LITMIR.BIZ

       Light in the Shadow

      THE DOCTOR CAME INTO THE ROOM, FLIPPED THE SWITCH on the light board, and slid the film under the clip. I shifted Hannah’s sleeping body to my other hip and leaned in next to Claude to get a closer look. The doctor used his pen to point to a large, dark shadow beneath the white outline of Hannah’s ribs.

      “There it is.”

      The pieces were beginning to fall into place. Three weeks earlier, during our vacation in Michigan, we had taken Hannah to an emergency room. She had been complaining that it hurt to lie down; she moaned in her sleep and ran a slight fever at night. The doctor told us she had the flu and sent us away with a sample-size packet of Children’s Tylenol. Two days later, when she didn’t seem to be getting any better, we took her to another hospital. The pediatrician there ordered X-rays of Hannah’s chest to rule out pneumonia, and then tried to examine Hannah’s abdomen. Hannah screamed and refused to lie down, saying it hurt too much. The doctor gave up, obviously exasperated.

      “There’s nothing wrong with her; she’s just manipulating you,” the woman told us. “She’s a typical two-year-old who doesn’t want to go to sleep.”

      “How can we be sure it’s not something more serious?” I asked, somewhat distracted. Will and Hannah, bored with waiting, had stepped outside the examining room and were now shrieking and chasing each other in the hall.

      The doctor sniffed disapprovingly at the commotion.

      “Well, look at her,” the doctor said. “She has too much energy to be really sick. A sick child would be listless and lethargic, would run a fever all day, not just at night. She wouldn’t put up such a fuss during an examination. If you want, make an appointment with her pediatrician when you get home; but as far as I can see, she’s fine.”

      I felt confused and embarrassed by the doctor’s words. Every bone in my body was telling me something was wrong, and yet, perhaps the doctor was right; maybe I was just the inadequate mother of an overindulged child. While Claude rounded up Will and Hannah, I quickly collected our things. Escorting our two unruly children past the other, obviously sick children in the waiting room, I felt guilty for having wasted a doctor’s valuable time.

      Now, looking at the dark shadow on the X-ray of Hannah’s ribs, I felt like a profound failure again. The doctor in Michigan had only been half right; instead of being the inadequate mother of an overindulged child, I was the inadequate mother of a very sick one. Why hadn’t I trusted myself more? The doctors knew symptoms of illness as they applied generally to children. I knew Hannah. We were authorities on different subjects. I should have insisted that the doctor’s explanation of Hannah’s behavior didn’t match what I knew to be true for her. Hannah had no interest in playing games to get what she wanted; she asked for it directly, demanding it if necessary. And why was she moaning in her sleep and running fevers at night? Even if these were unusual symptoms, surely they were signs of something more than manipulative behavior! Was I so afraid of making a mistake, so afraid of what these strangers might think of me, that I had failed my daughter?

      As the doctor peeled the film from the light board, I knew one thing: I was going to have to start speaking up, before it was too late for Hannah. Before it was too late for me.