The Age of Grief - Jane Smiley [76]
Just then, Stephanie threw out her arm, smacking Lizzie in the face. Lizzie jumped back in surprise, already crying, and I was upon them with reassurances. “She didn’t mean it, honey. Stephie? Stephie? Are you there, sweetie? Do you want to take a little bath?” She was tossing herself around the bed. She said, “Megan, don’t. Don’t!” I picked her up to carry her into the bathroom and she nearly jerked out of my arms. She was soaked with sweat and slippery. After the bath, she was still above 104. It was like a floor she could not break through.
I kept a record:
6 p.m.: 104.1
6:40 p.m.: 104.2
8 p.m. (more Tylenol): 104
9 p.m.: 104.2
10:35 : 104.2
Midnight: 104.4
12:30 : 104.4
3 a.m.: 104.6 (another bath)
4 a.m.: 104.4
6 a.m.: 104.2
I longed for some magic number, either 103.8 or 105, for either reassurance or the right to take her to the hospital. She writhed and spoke and sweated and grew smaller in my eyes, as if the flesh were melting off her. I kept reminding myself that the fever is not the illness but the body fighting off the illness. It is hard to watch, hands twitch for something to do. And I was beat, after those nights with Leah, but even if I dozed, I would wake after an hour, and my first feeling was raging curiosity: what would it read this time?
8 a.m.: 104.2
Lizzie walked to school alone and I took Leah to her day care. I ran home, my fingers itching for the thermometer. I was ready to believe any magic, but none had taken effect. I gave her more Tylenol, another bath, took a shower, stepped on the scale. I had lost twelve pounds since Dana’s opera. The High Stress Family Diet.
9:30 a.m.: 104.4. Dan, the pediatrician, told me to keep taking her temperature.
11 a.m.: 104.4
1 p.m.: 104.4
3 p.m.: 104.4
6 p.m.: 104.4
After I read it, I shook the thermometer, just to see if the mercury was able to register any other number. I called the pediatrician again. He said that it would go down very soon. I said, “It’s not impossible that it could just stay at this level, is it?”
He said, “Anything is possible.” I was glad to hear him admit it.
8 p.m.: 104.6
10 p.m.: 104.6
I should say that I talked to her the whole day. “Stephanie,” I said, “this stinks, doesn’t it? We’ve been at this for days, it seems to me. Pure torture, an endless task. Sisyphean, you might say. I remember the myth of Sisyphus quite well, actually. We read it in seventh grade. You will probably read it in seventh grade, too. I also remember the myth of Tantalus. He kept trying to bite an apple that would move out of the way when he leaned his head toward it. Sisyphus had to roll a stone up the mountain, and then watch it roll back down again. I think I remember it because that’s what seventh grade seemed like to me. Anyway, sooner or later you will know all this stuff. And more. The thing is, after you know it, it will float in and out of your consciousness in a random way, so that if you ever just want to sit and talk to your own daughter like this, not having a conversation but just talking to keep her ears greased, as it were, then all of this stuff will come in handy. But I am here to tell you, Stephie dear, that every word, whatever its meaning, gets us closer to tomorrow or the next day, when you will sit up and look around, and I will breathe a long sigh of relief.” The paternal patter. During the night, it eased toward 105, and I took it every forty-five minutes. At two, Dana got up to spell me, but when I got up at two thirty, I found her passed out in the hallway and carried her back to bed.
She is light. She is only 5’ 4”, though she seems taller to the patients because she always wears those three-inch Italian heels in the office. People marvel at this, but in fact she doesn’t stand on her feet all day, she sits on a stool. The