Heart Attack

This boy gave me a complete heart attack this evening.

Forget my fear of heights, I realised that my biggest fear is him coming to harm. It all started after I put him to his bed as usual at 6.30pm. Fast forward an hour to 7.30pm, when I’m making dinner and hear him crying. I go through and as soon as he sees me he stops crying and starts smiling. I smile back, until I pick him up that is…

On the sheets; blood. I become frantic. First place I obviously check is his ears. It’s not good. Blood is all around the inside of his right ear. I completely panic. I do a quick once over and he’s otherwise fine. He’s breathing, his temperature is ok and not only is he responsive but he’s smiling and chatting away.

I grab the phone and dial 999. I speak to a woman on the phone who takes me through all the general questions: Is he breathing, responsive, alert, vomiting, crying? And then tells me the ambulance is on its way. I call Iain who’s on his way home to let him know what’s happening.

I’m sitting on the bed cuddling John and he’s chatting away whilst I’m holding back the tears and telling him that he can’t do this to me, that he can’t come into my life and make me love him this much and then break my heart. He just looks up at me and let’s out one of his screechy, gurgling noises.

10 minutes later the paramedics arrive. They come in and ask what’s happened, I explain everything to them and they proceed to give John the once over, whilst I be an emotional wreck standing over them, feeling like I’m going to vomit. They check his ear and find the blood isn’t coming from within the ear. In fact, it’s just a case of him scratching the cartilage of his ear and causing it to bleed.

I could cry. He’s fine. Thank god. I’m still shaking though. The paramedics take us through to the living room and try to calm me down whilst we wait for Iain to get home. And when he does he abandons the car in the car park, runs up the stairs and nearly knocks one of the paramedics off their feet as he comes rushing through the door. As always, John gives him a big smile.

He’s now back in his bed. I’ve been in more times than I can count to check him.

This boy? He’s my life. He’s my world.