Tiger stripe

We got the call and we were not far away.

Two minutes, max, as we were already enroute for after school pick up. They said the ambulance had already been dispatched. My guts twisted at the thought.

We ran the school corridors, seeking your little silhouette on the playground bench. There you were - poor darling - holding it together like a little ball of twine. Pale, dazed and like you were hit to another plane of existence. I couldn't see much more than welling tears, dressed in warm blood and bandages. You just sobbed and wanted strongest of all childrens' treatments – a cuddle. We wanted to do so much more for you in that instant and all we could offer was a warm embrace. The gash on your forehead yawned open like a crimson chasm, a silent scream etched in your face. It had the sheen fresh pain. Blood-mixed with tears in little deltas across your peachy cheeks. As a parent you never buy a first school uniform expecting to see it splattered in blood. "It'll be OK sweetheart, we're going to fix you up".

There is a special kind of helplessness you get in a hospital waiting room. It's the worst of worlds. Pain, injury, unknown ailments, unknown treatment times. The collision of individual journeys with no prize other than to leave and never return. This is the human equivalent of going to the vet.

The wait was the gift of triage by a hospital system brought to its knees by just too many sick kids that night. You lay there waiting, oozing plasma across mum's cashmere jumper. I made offerings of mochi, hummus chips and chocolate digestives. You ate it lying down for fear that gravity would yank the wound open again. We tried to get you to stay still but you wanted to just sleep in to your pain on your tummy across crusty waiting room chairs. The pleather was as cracked and as coarse as unkempt heels in the winter, having yielded to anxious arses over the last decade.

I could hear a newborn's chesty cough. I could smell the sterility of fluro hospital-grade sanitiser over my hands. Meanwhile a toddler was disintegrating into their eczema, mottled like a red Dalmatian. A mother whinging she’d been waiting for 4 hours because her child had an ear-ache. We were all cast into a boat adrift on sea for unknown rescue.

“Children sobbed and stirred and arched like broken creatures. Parents stared blankly at their phones, tossing their thumbs to the screen in worthless worship of reprieve.”

We willed some action beyond the intake door. We contemplated leaving for the Private hospital. It was a gamble as they don't specialise in peads. So you waited. We waited. And we all waited some more.

We had to wait because a child was brought back from the brink of death. You had to wait for a twelve-week old baby who had an unstoppable fever. You waited for some kiddo with a mangled foot. You had a head injury and you simply slept most of the waiting off. Mum and dad didn't. Each second was a helpless hurry. We just had to sit there among the wailing, watching over you, twitch and dream of places better than this.

Finally after eight hours it was your turn – your lucky number. The SHO came, inspected, and assured us. The nurse irrigated your laceration like an angel of compassion. She was patient and ushered you to a new level of bravery. We saw the effects of fentanyl and happy gas lift any shroud of pain and you giggled like a school girl again. The SHO placed three stitches over your cut all the while I told "Dad jokes" to ease my own squeamishness. I could not watch you be clamped shut. I am squeamish around my own blood’s blood. So I too tossed my thumb to my phone in desperation.

And that was it. 2:30am.

You might have scar or if you're lucky it might just fade with time. Either way, I know you're super proud of your brave-new self. I know how much you love tigers, "Daddy, you know tigers are SO brave you know? They are the most ferocious animals in the whole entire jungle!". How I wished mummy and daddy could wear an ounce of that bravery.

So now you have your very own "tiger stripe".

People say scars have stories to tell. This is your first one.