Alterity

Chapter Fourteen

The next two days are an absolute nightmare. That's how long it takes for Aiden to settle into his current situation, which involves wrist and leg restraints—to keep him from both eloping (running away) from the hospital room and engaging in his pica while in the hospital—and regular doses of various medications. The morphine and anti-anxiety medication do seem to help a lot though and they almost always make him fall asleep, which is great.

            Upon finding out that Aiden was suffering from lead poisoning, Mom became very upset and confused, saying there was no way he had gotten it from our home because we don't have lead paint on the walls and neither does any of The Ducharme School buildings for that matter. The doctor said that she didn't believe it came from paint but from most likely regular and repeated ingestion of dirt that contained trace amounts of lead, which he likely ingested at school on the playground during recess breaks; as when Aiden is at home, he is always inside.

            Aiden's pica is very extreme and he in no way discriminates what he will put in his mouth and ingest. The things I have seen him put in his mouth the most are dirt, rocks, sticks and paper. Like a lot of people with pica, Aiden does not chew any of these objects, but swallows them whole. If I catch him pop something unsafe in his mouth, I run as fast as humanly possible over to him to try and retrieve the object from his mouth before he is able to swallow it—which he normally does within three-to-five seconds. The fact that he is lying here in the hospital because of the dirt on his elementary school playground makes me shudder.

            Here's the trouble: Aiden is fast and very, very sneaky when it comes to his pica. If he's playing outside, you have to tail him every second, as in an instant, he is able to sneak something into his mouth and swallow it. Even when tailing him, he'll still sometimes manage to put something into his mouth that you will have to get out. One of the scariest memories of my life with him was when he and I went to the playground near our apartment together. I'd been sitting on the ground with Aiden, who was playing around with a small toy car, when I heard someone scream. I turned my head to see what was going on—realizing that it was just a couple of kids playing hide and seek—and when I turned back hardly a second later, Aiden had begun choking. I did the Heimlich immediately and got the toy car out of his throat. My point being that unless a school has a staff member tailing him every second while outside, he'll more-than-likely ingest something.

Mom is on and off the phone with Aiden's case manager at TDS, trying to figure out a plan moving forward so this won't happen again. I sit by his bedside constantly, talking to him, squeezing his hands and stroking his hair the way he likes. While he's awake, he's under the influence of some strong medications, so he is very quiet and opens then closes his eyes a lot. Since his lead levels are still pretty high, there is still no estimate on when we'll be able to take him home. Fortunately, his poisoning was not severe to the point that it was fatal or especially damaging. I don't know what I would have done if we had lost him, but it's not something I can't even bear thinking about, so I repeatedly push the thought out of my mind.

Aiden inhales deeply and squeezes my hand back, smiling a little before closing his eyes again. First smile I've seen in a few days, actually. I took Friday off school because of everything that was happening with Aiden, and desperately want to keep staying with him until he's discharged, but Mom and Dad both said that missing one day of school was enough and that I'd have to go back on Monday. I tried to argue against it but it was no good.

"I gotta go, buddy," I say. "But I'll be back after school tomorrow, ok?"

Eyes still closed, Aiden's mouth moves a little before he takes on the heavy breathing of those in deep sleep. I kiss him on his head and leave the hospital.