve felt physical pain worse than that night can still be counted on one hand.

Have you ever had shards of glass spread through the entire length of your intestines? I have not, but I imagine it would feel comparable to this experience. This wasn’t like one of those horrible “tummy aches” that I would often get from drinking too much chocolate milk. I could and did handle those every single time that my parents took my sister and me to Eat N’ Park. I would usually go down somewhere around my 15th refill. To this day, I don’t know why my parents let this go on, time after time after every single time, but I imagine it was because my parents knew it would be much easier to deal with a moaning little body just lying there crumpled up in the booth next to them than it would be to chase and calm down an out-of-control child throwing a tantrum because his chocolate milk supply was cut-off.

I digress. The pain I woke up to that evening was frightening, to say the least, and the situation was just about to become horrifying. Not because the pain became worse, that was fairly stable. I knew the situation was going to intensify because I knew that I had to wake my parents up.

I have the most incredible parents in the universe and that’s barely hyperbole. My mother and father have always done everything in their power to support my sister and me. Unfortunately, my mother’s startle-response from being woken up in the middle of the night has never been in her locus of control. Anytime I had a nightmare, which was often, I would wake up having just had the bejesus scared out of me only to realize that I was going to have the bejesus scared out of me again. Calling my mother’s reaction to being awoken a “startle response” is a bit of a misnomer. When she was startled, she would shriek at the top of her lungs until she remembered that she had children and that one of them had come to wake her because he was scared by a nightmare, and then potentially traumatized by her reaction.

This evening wasn't my ordinary nightmares - it was a real one and the pain was just too much. I didn’t even think twice about having my eardrums ruptured, I needed to go to the hospital. Right away.

Somehow my mother’s shrieks were able to break glass but avoid waking my sister. This left my parents in a predicament. They both wanted to be with me at the ER, but they did not want to wake or frighten my 7-year-old sister, Sarah. So they didn’t, they nearly traumatized her.

I’m guessing it was my dad who had the brilliant idea to call his good pal Krys Kaniasty, to come and hold down the fort in case Sarah woke up in the middle of the night (she did). Now, Krys is an amazingly kind and gentleman, but those aren’t the type of characteristics young children would pick up on first. Krys is also about 6’3” and has a very heavy Polish accent. Very heavy. Krys is also a very handsome man, the type of beautiful man that nowadays reassures me about aging, but back then, he was just a big handsome guy that looked and sounded like Dracula.

As a child, and let’s be honest, as an adult - you’re rarely able to discern accents from that area of Europe..and I’m making it sound like I can find Poland on a world map - so it was natural for me to assume he was from Transylvania. I was also primed for these assumptions because the first time I ever met Krys and his daughter Natalia was Halloween ‘94. I was in kindergarten and Natalia was in 5th or 6th grade - she went to my school. Krys worked at the university in the Psychology department which is where he became friends with my father. The Kaniasty’s also lived in the same neighborhood. So it was natural for us to stop by during trick-or-treating.

I immediately wished we hadn’t. Like most children, I was afraid of witches, skeletons, and vampires. Krys and Natalia were dressed as vampires, and I thought that Krys was a real vampire. I was fucking terrified.

So terrified that the next week, when my dad spotted Krys walking to the university while he was driving me to school and offered him a ride (to my dismay, he accepted) I couldn’t turn around to look at him. All I knew was fucking Dracula was in the backseat and my father and I were in imminent danger.

So, yeah. That’s who my dad thought to call to leave my sleeping - 7-year-old sister with.

She did wake up. She’s much braver than me, but still. I can’t imagine what it was like for her to go searching for my parents only to find an empty room, then walk down the steps to the pitch-black living room and call out only to be met by Krys's less than comforting response. "Sarah, it is I, Krys. Your parents have left." … That was it. I think he elaborated after he realized how upset she was, but at that point, the damage was done.

I’m not sure how or if she got over that. I am actually only making this connection now, but as an adult, Sarah has a tremendous amount of anxiety about any of us traveling and getting home safely. I’m sorry, Sarah. My fault.

And it was my fault. Because the trip to the ER could have easily been avoided. We found this out post-abdomen x-ray when the cool ER doc taking care of me (really cool, he looked like Duncan McCloud from Highlander - a guilty pleasure of my mother’s that still embarrasses her) he had a ponytail and everything. Guaranteed that guy pulled mad women, or men, or whatever he wanted. He was kind of handsome like Krys, but anyway. The physician came in with the x-rays and put them up on the light boards.

“Hey Roddy, have you been holding in your gas sometimes? Or maybe a lot of times?”

I was. I didn’t want to pass gas in school. I admitted it.

“Do you see this cloudy stuff in your tummy?”

I did, I couldn’t miss it, it was like a fog rolled into my entire abdomen.

“That’s all your gas, buddy. Don’t feel embarrassed, my son does this too. But we’ve got to let that out of you and whatever else is stuck. You’re just really constipated so we’re going to bring in an enema, okay?”

My parents seemed relieved. In walked a pretty young nurse with a toilet on wheels and some tubes and funnels and some sort of liquid.

“Hi, Roddy!”

“Hi Enema,”

I murmured.

As the nurse, whose actual name I forget, began preparing the enema. I decided it was very important for me to whisper something to my parents.

I didn’t need to whisper, of course. But this was what I saw in all of the movies and TV shows, and I wanted to add to the dramatic effect.

“Mom….mom..mom!”

I ended up having to raise my voice a bit to get her attention initially.

“Yes, sweetie?” She replied.

“If anything happens to me -”

“Sweetie, you’re going to be just -” I cut her off with a louder whisper.

“*IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO ME….*tell Sarah I love her.”

That must have been a really sweet moment for her, I think she chuckled a bit. And then the nurse asked me to roll on my side and told me that I would feel a slight pressure going into my anus.

So they dumped in the enema and told me to tell them when I had to use the toilet.

That didn’t take long, if you’ve had an enema before you know the type of urgency I’m talking about. I told them. They helped me onto the toilet. And then they all stayed. They all stayed right in the fucking room as I blasted my little ass in the most embarrassing fashion. Every one of them. Including this very pretty nurse that I had a crush on.

I’m still a little pissed about that. I mean, if I was so embarrassed to pass gas that I became this constipated...what in the fuck made them think that I wouldn’t want a bit of privacy while my backside was making more noise than I had ever imagined it could.

Still. I was more relieved than mad.

We went home. Sarah was crying. Krys looked uncomfortable. And I was just relieved.

The next day I went to school with my cool hospital bracelet. I told a few of the boys what happened and played it off like it was funny. I let the young ladies wonder what type of horrible trauma I must have dealt with, but remained tough enough to still make it to school.

And I think that was the first time I said that I loved my sister, but I always have. I also love my parents and the Kaniasty’s...a lot. They have always come in the clutch, but those are stories for another time.