"He's out of danger...right?"

I must not have read that text correctly. I read it again as April comes out the door to greet me. My face must be registering alarm because she immediately grabs my cell phone and says, "What? What's wrong?"

I can't see anymore. WHY CAN'T I SEE ANYTHING?? Oh, I've actually taken my glasses off to rub my eyes and forgotten they were in my hand. Geez.

"Where's Tabby? Where's the McBee guy? Is he done yet? What's wrong with the unit? Is he trying to sell us something we don't need? Are you ready to go? I need to call Mikey. Give me the phone."

My eyes hurt. My head hurts. I must be in someone else's life.

"Mom! Is Mikey in surgery? What does this mean?"

"WHERE IS THE HEATING AND AIR GUY, GIRLIE!! Call Mikey on your phone. I can't see to dial mine....I can't find it, either. Did you see where I put my phone?"

Tabby comes bounding outside, still in her pajamas.

"How's Mikey? Can we go to the hospital with you?"

"Mom, I have Mikey on the phone."

April hands me the phone.

"This isn't my phone! Do you know where my phone is? Hello? Mikey? Where is the surgeon?"

"Surgeon? Mom, what surgeon?" This is Tabby talking to me.

"TABBY GET DRESSED! (Back to the phone) Mikey, is the surgeon with you? Do I have time to get to the hospital? Ask him if I can get back there."

"Mom," he sounds small and scared, "I will make him wait for you...how long are you going to be?"

"No, Mikey. Please, don't make him wait. Ask him if I have time to get back there. It took me 20 minutes to get home."

April gives me my phone. Oh yeah, I had given it to her to read. She points to the back of the house...this is where the McBee guy is. I start walking. Tabby has gone in to get dressed, and April is trailing me closely to hear my half of the conversation. I head to the backyard to see if the unit is operable yet.

"Mikey. Call me back when the - "

"Mom...the surgeon just walked in. (Turning away from the phone) Um...does my mom have time to get here? (Turning back to the phone) Mom, he says 30-45 minutes tops, and then I go into surgery. Please get here. I don't want to go in without you here. Please."

"Mikey, I will get there. If I am not there, though...if you don't see me...please go anyway. I might be there and just not where you are. Please don't refuse to go...please."

"Ok, mom...but get here...I'm...scared." He is my little boy again. And I am not there to comfort him. Geez!

The McBee guy is squatting by my unit, looking at a gauge. As I approach, he looks up and smiles.

"So," I try to sound casual, "how is everything?"

"Well, I cleaned it out - there was a lot of debris in there - and now I'm just topping off your freon, here."

"Oh! Then, you're almost done?" No way. Something good is happening?

"Oh, yes ma'am. Five more minutes, tops."

I explain a little bit of what is going on and ask if he has a total for me. He does, $130.00. I write a check and hand it to him. He looks startled. Then, he goes to his van, writes a receipt and goes back to my unit. I tell him that I hate to rush him, but my son is being prepped for surgery as we speak, and I need to get going. He is done, actually, and would like to just go into the house for a minute to make sure my unit is putting out cold air. Ten minutes after the 30-45 minute time limit has been imposed by the surgeon, the girls and I are on our way to the hospital. Amazing.

Parking, running, sliding glass doors closing behind us....and we are in Mikey's room. He looks relieved and reaches out his hand. I take it and squeeze. Before any of us can say anything, the door swishes open, and here is a man in light blue scrubs, blue booties and a blue, fluffy shower cap-looking thing on his head.

"Hi there, are you ready to go?" He is smiling and entirely too cheerful.

"Yeah, man, this is my mom and sisters. Can they come with us?"

"Oh, sure! They can all ride up in the elevator!" He is very efficient. The IV, the gurney and all three of us are in that elevator about 1.5 minutes after his entrance.

Mikey says, "Oh, I have to use the restroom first. I hate to delay you..."

"Oh, no! Don't worry about that! We'll take care of that for you when you get up there."

Mikey does a double-take, causing the orderly to laugh.

"We do that all the time! Don't worry about it!" This too-cheerful orderly has made us all laugh. Ok, he's not too cheerful. He is comic-relief. It's a good thing.

We get up to the third floor and he points to a reception desk.

"You guys go that way, and we go this way. His doctor will come out after the surgery and give you a report on his condition. He will go to Recovery for a short time, and then up to 10-East, though I don't know what room."

I like this guy. I feel better already! Mikey grabs my hand and squeezes it.

"I'm still scared."

"Oh, don't worry about that, either. We'll give you something in the OR that will make you feel fine."

I laugh at this statement both because it's true and because I have experienced it, myself. I know that Mikey won't be scared for long. Soon, he will be in his room, post-surgery, and the healing will begin. I don't know how long he will be here, but I know that things will be fine. I am actually becoming more relaxed. I have to credit the orderly for this. I've decided he is not too cheerful, after all -- he is just cheerful enough. I kiss Mikey's forhead and give him a hug.

"You know, Mikey, he's right," I say. "I have had surgeries before, and I can tell you that you'll get a shot that will make you feel like everything is fine and will be fine forever." I giggle a little. "Honey, you will want some to take home!"

Mikey looks at me like I am crazy, but the orderly laughs.

"Yes, she's right," he says. (Boy, I am begining to love this orderly!) "As a matter of fact, for you, you will feel like you went to sleep and someone decided to wake you up a minute later -- but actually you will have been asleep for hours! You won't remember any of this, probably."

I give Mikey one more kiss. April and Tabby hug him and we watch him get wheeled down the hall. The orderly continues to talk to him. Wow. He must love his job. Or, he has been taking some of that medicine he's been touting to Mikey. No, I'm kidding.

