I fretted as I felt my five-year-old daughter’s warm forehead. All day she had been sick with a fever. I checked her temperature again. Still high.
It had been nearly four years since she had a seizure, but still I worried. The doctors had never figured out what triggered her off-and-on seizures as an infant. I lay down beside her and dozed off.
A piercing scream jolted me awake. I knew that scream. I grabbed for my glasses and shoved them on. Celina was deathly white and her eyes were glassy and fixed. Her body was stiff. Her tiny chest jerked in little pulses. Her lungs were straining for air. She seemed so alone, so isolated in her suffering.
And I felt so far away, like I couldn’t reach her. For the last five years I had carried a terrible burden of guilt: Celina had gone through all those seizures in her infancy, and I had been unable to help or comfort her. Now that feeling rose to the surface. I felt totally helpless. Dear God, why can’t I ease my little girl’s pain?
“Dwayne! Dwayne!” I shouted for my husband. I prayed and sobbed as I rolled my baby’s stiff body onto her side.
Dwayne rushed in and knelt by the bed. “Lord, help me remember what to do!” he cried. He got ready to administer CPR, and said, “Jennifer, call 911.”
My senses came flooding back. I flew down the stairs to the kitchen phone. The ambulance arrived in minutes and the paramedics got to work on Celina. Dwayne had managed to get a few breaths in her, but she was not breathing on her own.
Celina wasn’t responding and my fear increased. I kept remembering what her pediatric neurologist had always said: The longer she went without oxygen, the greater the risk of brain damage. She was so pale. I was afraid I was about to lose my little girl.
Finally Celina began to pant. A paramedic motioned me over. “Come talk to her,” he urged.
I dropped down on my knees by her bed. “Can she hear me?” I asked the medic.
He shook his head. “I don’t know, but if she can, she needs to hear her mama’s voice.”
I brushed her wavy brown hair off her forehead. Her skin was now cool to the touch. I spoke softly, choking back my tears. “Celina, Mommy’s here with you. You’re going to be all right.”
Suddenly her eyes moved. I could see she didn’t understand what was happening to her or who these people were in her room. “Okay, she’s coming back. She recognizes Mama,” the paramedic said, turning to look at me. “Mama, move around, but stay in her sight. I need to see if she can follow you with her eyes.” Sure enough, Celina didn’t take her eyes off me as I moved around the room.
In the ambulance I lay on a stretcher with Celina in my arms. Her little hands clung to me. By the time we reached the emergency room she was feeling much better. She even sat up in her hospital bed and smiled at me. “I’m going to be okay,” Celina said.
“Yes, the doctor said so.”
“No, Mommy. An angel,” she said. “She had beautiful orange hair that was long down her back. And she talked to me.”
Dwayne and I exchanged glances. An angel? I turned back to Celina and leaned over the silver horizontal bars around her hospital bed. “And what did she say to you?” I asked.
“She told me I was going to be okay. And she touched my hands and made them cold.”
My heart skipped a beat as the full impact of her words hit me. The doctor had told us that Celina’s fever had shot up too high too quickly. The fever had triggered her seizure.
I remembered back to when I had brushed the hair off Celina’s forehead. She had felt cool to the touch. A strange peace came over me. I had been so afraid she had felt alone in those moments during her seizure. I knew now that she had never been alone, not for one second.
A mom never stops worrying, but I wasn’t helpless after all. I had incredible help: God was in control. When Celina and I weren’t able to communicate, he had not abandoned Celina to her fears, nor had he ignored our prayers. He had sent an orange-haired angel to comfort my baby, and to cool her down.
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