EIGHT
RAGING AT GOD
Five minutes later, a white-coated man emerged from the imaging lab. I
don’t remember his name, but I remember that his name tag said
“Radiologist.”
“Your son has a ruptured appendix,” he said. “He needs emergency
surgery. They’re ready for you in surgical prep now. Follow me.”
Astonished, Sonja and I fell in behind him. Heat surged in my temples. A
burst appendix? Hadn’t the doctor in Imperial ruled that out?
In the surgical prep room, Sonja laid Colton on a gurney, kissed his
forehead, and stepped away as a nurse closed in with an IV bag and a
needle. Immediately, Colton began to scream and thrash. I stood at my
son’s head and held his shoulders down, trying to soothe him with my
voice. Sonja returned to Colton’s side, crying openly as she kept trying to
brace his left arm and leg with her body.
When I looked up, the prep room was crowded with men and women in
white coats and scrubs. “The surgeon is here,” one of them said, gently. “If
you’ll step out and talk with him, we’ll take over in here.”
Reluctantly, we stepped through the curtain, Colton screaming,
“Pleeease, Daddy! Don’t go!”
In the hallway, Dr. Timothy O’Holleran waited for us. Dr. O’Holleran was
the doctor who had performed the mastectomy on me four months earlier.
Now his features were set in grim horizontal lines.
He didn’t waste words. “Colton’s appendix has ruptured. He’s not in
good shape. We’re going to go in and try to clean him out.”
On the other side of the curtain, Colton was still screaming. “Daddy!
Daaadd-eeee!”
Gritting my teeth, I shut out the sound and tried to focus on the doctor.
“We asked about a burst appendix in Imperial,” Sonja said. “They ruled it
out.”
My brain skipped over the past and looked toward the future, angling for