The Longest Night

After Zac’s epic and terrifying reaction to Stemetil, I am now quietly confident that everything that could go wrong already has.

After a refreshing cigarette or five, I locate the floor that has free coffee and make myself some, then rejoin my spawn and his father in the quite ludicrously sci-fi basement of the Union.

Zac’s MRI scan is almost finished, and he’s pretty much out cold from the sedatives. This is a bit of a shame, as terribly pretty images of his brain are scrolling across the technician’s screen, and the whole thing, frankly, looks like a 2001-era Kubrick wet dream.

And… he’s done.

Back up to our gigantic room where, I note with amusement, there are now under four hours to go before I have to get my ass out of bed and do a run to the 24-hour McDonald’s for – and I use the term loosely – “nutrition” before surgery. Well, calories, anyway.

S changes and crashes out. I take myself for a little wander to the bling-bling reception desk on our floor to see if anything’s come back from the MRI scan.

20 minutes? Well, no point going to sleep for 20 minutes, even if I could. I pop downstairs and out into the steamy dark to the smoker’s corner.

“There’s a minor abnormality on the MRI scan,” he says. I stare at him, blankly. I’ve been rolling with the punches for the big end of a week now, and I simply cannot believe what I’m hearing.

When I return, the paediatrician is at the main desk, looking tired, but with his bow tie adjusted.

“There’s a minor abnormality on the MRI scan,” he says.

I stare at him, blankly. I’ve been rolling with the punches for the big end of a week now, and I simply cannot believe what I’m hearing.

There CAN’T be anything wrong with Zac’s brain. He CAN’T have brain damage. It would have shown up AGES ago. He was wearing a HELMET, goddamn it. There simply CANNOT, MUST NOT, WILL NOT be anything wrong with his brain.

And… further… does this count as a pre-existing medical condition? Will our insurance even cover this? Shit.

“It’s, honestly, nothing to worry about,” he says, again. “It’s a benign abnormality that we find occasionally on MRI scans, usually when we’re looking for something else, and it’s typically not problematic.”

“What is it?” I ask. I’ve already decided I’m not waking Zac’s dad up for this one.

“It’s an arachnoid cyst,” he says.

Oh fuck. That really doesn’t sound good. That really doesn’t sound good at all. My stomach turns solid. I channel calm and take a deep breath.

I decide to head out for another cigarette. That’s odd, I observe. The paediatrician’s still on our floor.

“Does it require further investigation?” I ask. “Is it something that’s going to impact on the surgery? Can he have the surgery with it?”

“Yes,” he says again. “It’s a benign abnormality. It’s not associated with bad outcomes. But as MRI scanning becomes more and more common, we’re finding more and more of these things.”

“So…” I say. “What you’re saying is that people have had these things for ages, but you’ve not known about them, because you’ve not gone looking for them?”

“Exactly,” he says. I’m oddly fascinated by this idea, that brains we’d considered standard are now proving not to be, that MRI scanning is opening up a whole new perspective on the human brain, once only revealed in autopsy and surgery, and redefining normal.

“So….” I say. “Do we need a referral to a neurologist? Do you need to talk to a neurologist? Or is it just a ‘mention it to a neurologist in passing’ kind of deal?”

“Yes,” he says. “That’s it exactly. I’ll mention it to a neurologist in passing, but I’m honestly not concerned.”

I head back to our room, where father and son are sleeping peacefully, and dive deep into the warm embrace of Uncle Google. By the time Google has confirmed what the paediatrician has told me, it’s rising 3am.

I decide to head out for another cigarette. That’s odd, I observe. The paediatrician’s still on our floor. I stop at the floor with the free coffee and load up one plastic cup with free coffee and another with free powdered milk. There’s no way I’m sleeping before my McDonald’s run.

“There’s a minor irregularity on the ECG,” the paediatrician remarks, faux-casually. “We will need to do another ECG in the morning.” “WHAT?!” I say.

Back up to base. “There’s a minor irregularity on the ECG,” the paediatrician remarks, faux-casually. “We will need to do another ECG in the morning.”

