At 16 years old, moments are harder to come by these days that remind me he was once my little boy.
“Did I do okay, Dad?”
This was the first thing I heard him say upon coming to from sedation following a six-hour surgery. He was still on oxygen and talking through a mask. He was exceptionally dopey but had the kindest, most tired little-boy eyes. Droplets of moisture formed inside the mask when he spoke.
“Did I do okay, Dad?”
“You did so great, buddy. So great. We love you very much.”
He had just awakened from surgery to correct kyphosis (think scoliosis, but front to back rather than the side-to-side S-shape).
On Halloween, just a few days before surgery, he joked, “I should have dressed as the Hunchback of Notre Dame. It would have been the last year I could have pulled it off!”
Over the years, the curvature had become more noticeable, and though we’d remind him to straighten up, he couldn’t. The doctor said it wasn’t from using his phone too much, bad posture, or genetics. “These things happen,” he said.
Looking back now, it was noticeable. For years, he would have me delete pictures when it was obvious. I didn’t realize how much it embarrassed him until it was corrected. It had become normal, I guess.
Back to the hospital. He came to and looked around. The nurse showed him where the pain relief button was.
His second sentence with his newly straightened back was, “Mom… button…”
For the next week, that button came in handy when the drip of meds wasn’t enough. Luckily, it had a ten-minute timeout feature. Sometimes he’d press it more than once, and I would laugh, saying he looked like a Jeopardy! contestant manically pressing the buzzer and locking himself out.
He didn’t laugh. I did. I did a lot that week in the hospital. A teenager on ketamine can be very entertaining to a sleep-deprived father. He was dry in his delivery and very funny. He became ornery and opinionated. Sometimes demanding.
Up until surgery, he and I would play Pokémon GO on our phones. (He stopped abruptly after surgery, claiming he realized he was addicted, but I know he quit because I leveled up ahead of him while he was unable to play.) One night in the ICU, seemingly moments after I fell asleep in the not-meant-for-sleeping recliner, he woke me with quiet urgency.
“Dad! Dad. I need you to get up. It’s an emergency. Seriously, Dad. Emergency!”
“What is it, man?”
“Dad, I need you to log in to my Pokémon! There is a trade I need you to make. Emergency. Dad. Emergency!”
I let it go.
As I did the night he woke me with the same abruptness, demanding I log on to chatgpt to ask why something on him hurt.
I told him I’d ask the overnight nurse. He dryly demanded that they didn’t know anything and that I needed to ask AI. He trusted it more.
Seeing that he was awake, one of the overnight nurses came in for what had become a constant stream of bloodletting procedures. Though he tried several veins, the nurse couldn’t get blood from him.
Very seriously, from his bed, he said to me after the nurse left empty-handed, “I don’t think that guy likes me.”
I told him he had mentioned to me that he doesn’t like overnight shifts.
Staring at the ceiling, he said, “No. He genuinely doesn’t like me.”
One of my roles during the week was holder of the urine jug. While, in the beginning of the adventure, he was a little timid about using the restroom in the presence of others, that quickly dissipated. Only a few days in, while I was assisting in the process, a doctor came in with a dozen students to find us in the middle of this procedure.
The doctor said, “Oh. We can come back.”
My little boy, proudly seated above me, said, “No, now is fine.”
After I suggested that maybe I should have a say in this, he said, “Oh. You’ll be fine. You’re not the one urinating.”
I let it go
On our last night in the hospital, they finally transferred us to a private room. He suggested on the way that it better be awesome.
“They’re making it sound like a goddamned wonderland on that floor compared to the ICU.”
And with that, my young man, who started this experience as my little boy, was ending the week as a drug-addled angry old man.