Saving Elijah

ridiculous. From the moment we got here, Sam hadn't understood anything I said, or he understood and disagreed. Could I have been sadly mistaken all these years, believing Sam and I were complementary halves of a whole, that together we were more than what we were individually? Perhaps my robotic speech was an unknown language.
    Dr. Jonas unhooked Elijah's chart, made a note or two. I had read the chart myself, some of it: Elijah Galligan, 5 years old. . . history of present illness. . . admitted 9:02 AM Jan. 4, status epilepticus. . . non-responsive . . . bluish extremities. . . patient intubated. Loading dose administered, 9:14 AM, Ativan, 5 mg . . . 9:25 AM Dilantin administered, 250 mg . . . 9:48 AM. . . phenobarbital administered, 300 mg. Mother states . . . transferred. . .
    I hadn't yet been able to read any further, because the letters always started to swell and melt into meaningless black marks.
    Jonas hooked the chart back to the bed, pressed his hand into my shoulder in a gesture he meant to be comforting, I'm sure.
    "We'll do an MRI because we just want to be certain of everything," he said, then he left.
    Left us, without telling us anything. Again.
    I looked at my son lying there, his little glasses useless on the night table, his Tuddy beside him. No. There was something wrong with that. The doctor had moved Tuddy to examine him. I placed Tuddy back under his arm, and arranged his hand the way it was supposed to be.
    I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to conjure up the vision again, the sea and salt air, my son in his future, but I saw nothing. I heard nothing. There was nothing to smell in the air except my own sweat and parfum de hospital.
    "I need to draw some blood."
    I opened my eyes. A technician was standing in the doorway, holding a white plastic tray packed with tall skinny vials.
    "Again?"
    "I'm sorry."
    I took my son's hand. Maybe this time he'd feel them sticking him, and it would wake him up.
    The technician had so many vials to fill, had to be thirty, at least.
    I couldn't watch him take still more blood. I closed my eyes, and that was when I heard the guitar song again. "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod." Was it possible there was a singing vampire in the hematology department?
    No. It had to be a sign from God, a little number God dreamed up, exactly like the Great Barrier Reef. Who else could possess an instrument that yielded the sound of a symphony; a melody so simple and yet so complex; a lullaby, hymn, spiritual rock me baby? Who could make those frets shout "Hallelujah" like a whole gospel choir? Who could hold a note for so long without taking a breath, or would even know the lullaby I sang to my son?
    Who, indeed?

two
    After the technician left, Sam closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the bed. He really didn't hear the music. Incredible. Now it seemed to be coming from a source just outside the room. I looked through the glass wall to see if there was a troubadour playing a guitar in the PICU. There didn't seem to be one as far as I could tell.
    The nurse was taking Elijah's temperature again. She was a kind woman with a large bosom, plump cheeks, and quiet eyes. I'd had the thought of wanting to rest my head against her chest.
    "He has such long eyelashes," she said, placing the electronic thermometer in his ear but laying her palm on his forehead, too, as if she were taking his temperature that way, as a loving mother would. Wait till she saw his blue eyes when he opened them.
    I searched my son's face one last time for any twitch, then walked out. My husband didn't even look up, though I hadn't left the room in hours, maybe a day or two, even for a meal. What was the point of eating when my son had to be fed through a tube in his nose with a watery whitish liquid that looked like infant formula, only thinner?
    I wandered into the PICU, where pandemonium had erupted as it did here at intervals, clattering metal wheels across the floor, nurses and doctors descending. I shrank up against the wall to let them race in with a child on a gurney, terrible purplish lesions all over her body, terror-struck parents following close behind. Right. A bed had been vacated that morning. Someone's child had died right there in front of me, or been moved down to the regular pediatric floor for further treatment. That was about it for the choices. No one got tossed right from the PICU into the street.
    Still hearing the music, I started across the PICU again, passing by the other NAR. That was