the ickiest weekend

we've had the most unfun 48 hours possible. friday evening, t2 was acting funny. not funny ha-ha. funny sick. his head was hot and he wouldn't eat. he had a temperature.
here's something i didn't know: a temperature over 101 is a pretty serious thing in an infant. his was just above the danger mark. by 9 p.m. we were knee-deep in emergency room doctors going ape shit over our son. little guy was getting poked and pricked and prodded all over. because he can't sit up and say, "hey parents, i have a headache but otherwise feel ok so lets just go home," they have to assume the very worst. assuming the very worst means doing all kinds of tests for the very worst, which of course meant me assuming the very worst (recall janundice).
i spent friday night and a good part of saturday in a code red heightened state of worry intensified by a young resident who got me uber hyped up about infection and death. it took a good hour, some stupid tayloe jokes and one long phone call to our pediatrician for me to regain sanity.
in our relationship, i'm most often the mellow one. traffic jams, getting lost, long lines - i can pretty much take it and go with the flow. all these things make tayloe bonkers. however, when it comes to trouble with our son he transforms into the dalai lama. i'm not as helpful. i become an irritating mix of an overactive puppy and the worst girlfriend you've ever had.
it's one of my 'needs improvement' areas.
we're on the eve of night three in the hospital. he's still being pumped with antibiotics, but the last 18 hours little tay has been 100 percent better with nothing more than the sniffles. all his blood tests have come back negative. his spinal fluid is fine. he's alert and charming and cute as ever. hopefully he's forgotten all the madness he went through on friday night and just focusing on knocking out what seems to be nothing more than a cold.
other than the constant waking, the stale air, the other screaming kids and the processed food, the hospital isn't really too awful. i haven't so much minded having a nurse at our beck and call. the meals are unimaginative and bland, but at least someone else is making them and cleaning up the mess.
plus, the nurses adore him. they ga-ga over his hair and his lips and his sunny disposition. they coddle and snuggle him. i woke up at 4 saturday morning to find a nurse in the corner of our room rocking him. "he's just so sweet," she said.
so yeah, on a scale of 1 to 10, this weekend gets a 0 on the fun scale.
but because i like to make chicken salad out of chicken shit (it's how i balance being manic and over anxious in the midst of crisis) i see the silver lining.
it's this: we've gotten to know our son in the last six weeks. we knew enough to know he was sick and we know enough to see that he's better.
when i look at him., i think he knows now that we're aren't just two freaky people he got stuck with. i think he knows that we'll take care of him, that he can feel safe with us, that we love him.