When we walked into the room of the Emergency Department’s Children’s Ward at Palmerston North Hospital, Andromeda was sitting up in bed, staring off at some faraway horizon.
Mum sat next to her and took her right hand. Her little sister, Maxine, stood by her left side. I sat at the foot of her bed.
“How are you feeling, Andy?” I asked.
“I feel weird. Everything is spinning. When am I going to be me again?”
“You will be soon. You come back slowly. I know it is weird. Part of you is here and part of you is somewhere else. It’s okay. Relax. Rest your eyes.”
“I’m going down a staircase holding hands with a keyboard… I can see a chicken,” she said.
Smiles all around.
“Maybe it is that chicken you always wanted and I won’t let you have.” I hate chickens.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Six twenty.”
“When is this going to go away?”
“The nurse said you should be feeling back to normal in an hour.”
“I can see my teeth from the inside.”
“I know, it is weird, isn’t it? You’re okay. We’re here. You are safe. Just close your eyes and relax. You’ll be feeling back to normal soon.”
Two hours earlier, I stood outside her room with the trauma doctor as she explained the drug options to give Andy when they reset her leg for her plaster cast. Well, I had heard of ketamine, that was for sure. I asked about the pros and cons, the risks, how the pain was managed. Until only two weeks before, I had been a nursing student halfway through a three-year BN program at the local trade school. That was until the government cut its third-year ‘fees free’ programme. So anyone in their second year of university, like me, was now going to have to front or borrow another $11k for their degree. I was 58, privately paying, and debt free, so I said, “No thanks,” and withdrew.
I liked the trauma doc straight away. She was American and had a zero-bullshit attitude. No soft-pedaling anything, not doom and gloom either. She was a straight talker and a straight shooter. I could see why she was a trauma specialist. She exuded competence. I trusted her implicitly. I told her we would go with the ketamine, hang out in the room with her and the team until Andy was out of it, and then let them do their thing.
It was over a lot sooner than I expected. As Tamara, Maxine, and I were heading back into Andy’s room, the trauma doc said to me, “She’s still dissociated.”
I looked at her and said in a matter-of-fact way, “I have some personal experience with ketamine.”
She looked me in the eye and said, “Yes, I figured that.” And that was the last I saw of her.
Back over twenty years ago, I had been a PhD student at the University of London, living in the slums of East London. I went through a stretch of strange days hanging out with some pretty hardcore drug users from my local pub. I’ll never forget my trip down the “K hole” on ketamine, sitting in a bathtub fully clothed in a dingy East London flat. That was the last time. Never a place I wanted to revisit. It felt like dying.
Five hours before, I was lying in my bed at close to 1 pm. I had just come off a 48-hour double shift from my job as a mental health support worker. I worked in local homes for youth struggling with mental health issues. We usually worked two support workers (kaimahi) with one client (whaiora) on 24-hour sleepover shifts from 10 am to 10 am. I had just finished a 10 am Sunday to 10 am Tuesday shift, had a coffee with a friend, and came home.
Upon arriving at our place in the country, in a river valley in the Manawatū district of New Zealand’s North Island, I was greeted by our staffie cross Duke and our little shih tzu-toy poodle, Krrsantan. I fed them, ate some oats, and took a shower. The plan now was to have a nap and recover a bit before getting the girls at the village bus stop two kilometres down the road.
That’s when I got the call.
Looking at the phone, I saw it was from Tracey, Andy’s principal. My heart started to pound.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Dee. Tracey here.”
“Hi, Tracey. How are you?”
“Not that good. We are at the reserve and Andy jumped off some playground equipment and I think she has broken her leg.”
My heart was now a sledgehammer in my chest.
“Is she conscious?”
“Yes.”
“Is she going into shock?”
“She doesn’t appear to be. We can’t move her, but we are keeping her warm. We called the ambulance. They did not say they are coming, but that someone would call us back.”
“Did you give her some pain relief?”
“No, but we can give her some paracetamol.”
“Okay. Do it. Is the bridge open yet?”
“It was earlier, so I am assuming yes.”
“Okay, I’ll go the other way just in case. I’ll be there in 25–30 minutes.”
