Me and my wife were just too damned tired. So sue us, we just finished moving into a new home a month ago, we were completely burned out from running around trying to keep our son from asphyxiating and dying, and we needed a goddamn break, and now I’m back here, frantically typing out a post that’ll probably cost precious seconds I could have used to
I’m sorry, I need to start over. Helen- that’s my wife- always tells me that I’m too quick to open conversations with anger/other heavy emotional loads. It’s not exactly something I like to brag about. She and I recently finished moving into a new house in the suburbs. It’s roomier than our last one, it’s near a good elementary school, and it’s close to the children’s hospital. Sorry for the unnecessarily morbid turn that took; Our 5-year-old son, Dylan, has cystic fibrosis. For the uninitiated, the glands in his body that produce sweat, mucus, and other bodily fluids don’t work right, and if he isn’t frequently given a nebulizer and airway clearance treatment, gunk starts to clog his airways.
In spite of his disability, Dylan is just as energetic if not more than the average kid his age, and with more room to run around in the new house, he’s taken to coming up with all sorts of imaginary friends. The latest and longest-lasting one is Rote Raveeja, a combination of two of his favorite TV characters- Rosie Revere from [Ada Twist, Scientist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Twist,Scientist(TV_series), and Night Ninja from PJ Masks. Rolled together, you get a ninja/inventor girl whose sole purpose seems to be giving Dylan an excuse to jump off the couch or run careening through the halls instead of sitting down for the nebulizer. Not that I blame him, but it’s frustrating to have your kid shouting “but Rote Raveeja wanted to plaaaaaaayyyyy!” when you’re trying to keep him from suffocating.
All this to say that neither me nor Helen were ever expecting a break anytime soon, at least until our neighbors the Rosewaters recommended us a high school senior named Shania to babysit. Shania had apparently worked with special needs/disabled children multiple times in the past, and Mr. Rosewater endlessly gushed to us about how well she had handled their hyperactive 7-year-old Emily, not only getting the little whirling Dervish to go to bed on time but apparently being so effective that Emily begged them to invite Shania back as soon as possible.
You’ve read the paragraph that I crossed out. You can probably surmise that we hired Shania, albeit after a vetting process that involved contacting several of her past clients. All of them freely vouched- this girl was apparently the real deal. The evening we left her with Dylan, he was upstairs brushing his teeth, having been informed about the babysitter beforehand. He knew how to help her administer his own treatments, and Shania had been given a sizable list of emergency contacts, required medications, and tricks that had at least a 40% success rate of getting him to calm down. She had taken everything since we contacted her in stride, and tonight was no different. If anything, she seemed almost excited for the challenge.
Within minutes of leaving the house for dinner, we got a text message from Shania saying that Dylan had come downstairs, and they were going to start off the night by watching a movie. Several times throughout the night, we received amusing follow-ups about how Dylan was holding up (it seemed that Shania had just a high enough energy level to match him, albeit with a little running to keep up occasionally).
No matter how reassuring these messages were, the whole time throughout the dinner, the back of my mind was on the edge of its’ seat. Call me paranoid, but when your child can clog up his lungs by doing the activities he loves best, you learn to err on the side of worry. At last, as I was finishing up my steak, the worst happened.
NO no why is this happening you left your kid alone for one evening and now there could be a
My hands were shaking the whole car ride home, to the point where Helen had to take over driving. I was furious with myself for leaving Dylan without us, furious at my beautiful idiot son for not letting the nicest babysitter he’s ever had try to keep him from not suffocating, furious in general that I didn’t have a kid who could be left alone without this much anxiety. Deep down, I knew that this anger wasn’t constructive, but it was all I could do not to punch something out of pure stress. We took ONE BREAK! ONE F-
I half expected the house to be on fire when we arrived, but it was undamaged, albeit quieter than usual. “Dylan ran off, and I couldn’t keep up while holding the vest”, said Shania, on the verge of tears whilst lugging around the inflatable pump/vest combo that we use to expel excess mucus from Dylan’s chest. (Just don’t imagine what the mucus looks like once it’s expelled, particularly all over your oak coffee table. Bad incident at our old house. Sorry, I’m rambling again.)
I fully expected to have to turn the house upside down, but for the first time that night, I breathed easy. Dylan was laying in the first place he checked- On his bed. “I’m sorry, daddy!”, he cry-coughed. “Ididdameantascareanybuddyijustneededanapandmychestgotbadcan *hack* wedodavesnow?”. I ran over and hugged him, so grateful to God that my son was alive and well that I started to cry on his favorite PJ Masks pajamas. Between the sobs, I asked Shania to hand me the vest. No response.
“Shania, can I have the vest please?”, I asked again.
“W-who’s that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who are you hugging, Mr. Sanderson?
”..I’m hugging Dylan?”
“Dylan’s a girl, though-“
“What?”, Helen interjected.
“I mean, I assumed she was a boy because you said he when explaining his treatments, but then I showed up and she came downstairs, and I just thought I had misremembered…”, Shania continued, and I felt my heart rate begin to grow.
“I’m Dylan! The only *gasp* girls in this house are Mommy, *gasp* you, and Rote *gasp* Raveeja!”, my son barked out as Helen strapped the vest onto him and began pumping.
Shania looked at me with a terror I had never seen before. “Then… who in hell was I babysitting?”
A thunk echoed from inside Dylan’s closet.