11. Pretoria, 1989 - Prayers
In which Eleanor calls for help.
Eleanor and Tig sit waiting by the phone, their family’s fate at stake. But prayers don't come with guarantees. 
Eleanor
The phone rings and Tig picks it up before the second ring. University hasn’t started back up for him yet, so he’s still home for the summer holidays. We’ve been sitting together in Mum’s study, waiting for news from Mum and Dad at the hospital. It’s Dad. I lean in close so I can hear Dad too. His voice is breaking. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard my father cry.
“The doctors say they’ve done everything they can, and now it’s in God's hands. Can you call Father Robert and ask him to activate the prayer chain for Henry?”
Of course we will, we assure him. Immediately. Tig hangs up and I call Father Robert. This will be the first time anyone knows what has happened, it’s all happened so quickly, our lives suddenly swept up into a desperate fight for our baby brother, Henry, just twenty months old.
The parish home line picks up after a half dozen rings. I hear Father Robert’s familiar voice. “Father Robert, it’s Eleanor Williams here. Mum and Dad asked me to call you. It’s about Henry. He’s very ill and in hospital and the doctors aren’t sure if he will make it. Mum and Dad are in hospital with him now, Jem and I are at home. Dad asks, could you please activate the prayer chain for him?”
Of course he will, he assures us.
“Let me do that first, and then I’ll go straight to the hospital to be with your parents, shall I? Where are they?”
“Thank you, Father, that would mean a lot to them. They’re at HF Verwoerd, ICU.”
“And Marion will come to you, so that the two of you aren’t alone.” Father Robert adds. Tears immediately well up in my eyes and my voice chokes.
“Thank you,” is all I manage to murmur.
Marion knocks on the front door half an hour later. Tig and I aren’t children any more, but as she steps into the front hallway and opens her arms to us, we melt into them.
“Why don’t I make you both a cup of tea, and then if you like we can pray together, or you can tell me whatever you would like. I can stay as long as needed, the night even. You don’t have to be alone through this.”
We nod our thanks and she leads us to the kitchen. She sits us down on the bar stools at the kitchen counter and with sure confidence, busies herself in the kitchen. Once hot sweet milky cups of tea are in our hands, she pauses and looks at us, then asks, “Have either of you eaten supper.” No, we shake our heads. We haven’t even thought about food, but at the mention of it my stomach suddenly turns over on its empty self. “Scrambled egg and toast okay?” she asks. Again we nod. As we sip, she once again moves about the kitchen, the mother we didn’t even know we needed right now.
Feeling steadier on our feet, Marion sits us in the family room, Henry’s toys all around us on the floor, but untouched for two days now. “Would it help to tell me what you know?” she asks us gently, her motherly face gentle under her short salt and pepper hair, her green eyes soft behind her glasses.
“Henry started to develop a rash on Tuesday, and then he started to run a fever on Wednesday,” Tig tells the story. “Mum took him to the doctor, and he said it was likely tick bite fever. We couldn’t get his fever down, though, so Mum took him back to the doctor this afternoon.” Tig bites his lower lip. He had been the one to drive Mum to the hospital, while Mum sat next to Henry in his car-seat on the backseat. “While he was there he had a temperature convulsion, and became unconscious. The doctor had Henry and Mum rushed to the hospital.” He looks down at his hands. His voice is steady, but his hands still have a slight tremor.
“I called Dad at work, and he went straight there. Then I came home to be with Eleanor.” He gives me a wan smile. “When Dad called at about five he said that they had him completely naked, were bathing him down with cool water, and had fans blowing on him, but that they were still battling to get his temperature down. And that he was still unconscious.” Tig bites his lip again, but his voice remains steady. Or maybe he’s just in shock, like I am? “Apparently the fever is causing his brain to swell. Then when Dad called again at about eight, that’s when he said the doctor’s had done all they could, and now they just had to wait and see.”
I don’t know how Tig can tell the story so calmly. I keep seeing Henry’s little body on a hospital bed in an ice cold room and I can’t bear it. My little baby brother, who has so thoroughly upended all of our lives with his arrival, but whom I adore to bits. I’ve been like a second mother to him, bathing him, feeding him, playing with him. Watching him become so listless the last few days has been horrible. But none of us expected this. The doctor had assured us tick bite fever wasn’t usually severe1 and that Henry should start to feel better in a few days of starting on the tetracycline. To have him get so ill so fast, we are all still reeling from the shock of it.
Marion asks us if we’d like to pray together, we nod, and we sit forward on our seats, joining hands. She leads us, her words calming, gentle, soothing. We sit in stillness for a while, then quietly Tig gets up and comes back with a book. I do the same, and Marion takes some knitting out of her bag. We sit in quiet vigil, our tired eyes drooping, but none of us are ready to go to bed yet either. Just before eleven the phone rings again, and we all jolt. I get up to get it this time. It’s Dad.
“Ellie, Henry is going to be okay. He’s stabilized, he is breathing normally and his heart rate is down. His fever is still elevated, but it’s not as high as it was. He’s turned the corner. He’s going to be okay, Ellie. He’s going to come home. He’s going to come home.” And once again I hear my Dad cry. Tears are running down my face too. I smile and nod at Tig and Marion through my tears so that they know it’s all okay. I put down the phone and go to Tig, giving him a big hug. I feel my six foot two, nearly twenty year old brother, tremble in my arms. Now it's his little sister's turn to mother him.
“He’s going to be okay, Tig. He’s going to come home,” I say into his ear. Tig’s lean, muscular body heaves in my arms.