We live on the west side of a river valley, and both Andromeda’s school and the reserve were on the east side. There were two bridges across the river — one north of us and one south. The north bridge had been under construction for over half a year following a flood. Also, the way north turned into a windy gravel road in a few kilometres. We were closer to it, but I didn’t want to risk high speed on the gravel with blind turns and a bridge that might not be open. So I opted for the southern bridge.
I quickly changed into jeans and a hoodie. Got my backpack, snacks, liquid paracetamol, and my water bottle. Keys, wallet.
I checked the time: 1.01 pm. I called Tamara on WhatsApp. No answer. She must be back from her lunch break.
She messaged me back: “???”
I texted, “Andy broke her leg.”
“What?!” she messaged.
I called.
“Tracey just called me. Andy jumped off some equipment in the playpark at the reserve. I’m going to get her. Meet me at ED.”
“Do you want me to get Maxine from school?”
“Yes. Meet me at the hospital. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Let the dogs out. Locked the house. Jumped in my Impreza. Opened the gate. Drove through. Closed the gate. And went. Went like the wind. 120–110 km/h, hitting it hard. Passing farm trucks. Hugging turns. Breathe. Breathe. Turn. How much time? How much time? Another turn. Breathe. Almost there.
When I got to the playground of the reserve, I had to drive around some construction workers. The van and the kids were gone. Tracey was there with Annie, a parent helping hold a blue tarp over someone.
Where is my girl? Where is my baby girl?
I parked the car and jumped out.
Tracey spoke first.
“We have her under the tarp to keep the rain off her.”
It was one of those miserable New Zealand early winter days — cold, damp, intermittent showers, then a short sunbreak, and back to rain.
I climbed under the tarp and lay down on the damp woodchips next to Andy.
“Hey, Andy.”
“Hi, Dad.”
“How are you doing?”
“It hurts.”
“I know. I’m here now. What happened?”
“I jumped off the spinning tabletop, and my leg made a loud cracking noise when I hit the ground.”
“Yeah, sounds like you broke something, alright. We are gonna get you to the hospital and get it sorted. I am just gonna talk to Tracey for a bit.”
Tracey told me she was still waiting for the emergency services person to call her back. They had asked if Andy was conscious, bleeding, etc. The usual stuff. But why weren’t they coming? The district was woefully underfunded and had three ambulances for a city of 90,000 and another 20,000 rural residents over a huge expanse of land. They always had to triage, and who knew how many people were having heart attacks or strokes, or were in car crashes on a Tuesday afternoon?
I was having flashbacks to three years ago, when Andy had an allergic reaction to a bee sting. It was summer and we had just gone for a swim in the village swimming pool next to the old schoolhouse. There was a little playpark next to the school, a tennis court, and a playing field. Andy and Maxine, 7 and 5 back then, were running through the grass when Andy got stung on the toe. Without thinking about it, I pulled the stinger out, probably squeezing more of the venom into her toe, instead of scraping it off. Shortly after we got home, I noticed that Andy had broken out in hives all over her body. That was the “oh shit” moment. I called the ambulance, but they went the wrong way around the valley and ended up circling around. It took them over an hour. It should have been 30 minutes.
Less than two weeks after that, Andy was stung by a bumblebee in the driveway. We called 111, and they told us to give her the EpiPen. I did and then drove her to the hospital.
The youngest of my three boys, Theo, had broken his arm twice while at our place. The first time, he fell one meter out of a tree and broke his left arm and needed surgery to wire it up when he was five. Two years later, he fell off the porch and broke his right arm. Both times, I drove him to the hospital. It was the family joke that Theo had used up the broken-bone quota for the family. No other broken bones allowed.
“Let’s try and get her into the back seat of my car,” I said. “Who knows how long it is going to take for them to get here?”
“They said not to move her,” Tracey replied.
“And yet, they didn’t say they were coming either,” I replied.
I backed my car up close to the tarp and opened the back doors.
“Let’s try to sit her up and then move her together into the back seat.”
I moved her leg a quarter inch and she screamed.
“Okay, that’s not happening,” I said.
Finally, they called Tracey back and did a video conference on her phone.
“They are coming,” she said.
Fucking finally.
I lay on the ground with Andy, holding her hand for the next forty-five minutes. We played “guess what I am thinking of,” and joked about how she broke the no-more-broken-bones rule. At one point, she said, “I always wanted a cast, but I didn’t know how much it would hurt.” I told her it was the price she had to pay for one. At one point, I accidentally bumped the foot of her broken leg, and she cried out in agony. If there were a big enough hole nearby, I could have crawled into it and died. Above us, Tracey and Annie held the tarp in place. At one point, we could hear hail pelting against it.
