Creepypastas

Exchanges

Late one night about ten months ago, I found myself rushing my daughter to the hospital.

I remember the morning. What time I woke up, the food I ate, and the sound of my girl's voice yelling "See ya, daddy!" as she ran out the door to catch her school bus.

Everything was normal...average. But were there signs? Could I have expected to bring her home from school at twelve that afternoon? Could I have guessed the cause to be chest pains, or predicted that those pains would return again eleven hours later, causing her to cry out in pain and fear? Could I have been better prepared for the race to the ER that ensued just before her heart gave out?

I don't know.

I remember that night: the heavy rain pounding against my car, creating a slick sheen on the streets that made driving over forty impossible, the images of streetlamps and traffic lights bleeding into one another on my windshield. I remember that franticness I felt as I gripped the steering wheel, swerving and slamming on the horn to warn the blurry shapes of pedestrians to "get off the fucking road!" before they ended up getting personal with the front of my car.

I remember her: her wide eyes as she held her chest in agony...the suffocating sense of hopelessness that filled the air around her by the time we reached the parking lot where she fell unconscious...her motionless chest by the time I carried her through those automatic doors.

* * * * * *

What followed was a long forty minutes in the waiting room.

The emergency room was surprisingly empty for a Friday night, apart from the woman at the check-in desk. Her face a mask of indifference, I doubted she had much interest discussing why I was there, soaking wet and tapping my foot in my pajamas. Looking back, that indifference seems vaguely irritating. At the time, it was fine by me. I wasn't feeling talkative anyway.

I sat in an uncomfortable waiting room chair and thought about my daughter. I wondered what those doctors were doing to her in that disgusting hospital room. My mind jumped back and forth between the present and the last time I'd seen something like this. My wife had had a similar episode eight years before: shallow breathing, chest pains, sweating, moaning, a look of panic. I'll never forget that look – the look of someone whose time had come.

For her, it had, from a combination of heart and lung failure. She died, officially, in the emergency room, though by the time the ambulance arrived, there wasn't anything the doctors could have done to save her. Considering that, I thought, maybe it wasn't so irrational that I'd chosen to drive recklessly through the streets to the hospital myself as opposed to calling 911 and waiting for my daughter to die.

Still...the ride was rough. I probably did even more damage.

I braced myself for the worst. The news, when it came, fell somewhere in the middle of the spectrum: not bad...certainly not good.

"She's unconscious, but her breathing's stable," the doctor started. Relieved, I interrupted and thanked him for telling me she was alright. At least that's what I thought he was saying before I sensed his grim disposition and cut myself off.

He repeated she wasn't dead, but went on to report that she was far from healthy. At the time, the doctors could only guess at what was causing her symptoms, but within a few days we learned my daughter was functioning with diseased heart and lungs.

"Likely hereditary," they said. Something inside me couldn't help but agree.

Her heart was already struggling to pump blood while her lungs made breathing difficult. Directly and quite coolly, the doctors told me if something wasn't done, and soon, the consequences would be dire. This wasn't a situation that could be remedied by a prescription; if she expected to live and regain her health, she would need a donor.