Henry comes home ten days later, but he’s not the bouncy, bubbly, effervescent toddler he was. He’s like a newborn. He can’t walk, his words are all gone, he can’t even lift his head. Mum’s face is haggard, her slim frame now stooped and gaunt. Dad moves slowly, exhaustion rolling off of him in waves. They’ve practically lived at the hospital over the last ten days. Coming home only to shower, change, and catch a little sleep in turns.
“Dad, go to bed,” I gently squeeze his hand a few hours later. Henry is asleep on Tig in the armchair. Mum, barely able to stand upright, has been sent to bed by all of us. The house is deathly quiet. “Tig and I will look after him. We’ll call you immediately if anything changes. Go to bed. We can feed him and change him. You know we can.”
Dad gives me a weak smile, and gets up groggily. “Thank you, Ellie,” he says gruffly, pulling me into a hug. “The doctors say we just need to be patient. His recovery might be very slow. His temperature was so high, his brain swelled so much—” his voice trails off.
“I know, Dad. Go get some proper sleep now. He’s home. He’s safe. He’s sleeping peacefully. We’ll call you, I promise, if anything changes.”
When Henry wakes a few hours later, I make up a bottle for him, and rock him in my arms while I feed him. He looks up at me, his eyes the same, yet so different. It’s like he’s trying to remember me. His body is so still and quiet, barely moving. I sing softly to him as he feeds, holding the bottle for him, where two weeks ago his chubby hands would have gleefully played with a sippy cup. When I put him down on the floor to change his nappy he is as floppy as a newborn. My heart catches.
Will our Henry come back to us?
Mum and I sit together in the wicker chairs in the family room, having our afternoon tea, watching The Bold and the Beautiful, our regular after-school ritual, and keeping an eye on Henry at the same time. I hear Becca in the kitchen, preparing supper. She’s been an absolute godsend, keeping Henry with her during the day so that Mum can go back to work. We wouldn't trust him with anyone else.
Mum’s tiredness is permanently etched on her face these days. Henry has started to crawl again, and is teaching himself to walk again now, slowly, effortfully pulling himself up and cruising unsteadily from chair to sofa, to table, to legs. He’s quieter, and so much easier to manage than the energetic toddler he had been before, who was forever toddling off and not listening to anything we said. An utter rapscallion is how we had referred to him before.
It’s easier, but it’s also so much harder. The doctors have said only time will tell if there’s been brain damage and to what extent. They say there’s every reason to be hopeful. Babies' brains are so plastic. Babies heal faster and better than adults. It’s too early to be sure of anything. They tell us all of this, and we hope, but it has been so hard, so very hard, to watch Henry’s painfully slow recovery. Be patient, they remind us. Be patient, as we watch Henry go through every single one of the baby milestones again, starting with just being able to hold his head up.
We had all celebrated joyfully when, two months after he had come home from hospital, and Dad scooped him up into his arms as usual as he walked into the house after coming back from work, Henry had reached for the pen in Dad’s shirt pocket and tried, clumsily, to pull it out. We’d all watched, breaths held, as his little fists fumbled, struggling to be coordinated and get it out. And then a moment later we were all laughing with joyous relief.
“Did you see that,” Dad asked incredulously, looking at Mum and I. Of course we did!
“Yes, oh yes!” we both cried back.
“He remembers,” Dad said ecstatically. “He remembers!”
It had always been Henry’s signature gesture, whenever Dad picked him up after he came home from work, to immediately pluck the pen from Dad’s pocket, uncap it, gleefully wave it around, and then of course throw it, chortling hilariously as Dad admonished him. That first time Henry reached for Dad’s pen again, hesitatingly, his little hands fumbling, uncoordinated, was the first time we had true hope that our Henry would come back to us.
He’s still silent for the most part though, barely cries, but will point and make baby sounds when he wants something.
“Ellie, look,” Mum suddenly cries out. I look up in alarm, first at her, then following her gaze to Henry. He is standing next to the TV cabinet, one hand holding on for balance, but he is standing completely still, and his face is…expressionless, vacant. His eyes are blank. It’s like he’s not there. Like there’s no Henry there, even as Henry stands right in front of us. Mum seems transfixed. I get up and move to Henry, kneeling in front of him, searching his face and eyes.
It lasts for what seems like an eternity, but is probably only a few seconds or so, and then it’s like a switch flicks and suddenly the light comes back on his eyes. He is back with us.
I look over at Mum. We are both confused, and worried. What just happened?
“I’ll call the doctor,” Mum says, getting up and moving to the phone. I stay with Henry on the floor, quietly playing blocks with him, while Mum is paged through to Henry’s doctor. “It’s like he was just absent,” I hear Mum say. “His face was completely blank, his eyes just staring, but not looking at anything.”
“The doctor says it’s probably nothing to be concerned about, just his brain continuing to heal, but to let him know if it happens again,” Mum says as she comes to sit down again.
It happens regularly over the coming months. Petit mal seizures, they are called. Again the doctors assure us. He is still very young, there is every reason to believe his brain will heal and grow out of the epilepsy.
By the time Henry turns four, the petit mal seizures have become grand mal seizures, and no one is telling us that Henry will grow out of it anymore. Now the only question is, just how pervasive is the brain damage, and what are Henry’s long term prospects?
No one makes us promises it will be okay any more.
Book Club #1: Apartheid South Africa
Saturday, November 9, 10am ET (US) 5pm South Africa
Mandela has walked free. But before we follow Eleanor as she comes of age just as South Africa starts its transition away from apartheid, let’s take a moment to more fully explore together.
Severe forms of tick bite fever are sufficiently rare that when three severe cases in children happened in short succession in South Africa over the Christmas-New Year period of 1987/1988 it occasioned a research article published in the South African Medical Journal.