“WHAT?!” I say.

There CAN’T be. Zac’s an active, fit, happy child, carrying no excess weight. He CANNOT have a heart problem. But then…

But then… active, fit, happy children drop down dead from undiagnosed heart problems every day.

“It’s a minor variation,” the paediatrician explains. “Just on the outside edge of normal. But it does require further investigation.”

“Before surgery?” I ask. Zac broke his arm on Sunday. We are now in the wee hours of Friday. And STILL the only treatment he’s had is pain relief and splinting.

“We would need to confirm that before surgery, yes,” says the paediatrician. “It’s a general anaesthetic.”

“What SORT of irregularity?” I say, mind racing through panic and into the safe space of flat, fast calm.

The paediatrician embarks on an explanation that extends WAY beyond my knowledge of physics, let alone biology, while showing me graphs, things I’m about as good with as I am with maps or parallel parking.

My takeaway is that one beat is a bit too long, although it’s not a beat but a signal, or something. “But… He was reacting to Stemetil when they did the ECG,” I say. “Won’t that have impacted on it?”

“We don’t know,” he says. “We’ll give him an ECG on a more sophisticated machine in the morning, and get a paediatric cardiologist to take a look at the results.”

As I watch him, he switches into REM mode and giggles, slightly, at something in his dream. There CAN’T be anything wrong with his heart, I think. There CAN’T be.

Back to base. It’s past 4am now, and Zac’s sleeping – well, really peacefully. His breathing seems regular. His face is lightly flushed. He looks like – well, like a sleeping child. And, I notice, quite ridiculously like his father. As I watch him, he switches into REM mode and giggles, slightly, at something in his dream.

There CAN’T be anything wrong with his heart, I think. There CAN’T be.

But then…. I thought there couldn’t be anything wrong with his brain, and it’s down there in black and white imaging, incontrovertibly, a fluid-filled layer, an arachnoid cyst, a sci-fi horror term revealed by sci-fi-grade machines. Maybe there’s something wrong with his heart too.

But if there is, I figure, it’s good that we’ve caught it, and can act on it.

No point in waking Zac’s dad up. He’s doing the morning shift.

I’m so tired now that, despite the caffeine and the nicotine, I’m on the verge of dropping. But we still need to treat this as though Zac’s having surgery tomorrow, which means he needs some calories, and he needs them before 6am.

I brush my teeth, wash my face, apply some token mascara, head down into the bowels of the hospital to extract an amount of Hong Kong dollars that I figure should last me a while – although I’m so tired I can’t even remember what the currency’s worth — and pick up a cab outside the gate.

“McDonald’s, please,” I say. “Go and come back.”

“Which one?” he says.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t live here. The nearest one that’s open.”

I order a Coke, hash browns, a Sausage McMuffin and a Bacon and Egg McMuffin, sulking quietly that they don’t do fries.

It’s not a classy McDonald’s, a little hole in the wall joint rather than a luxury show-off mall affair, but it’s open. The chick at the counter, to my surprise, speaks Cantonese and Mandarin but hardly any English and, of course, being McDonald’s, they’re now on their quite epically disgusting breakfast menu.

I am under the (mistaken) impression that this will be Zac’s first ever McDonald’s meal. I watched Super Size Me with him when he was a pre-schooler, and, since then, he’s had ethical objections to McDonald’s.

So when we do burgers, we do BK burgers. Not because they’re ethically or nutritionally better, obviously, but just because Zac doesn’t know they’re not, and, further, Whopper over Big Mac any time.

I order a Coke, hash browns, a Sausage McMuffin and a Bacon and Egg McMuffin, sulking quietly that they don’t do fries (surely, surely, I’m not the only person that could quite happily do a Big Mac and fries for breakfast), and chat quite happily with the cab driver all the way back, about the mainland, mainlanders and our life in Harbin.

To my surprise, Zac doesn’t object to the McDonald’s.

The Coke goes down, so do the hash browns, and he has a reasonable stab at the Sausage McMuffin, too. I’m asleep, I think, even faster than him. In theory, at least, he’s having surgery in the morning.