We go to the receptionist desk. It is less a desk and more of a square with two volunteers inside it, answering phones and filling out charts. Beyond this square is a room full of cubicles, each with a number on it. Several families are taking up several cubicles. There is a huge, flat-screen TV similar to what you would find in an airport terminal with flight data on it. I am wondering what is being tracked on that TV. I can see that there are black colums of letters, blue columns and red columns. Oh my....are the red columns recent deaths? I am being morbid. Why would there be death numbers in a hospital waiting room? Maybe these are actually horse track numbers. Tulsa does have a horse track not too far away from the hospital. How about I just quit guessing stupid things and talk to the receptionist. Why I need to talk to her about anything, I have no idea, but I usually do what I am told.

There are four sides that I can walk up to, but only two sides are currently manned. I choose the nearest side that contains a person. She is weird-looking. No, I'm serious. She is weird-looking. Her face is kind of crescent-shaped, her mouth is crooked, her skin is powder-white, and her left eye appears to be slightly recessed on one side of her head and looking a different direction. Her whole head is lop-sided. And she is not smiling. And her voice is rather flat. She is wearing the pink overcoat of an auxilliary volunteer. She is older, with a gray-haired beehive sort of old-lady 'do. Her photo ID shows an unsmiling portrait - and looks exactly like her. I am trying not to feel sorry for her. "She is volunteering to help people like me," I keep thinking. "She is a nice person - she has to be." She is talking on the phone.

"When I hang up, say hello," she says, then presses a lighted button. "Mrs. Smith? When I hang-up, say hello." Another button press, "Mr. Jones? When I hang up, say hello." This goes on for a while. I am confused. She has not looked up or said anything to us. She just keeps saying, "When I hang up, say hello." Why would anyone say "hello" after someone hangs up? I am thinking of heading over to the other side of the square to talk to the other volunteer when that one answers the phone in front of her. She says, "Hello Mr. White? (Note: I am making all these names up as I go) I have your doctor on the phone. When I hang up, he'll be there, so just say hello." Ah-HAH! Now, THAT makes sense. I want to talk to that one! I'm just about ready to walk over there when my lady turns to the other one and says, "Will you help these people?" She sounds irritated. The nice volunteer (yes, I have divided them into nice and not nice) looks over and says, "I'm on the phone." Her voice is hushed and her face is irritated. I can tell just by this brief conversation that Not Nice Volunteer thinks that Nice Volunteer is a shirker and does not work nearly as hard as Not Nice Volunteer. Not Nice Volunteer stares at Nice Volunteer's back for a good 30 seconds and then turns back to her phone (which has not rung for at least a minute) in disgust. We are still standing in front of Not Nice Volunteer when her phone rings again. "When I hang up...."

I don't know what to do. These are the sentries into the inner sanctum of the waiting room. Do I just go in and sit down? Do I have to stand here until the feuding old ladies decide to help me? Is someone else who is more helpful and pleasant in the restroom or at lunch and about to come back? I don't know the answer to any of these questions. Thankfully, before I have to be rude and interrupt one of them, Not Nice Volunteer grabs a chart and says, "Name?" I must look confused. "Who is in surgery?" she asks. I tell her. "He's not on my list. Is this a scheduled surgery?" Well, no it is not. "Oh. Then it won't be on here." Oh my gosh. Really? No way. How efficient of you to figure that out. I am now not in a good mood. She tells me to take a seat and tell her which cubicle I choose. I will be updated via telephone in the cubicle ("When I hang up...), so it is important that I tell her where I sit. Ok, Ok, Ok...got it.

The girls and I choose cubicle 10-R. We put our stuff down, but before I can go inform Not Nice, another lady dressed in pink approaches us. "10-R? Perfect! I'll go tell them at the desk. There is coffee in that room and it's free. Everything else you have to pay for. Of course, you can go to the second floor and get something in the cafeteria if you would like. What's your name so I can tell them at the desk?"

WOW! I like this lady. She is short (that is something when I say someone is short!) and sprightly with gray, spikey hair and white tennis shoes. I like her! She shows us the magazine rack, and takes me to the big-screen TV. It is a list of everyone currently scheduled for surgery. The black names are those who are currently in surgery. The blue letters show the actual start times of the surgery (as opposed to when they are scheduled to begin), and the red names are the emergency surgeries. Mikey's name is red. Mystery solved. Much more interesting than horse track numbers.

The girls get sodas, I get coffee, we all get magazines and we settle in. Occasionally, we look at the TV to see about Mikey, but we don't really talk much. The sprightly volunteer checks on us periodically, and then, the phone rings. It is a nurse from the OR to tell me that Mikey's surgery will be done soon and the doctor will be out to talk to me. YAY! It's been an hour. As promised, the doctor comes out about 20 minutes later.

We shake hands and he tells me that it was a massive infection. It was not the injury itself that caused the infection. That is, the hit in the crotch with the showerhead did no damage (as I had suspected...he is dramatic, as I said). Rather, it was a tiny scratch that had been caused by the showerhead that allowed germs to get in and wreak the havoc that brought us here. He described how there had been lots of dead tissue and I interrupted him.

"Is he sterile? He was worried about whether his testicles..."

"No, no actually. The testicles have their own blood supply. It's amazing how these things happen. Everything in there is dead, but the testicles are perfectly healthy!"

Wow. That is something I hadn't known. I am always interested in human body information. At one time, I had wanted to be a doctor. So, the operation is over, his testicles are healthy, and he will be going to a room.

"So, he's out of danger then, right?"

"Oh no, ma'am. Not by a long shot."

What?