Killing the Elephant



I want to tell you about the worst night of my life.  I want to tell you that I never got past it. That the pain still lingers.  That I’ve had therapy.  That I’m despondent and have abandonment issues.  I want to focus on me and the torture I endured and if you feel pity, I’ll rub my story against you like a cat and weave endless tales of woe.

 Incessant.  The rain fell strait and sharp and incessantly.  It meant nothing that practice the previous day took us across the field now glistening and swelling.  Streams wiggled and jutted across running field paint and through pockmarks left by football cleats.  It meant nothing that my tan and black suit was new and lovely, that my shoes now soggy were to be worn the following night as well, that my hair and makeup had taken hours to perfect.  I stood, wilted, and alone.

Twelve years ago, it was the worst night of my life.  Twelve years ago boys still made choices that left scars, and I made choices that left my parents less than proud. Before I became a parent, before I became a wife, before I graduated college, I was a teenager.  I was a sixteen year old girl who was experiencing the worst night of her young, naïve, and narcissistic life. 

Foresight would have granted me many things.  I would have known that that night was not the last.  I would have known that my hair would dry around a dazzling rhinestone tiara.  I would have known that twelve years later those rhinestones would begin to lose hold and fall one by one into a cardboard box somewhere in the back of a closet.  And, I would have known that like their luster, the pain would also fade.

     
My son is screaming and my heart exploding.  He’s two and it is Saturday night.  Saturday night.  He’s red and trembling, contracting beneath the bed sheets.  I pull him close, tight, safe.  He’s shivering, and his body feels electric.  He’s wet and I’m wet and I can’t distinguish tears from sweat.  My husband comes with a cool cloth and presses it to Aidan’s brow, but he pushes further into my abdomen, hiding himself against me.  We calm him, and my husband retreats to the couch but only minutes pass and it begins again.  He’s two so the words aren’t there; he can’t and doesn’t say what is wrong.  He can say “Mama” and he does.  He cries, “Mama,” and all I can do is hold him and weep.  I’m covered in snot and tears and sweat his and mine and I don’t care because my son is in pain and I can do nothing.  He’s inconsolable and I’m helpless and it’s Saturday night.

I was inconsolable.  I was one of three girls chosen by the student body—the entire student body—and I drooped like the umbrella above my head.  Rain split the field lights like supernovas but the beauty was lost in apathy.  My mom arrived smiling, beaming beneath the hood of her Eddie Bauer parka.  I ran to her with complaints, sorrow flowed forth like the rain, but stagnant.  She was alone, and I knew she would have to search the stands, the freezing, dripping metal bleachers.  My dad would not come.  He would buy me flowers in his stead.  Pink carnations and the card would read, “I’m sorry I missed your big night. Love, Daddy.” 

 The trip down 95 takes an extra hour because of the early holiday traffic.  Rain falls steadily and fog hovers just above the roadway.  The DVD player attached to the back of my seat falls silent only a half hour before we pull in the driveway.  9263.  This is it.  The reverse of my parents’ phone number—easy enough to recall. Osprey Ridge Drive, Emerald Isle, NC.  Surprised that Aidan stays awake until just before we cross the island bridge, we joke that we might actually be allowed to sleep in Thanksgiving morning.  I struggle to carry him upstairs.  He’s a solid fifty pounds and I’m pregnant.  He’s three—almost four and still cute when he’s sleeping.  He snuggles tightly into the king sized bed we share—mother, father, son.  My husband and his brother unload the cars.  My sister-in-law and I, both pregnant, prop up swollen ankles and sip melted Frosties from the Wendy’s an hour inland.

 “Hey Carrie, when you finish that, why don’t you see if there’s any more coffee ice cream left!”  My husband calls from the stairs.

 “SO you really paid him the money?” asks Susan, my sister-in-law.

“I had to!” I reply.  “A bet’s a bet, and he’d never let me forget it.”

“Yeah, and you learned your lesson about making claims you can’t stomach,” Jason says rounding the corner with his brother—all grins. They’re referring to a bet I made the year ago. Note to self: when you think you like something so much that you could eat a gallon of it, keep your mouth SHUT.
“I could have finished it; I just got scared.” I’m indignant, because $100 is a sacrifice the month before Christmas, and I’m convinced he should have taken my personal safety into consideration.

“Yeah Susan, you should have never mentioned what all that ice cream could do to her blood sugar. She might have actually eaten until she puked!”

“I wouldn’t have puked.  I don’t puke anyway, I might throw up, but I don’t puke.  But I wasn’t going to die over a gallon of ice cream.”

“Nope, you’re right, you wouldn’t have died—but you paid anyway didn’t you?” he says, yanking a strand of my hair.

 It’s late and I’m cranky from the eight hour drive.  The teasing is obnoxious, especially after the wisecracks each time I asked how long to the next Rest Area.  The boys, anxious to engage in the mindless tedium of viewing endless Thanksgiving Day football, leave for the 24 hour Food Lion for everything good to eat that couldn’t be transported in a can, jar, bag, or aluminum foil.  Thanksgiving at the beach, a family tradition. 

Aidan stirs and I roll away from him.  The bed is enormous but I miss my husband’s presence.  There’s sound and it’s not Aidan snoring.

“CARRIE.”  I bolt.  The moonlight reflects his absence.

“OH MY GOD!  CARRIE HELP ME!”  It’s at least two in the morning and I’ve had only enough sleep to leave me groggy.

“What?”  “Where are you?”  No answer.  I can hear movement upstairs, the house sits on pilings and I feel the entire structure sway.

“OH MY GOD, I’M DYING!”  It’s Jason and he’s upstairs.

I don’t know how I make it upstairs without killing myself.  They’re steep, I’m not awake, and my balance is off.  He’s propped sideways on the couch, and I see his head and knees. 

