More Keys to Me

When I was a little girl I was carted to hospital after hospital for treatments, examinations, and x-rays. I have some very vivid memories of that time considering that I was anywhere between two and eight years old.

I remember that I hated the x-rays the most. The waiting rooms usually weren't stocked with kids' toys and the wait was interminable. Then some technician would contort my body into a bunch of uncomfortable positions. I especially hated the "butterfly" where I had to hold my bent and spread knees as close to the table as I could without moving. Then the technician would leave me alone in the room with the scary sounding machine.

I was a trooper though. In all those years, I only cried once. And that was the morning I woke up alone in the hospital for the first time in months, because my parents had gone to pick up the car together to take me home.

My mother used to try and make these trips to the hospitals a little more bearable by making them an event. A lot of times we'd have to drive pretty far, so she'd bring my grandmother along and we'd play car games. We'd go early so she could take me to the cafeteria for lunch.

I remember one day in particular when I was three years old. My mom had let me get a Hoodsie Cup along with my lunch. I was so excited to eat my ice cream. We were waiting in line to pay and I was standing quietly next to mom as I always did. She and my grandmother were talking about something.

Suddenly, I felt a horrible burning pain in my back. I remember that the pain was excruciating at first. But the shock of it almost immediately caused me not to feel it at all. I turned and looked at my mom in surprise.

And as she slowly turned her attention to me, I felt that pain slowly, but inexorably, return with a vengeance. I remember trying so hard not to cry, but not being able to help it.

"What's wrong?" my mother asked. I couldn't answer. She asked again and put a hand on my back as she implored me to answer.

And she snapped her hand away because my back was covered with burning hot coffee.

Since we were already in the hospital, she rushed me to the emergency room. I can still remember my grandmother, who didn't really know what was going on, saying, "But we just can't leave our trays!"

Of all my hospital experiences, that time in the emergency room was the worst. They parked me on a gurney in an open room with adults who were screaming and crying. They took my mother away. The doctor was nice enough, but the burning pain of a second degree burn was worse than the chronic pain I was used to.

After they had done what they could, they put me in a wheelchair and took me to my regularly scheduled x-ray appointment. The nice woman technician felt bad about my back, but still made me lie on it while she took x-ray after x-ray.

It wasn't until I heard my mother tell the story to someone else that I knew what had happened. A nurse had come up behind me in line with her hot cup of coffee and spilled it on me. And then she ran.

Apparently, some other people had seen it happen and reported the nurse.

It is just unfathomable to me that someone who is trained to care for people in that way could burn a small, crippled child and then run off.

But, you know, the most upsetting thing about that whole day for me was leaving my Hoodsie Cup behind in the cafeteria. I couldn't wait to go back to that hospital, and that cafeteria to get another one. And I didn't have to wait long.