As we anxiously wait to hear more.
Let me start off with this link from two years ago to tell Natalie’s mom she’s not alone. My daughter was in school at BYU at the time; her daughter’s on an internship here, the same distance away from home.
Michelle is very protective of me re germ exposure and my impulse to jump in the car with her wasn’t worth the time the argument was going to take if I pursued it. But I thanked her as she walked out the door.
She stopped in her tracks and shot back in her worry, Mom! To do anything else would be unthinkable and immoral!
Well, yes, of course, and she saw that clearly and dropped everything during a heavy day at her job; that’s why I was so proud of her.
She had met Natalie at a church young adults party. Natalie asked if she might have a ride home to where she was staying for the summer, and it turned out to be right in our immediate neighborhood anyway, so it went from sure, glad to help, to, oh cool! They were friends on the spot.
That made it so Natalie had someone in a town she didn’t know that she knew she could turn to.
Good thing. Last night there was a call; she had a fever. The older woman whose house she was staying at was out of town. We knew Natalie had no car, and a bike gets you nowhere when you’re at 102. So when she said she had no aspirin or anything, did we, would we mind terribly? It was an of course and oh honey and I heard Michelle on the phone insisting that she call her any time in the night or day if she needed any help as she rummaged through our medicine cabinet before dashing over. We found the meds. We sent along a new pillow for her, too, trying to make her comfortable.
We all had a feeling that wasn’t the end of it. I told Michelle last night not to worry about the car today, just assume it was hers if Natalie needed her. We all said she was welcome to spend the night here, as a matter of fact we’d rather that than having her be sick and alone… But she did not.
The call came this afternoon and the very sound in her voice got Michelle’s instant attention. I know from an experience of mine at about that age how hard it is to go off to see some doctor you’ve never heard of in a town you don’t know, but it had gotten to the point that she knew she had to. Michelle was out the door in a flash, stopping only long enough to make that protest of but of COURSE!
Urgent Care took one look at her and said, Stanford ER. Go. We think it’s appendicitis.
Shirley, meantime, the woman she’d been staying with, came home from visiting her grandchildren and is now off at the hospital to be there for her–where I dearly wish I were, too.
I owe that. But I am so grateful to her and Michelle, too, who took up the cause on all three mothers’ behalf as well as Natalie’s from the start.