Code Harper

Thursday afternoon Aaron came home from daycare with a fever of 103 something. Friday morning, it was up to 104.7, and he was really out of it- confused, disoriented, talking nonsense. That freaked me out, so I called the pediatrician and they told me what to do, what to look for, and what would warrant a doctor visit. So I drugged him up all day Friday and we hung around the house. Saturday morning he woke up, another 104.5 fever, drugged him again. Sunday morning, more of the same. Once he hit 72 hours with a fever, we needed to go to the doctor, so this morning I took his temperature, and again, 104.6. Called the pediatrician, got an appointment, and rushed getting Harper up and in the car, throwing a pop-tart and some milk at her to keep her quiet. Nothing like keeping her on a healthy diet to keep *her* immune system up, right?

Aaron was kind of enjoying this attention- the breakfasts in bed, the back scratches, the limitless popsicles, and finally a doctor visit that revolved all around him. Once we got to the doctor, he changed his mind about enjoying his patient status once he realized there was going to be a needle involved. My ears are still ringing from the hysterics.

I should note that at this point I'm going moderately insane. I've been stuck in the house with the kids for three solid days, and the best I can tell, they're training for the Screaming and Arguing Olympics, in which they would surely take gold. With each new chorus of "NO, I'M NOT!", "YES, YOU ARE!", I can feel my brain liquefy just a little bit more. I was tempted to withhold the Tylenol and ibuprofen from Aaron just so he'd get all feverish again and maybe calm down.

At the pediatrician, after swabs and questions and bloodwork and an hour and a half of keeping the littles occupied in an 8x10 room, we had no answers as to what is making Aaron so sick (although miraculously not lowering his volume). I was given a prescription for an antibiotic, off to Target we go.

Of course the mindnumbing bickering starts before I even get them into their carseats, and driving to Target I felt like I was in a fog, and starting to really get depressed that my role as a parent seems to involve nothing more than fixing meals and saying "stop it. ignore her. come back here. leave him alone. be quiet." Waiting for the prescription confirms this, because as I spend approximately 60 seconds talking with another mom, they manage to get unruly to the point of literally dragging each other around on the floor by their arms and running behind the counter at the snack bar. (And, of course, screaming. Always the screaming.) By the time I go to pay for the prescription, I'm absolutely numb. So numb I feel like I barely even registered the shock of how much the antibiotic cost. But I must have been somewhat shocked, because for a half second I apparently gave all of my attention to the ridiculous number on the register at the pharmacy. And when that half second was up, I looked up, and Harper was gone.

Aaron said "she ran off! she went down this way!", and I start looking down aisle after aisle, calling her name louder and louder each time. Within a minute, I'm calling so loudly and frantically that the Target employees (whom I like to think of as family, I'm there so much) figure out what's going on and I hear them call through their radios that there's a CODE YELLOW, and I can hear it echoing through all of the radios around me. Other customers are coming up to me and telling me they just saw her, she went that way, so I head that way, and someone tells me they saw her go the other way, and it seemed like everywhere I turned someone was telling me they had seen her somewhere else. At this point, I am in full on panic, and halfway afraid I'm about to black out. I'm screaming her name and hysterically crying, to the point that when someone asked what she looked like I couldn't even speak, except to choke out "she's little, and she's got a little ponytail on top, and she's without me". I'm just walking down the aisles, sobbing and yelling her name at the top of my lungs with Aaron running next to me asking why I'm crying, and a Target employee right behind me, assuring me we'll find her. I hear crackles over the radios that "we've found her in the men's department", and then "she's in electronics", and then "oh, wait, now she's in the infant section". If you're as familiar with Target as I am, you should know how far those sections are from the pharmacy, and part of me is absolutely horrified at how far she got in that short amount of time, and some little tiny part of me thinks "yep, that's definitely her". I finally walked up to infants and there is a human dragnet of Target employees trying to corral her. When I saw her I went from hysterical to absolutely mortified, although way in the back of my brain I was thinking "see? you guys had a hard time pinning her down with 12 of you! do you know how hard it is with just one of me?"

Harper was thoroughly annoyed that her adventure was over. I picked her up and carried her out, still crying (me, not her), embarrassed at how hysterical I had gotten, and sobbing out thanks to every Target employee I saw. (And at this point they're all still ridiculously nice, offering me help, offering to get me a cart, patting my shoulder and telling me it's okay. I should send them all a Target giftcard.)

We walked out to my car and as I'm tightening the straps on Aaron's carseat, I realize he's been silent for almost 5 minutes, which is unheard of. Probably because no matter what that poor kid does, Harper manages to steal the show.