“I’m dying Carrie.  Please help me!”  He’s always taken care of me, and I don’t know how to react.  I panic and scream for my sister.  She was a nursing student, an EMT, she remains composed.

“What’s wrong?  Is it your heart?”  I assume it is his heart because I’m convinced the fast food will give him a heart attack.  Now is not the time to remind him of this, but I think it, and then feel guilty for thinking it.  Amy takes over, checking his vitals and pushing me to the phone.  I dial.

“9263 Osprey Ridge…pain in his abdomen…He thinks he’s dying…I don’t know how you’re going to get him down the stairs….”

His brother wakes and comes up only long enough to become woozy himself, stumble back downstairs, and faint in his bedroom. I’m pregnant, my twoyearold is sound asleep (thank you Jesus!), and my husband is dying before my eyes. He’s threehundredpounds and we’re on the third floor of my dad’s rental house in North Carolina, and, tomorrow is THANKSGIVING. I fall into gear. I cannot do this alone, and I refuse to let him DIE.

The ambulance driver is a Vietnam veteran, and as he drives my mind shifts between Jason’s moans from behind me, my disbelief, and an overwhelming feeling of gratitude and inferiority. Anytime I am incapable of fixing a situation immediately, I crumple in regret and apprehension. Helpless. The driver tells stories about wrecks and calls, and while I’m not sure I want to listen, I feel safe with him. I can do nothing. He tells me that he parachuted during the war and later when we arrive at the hospital I notice his limp. He’s a Vietnam veteran, and I’m a scared, pregnant, schoolteacher who can’t do anything. I hate having to surrender. I hate having to accept my inferiority, my incapability, my inadequacy. And yet, isn’t that what angels are for?

When I turn to enter the hospital the driver reassures me, “It sounds like kidney stones. They’re brutal.” He wishes me luck and I thank him. I thank him, but my soul is bleeding the way it does when I feel fragile, and I hope that he knows I’m thanking him for more than just the drive. “Thank you.”

 Susan arrives and wants to stay with me. I feel guilty, and she insists because she’s lovely like that. She doesn’t mind even though she’s pregnant too, and her pregnancy hasn’t been as easy as mine. She offers me things: water, crackers, a pillow, but I can’t focus enough to want or need anything….except my husband.

We met when I was fifteen. He was twenty. I’ll save you any silly analogy, metaphor, or anecdote. ‘Meant to be’ is cliché and doesn’t suggest the presence of effort. If it weren’t for effort, if it weren’t for stubbornness and damnittohelledness, ‘we’ would not exist. I think about this, sitting in a hard chair with wires and beeps and antiseptic smells.

I think about that night when the rain poured and he wasn’t there to escort me across the field like we’d practiced the night before. Two quarters of a high school football game can pass in a blink, or in a lifetime. I left the pep rally for home to shower and dress. No call. No answer. I sat with hot rollers and eyelash curlers. No call. No answer. That pattern was something I was used to, but not from him. He was different, and I thought that he loved me and I thought that this night was special, not just for me. No answer. No call. I drove to the field alone. My feet slid inside my shoes, gravel punched through the thin soles like bottle glass. At least I didn’t have to pay to get in. My cheerleader friends swarmed me. Some were angry that I had chosen not to cheer the first half with them. But tonight was special, wasn’t it?

“We told them they’d better vote for you.”

 “And then we snuck a look just to make sure….”

I cared, and I didn’t, because what good is winning anything if there’s no one to share it with?

We lined up inside the gate. Princesses and escorts. Queen nominees and escorts. And me. With two minutes to go I grabbed a friend and begged him to walk with me. He agreed, probably out of pity. Of course the announcer had no idea. “Miss Carrie Cotter escorted by Jason Campbell. Carrie is the daughter….” I understood that my dad would not come. There was no expectation there. He could not be there, period. But Jason. Jason never disappointed me. He said he loved me. How could he? Why would he?

 Minutes after I was crowned, after my mom hugged me and kissed my cheek, a friend approached, smiling. Good news. Finally, he was here. Whatever his excuse, at least he was here. But no, that wasn’t it. “Is it true? Did you really pay people to vote for you? I don’t know, I mean that’s just what I heard.” He laughed. He laughed in my face, and I stood alone, and alone. The rain never stopped.

Jason listened to my coronation on the radio. A car accident blocked traffic on 66 for hours. The rain. He simply could not get to me in time. I had to forgive him. He cried, and I knew. He hadn’t meant to disappoint me after all….

I also thought about the night Aidan’s eardrum burst. The shaking and screams. The doctor who insisted that it was just a virus. The blood on his pillow the next morning. He made the call. He drove us to the ER. I held my baby and I prayed. Pray. That’s all I could do and everything I could do. Pray. Then, and now, I surrendered.

Kidney stones. Enough morphine to “kill an elephant” according to the ER doctor, but my husband, my Jason, was gonna be okay. Surviving the worst night of my life, I grew a little taller, metaphorically, anyway. I surrendered, and I trusted others when I could do nothing myself. When we returned to 9263 Osprey Ridge on Thanksgiving evening, Aidan was clean and fed. His aunts Amy and Susan met his every need and even managed to keep him entertained. Chad, Jason’s brother recovered from his swoon, and helped the girls prepare Thanksgiving dinner, and that night we did what we went there to do, we ate and celebrated the blessings in our lives, and the boys watched football. We were together again and safely so.  And that, that became one of the best nights of my life.

Copyright © 2011. Carrie Ellen Campbell. All Rights Reserved. http://carriellencampbell.blogspot.com. Please respect Carrie's intellectual property. Sharing blog posts is permitted, but no part of this material may be copied, downloaded, reproduced, or printed without express written consent. Contact Carrie at: carrieellencampbell@icloud.com.