After what seemed an eternity, the ambulance arrived. The EMTs gave Andy a green whistle thing to suck on — the side of it said “Penthrox”. Later in the ambulance, the EMT told me how great it is for broken bones, but that the government was discontinuing it for something cheaper and not as safe. Typical coalition move – their unspoken motto “Profits before People,” once again proven true.
Not long after the guys arrived, they were able to get her to sit up, splint her left leg, and get her on the ambulance gurney.
I sat in the back with her on the way to the hospital. My girl was warm and safe now. Everything was going to be okay. We were in good hands.
As the EMT was handing Andy over to the ED nurse, Tamara and Maxine came in from the ED waiting room. Andy was still pretty relaxed from the Penthrox and happy to see her mum and little sister.
When they wheeled her into the little five-bed children’s ward of the ED, we could see it was a small area with a little workstation and about five beds. Directly in front of the station was a mum with her baby. To our immediate right was… What the hell? Andy and Maxine’s cousin Mandy and her mum, Veronica!
Mandy and Veronica lived with Scooter in the village just two klicks away from our place. Mandy was older, but the girls adored her and they quickly became friends. No one had any idea they were related. Then, about two years ago, Tamara’s uncle died, her mother’s brother. Tamara took the girls to the funeral, and right in front of them were Mandy, Veronica, and Scooter. Turns out that Tamara’s uncle was Veronica’s dad, making the girls cousins. Not long after that, Veronica started babysitting for us, and our girls were actually at her place just last evening while I was on shift and Tamara was still at work.
Mandy was in high school now, but the girls were still close. Apparently, Mandy was having pain in her lower right side and they suspected an appendicitis.
During the initial X-ray, Tamara, Max, and I sat behind the glass and watched as the digital image came up on the screen. We could clearly see that both the tibia and fibula were broken. After we returned to her ED room, a lot happened.
A nurse practitioner spoke to us, the previously mentioned trauma doctor, and a surgeon. We were told it was a torsion fracture and there was a 50/50 chance she would need surgery. After we agreed to the ketamine sedation for resetting the leg and the plaster cast, the nurse came in and hooked Andy up to the monitor for her heart rate and sinus rhythm, her ECG, breath rate, CO2 level, breaths per minute, and blood pressure.
Once she had come down from the ketamine, they took her for another X-ray and then brought her back. We were told that she would be transferred to the Children’s Ward. Tamara and Max left to get Subway sandwiches for everybody and were going to meet us on the ward. In a moment’s quiet, I sat with Andy and held her hand. I started to cry.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Oh, it’s just that I love you so much. You’re the most precious thing in the world to me, and it hurts real bad to see you in so much pain.”
“I’m okay.”
“I know, Sweetie. Everything will be okay now. We made it. We’re in the right place and they are going to take good care of you. Just needed a moment.”
I gave her a little hug and kissed her on the forehead.
Okay, Dee, no more tears. Game face back on.
When we got to our six-bed room in the Children’s Ward, across from us were Mandy and Veronica. We all had a good laugh about that. Veronica told Mandy, “You can finally have that sleepover with Andy you’ve been wanting.”
I slept in a fold-out chair bed next to Andy that night. In the evening, the pain came back. The nurse brought her paracetamol and ibuprofen. I took her aside.
“That’s not going to be good enough,” I said.
She frowned. “I might be able to get her some tramadol.”
“I am not a big fan of that.” I remembered our studies on pain management in nursing school. I had done my own research on tramadol and was not impressed. Poor pain management returns for potentially dangerous side effects.
“Morphine,” I said.
“I’ll ask the doctor.”
Twenty minutes later, she returned with liquid morphine, and my baby got a good, pain-free sleep that night.
The next morning, Tamara and Maxine returned. When the surgeon came around, he said he was happy with the way the bones were set and wanted to keep her in the plaster cast, in a wheelchair, for two weeks and then X-ray again. If the bones were in a good position, they would recast with fiberglass and not do surgery to put rods in through her tibia. We were all very happy. And the next evening, we took our baby bird home.