I Can Laugh Again

I walked back to the kitchen and out the back door. Standing on the high deck I looked straight out to the play area to see if he was swinging. Justin loved to swing, but he wasn’t there. I glanced to my right to see if he was riding his Big Wheel. It was there, but he wasn’t on it. I walked to the edge of the deck and looked down. There he was. Justin was facedown, floating in the pool. My worst nightmare had just begun. Without thinking, I ran from the deck, pulling one shoe off, then the other. I had on blue jeans and a tee shirt. It didn’t matter, nothing did except saving my baby. I dove into the pool, pulling Justin out seconds later. Running with him in my arms, I screamed over and over, “Rick! Rick! Rick! Rick!” although it seemed no sound was coming out of my mouth. I stopped running. I needed to do something. I placed Justin on the ground and slapped his little face. He looked sweet and peaceful. He didn’t respond. I began giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, a milky-white foam started to ooze out of his mouth and nose, but still there was no response. By now my voice had registered to Rick and Taylor. They ran out of the kitchen door onto the deck. As I was bent down on my knees over Justin’s limp body, I looked up at Rick. He was standing there, looking down at me, screaming, in slow motion it seemed. “Nooo, Baby. Nooo!” He and Taylor ran down the steps and into the fenced pool area. I picked Justin up again and ran toward the house. Rick sprinted past me to call 911 but left the phone hanging from the receiver when I yelled, “We don’t have time! We’ve got to go right now.” It took us six minutes to get to the Children’s Hospital in our neighborhood. Before the car was stopped completely, I jumped out. Rick followed me, only putting the car in park, with Taylor following after him. As I rushed into the front door of the emergency room, the nurses and attendants immediately took Justin out of my arms. “What happened?” They begged, running down the corridor with him. Horrified, we ran behind them crying, “He fell into the pool!” They wouldn’t let us go into the room where they had taken our baby boy; instead, a nurse led us to a small room that wasn’t a waiting room. It was sterile and cold, with lots of stainless steel. This small room was only two doors down from where they worked on Justin, but it seemed as though it was in another building. A nice young man came in to give us what little information he had about Justin. He told us the doctors were doing everything they could right now. “When you brought your son in, he didn’t have a heartbeat.” My own heart seemed to stop. Rick and I grabbed each other and held on. “They got a heartbeat but they lost it.” My heart stopped again. Rick and I had been very quiet up until now, but now we held onto each other and Taylor as we cried and waited for the young man to come back with more information. Yes, we waited and hoped for good news about Justin. I looked down at Taylor and saw for the first time he was in shock; his entire forehead had been scratched. When he saw Justin lying on the ground and realized what had happened, he began running around the backyard in circles, digging his fingernails deep into his own little sweet face, drawing blood. The young man came back, “The doctors have gotten a heartbeat.” “Praise the Lord!” Rick and I both looked up with tears in our eyes. “You can’t see your son right now, though. You have to wait until he is given a room in ICU.” For the first time since I found Justin lying in the pool, I could breathe. My baby was a fighter and I knew he could pull through this. He had been in ICU before and pulled through. Justin and I had gone through a lot together and I knew him. “He will make it. Stay strong for Justin,” I told myself. I had forgotten my clothes were soaking wet until the young man who had been kind handed me scrubs to wear. “Do you all want something to drink?” He offered us Cokes. All of a sudden, Rick and I looked at each other, “Jade!” There was a phone in the little room so we called Joe and Christina and asked them to bring our daughter to the hospital. Next, I phoned my sister Brenda, to tell her I was at the hospital and what had happened. I couldn’t get the words out. Shocked, I tried again, but the words just wouldn’t come. I heard Brenda inhale and exhale deeply, “Chloé, which child is it?” “Justin,” I cried, uncontrollably for the first time. “Chloé, I’ll be right there.” As soon as I hung up the phone from Brenda, I dialed the number for St. Jude Catholic Church. Unlike Jade and Taylor, Justin hadn’t been baptized. I began to panic when the voice on the other end told me that Monsignor O’Conner wasn’t there, but another priest arrived at the hospital within twenty minutes, prepared to baptize Justin. Brenda and the priest arrived at the same time, just as we were being led to Justin in ICU. We had been in the hospital now for nearly three hours. The priest wasn’t from St. Jude, but everything about him was familiar. He went right over to Justin’s bed and baptized him, “If your son died right now, or any time from this point on he would go straight to heaven.” I looked down at Justin. I don’t want to hear anything about dying.