37. Sick

Dear London Fire Snake Scorpio,

This is not how I wanted to celebrate a month of corresponding with you. Though I suppose it is a week after anyway. I am not sure how much I will be able to write. I will do my best, but the medications are still keeping me heavily under, and when my head starts swimming, lying and breathing is a full-time job.

He took the kids on the 9th, last week. But I didn’t move from the bed since the 7th, if you remember. Collapsed. I fought the fever as far and hard as I could, probably on the verge of death, now that I think of it.

Then my behaviour changed. Weird remarks to official lines that triggered the police, inability to avoid arguing with him… I suppose looking back, it all makes sense, but at the time, I just felt drifting. I lost the sense of self. I couldn’t even write “I love you” to you, because it would be a lie. How can I feel anything if I cannot even feel myself?

When I spoke to the nurses line, she urged me to go to the hospital. I didn’t. It seemed too dramatic. By Monday morning, it did not feel dramatic. I felt dying. Really dying, not a figure of speech. My head was heavy, I could not breathe, and by this point, the 40 °C fever was constant, no matter how many Tylenols I stuffed down my throat.

He dropped Drago and Wolfy at the door; they were not feeling well enough to go to school. I told him, “I am going to the hospital. Are you going to be a father and take your kids to the hospital?”

His answer got no reply from me. “I am a father. I have a plane to catch at noon. Good luck.” Only later did Drago tell me that his wife went with him, so it was not even a work trip. As if it matters.

We got to the hospital with a ride from my good friend, the Water Dog Sagittarius. And it was when I saw his face that I understood for the first time how bad the situation really is. I got to the hospital and could not even walk to the emergency room myself. The guards at the door told me to sit because I looked like I was about to faint. I probably was.

So, wheeled chair and rapidly accepted, I was in line. The hospital’s social worker arranged for a representative to come, and the girls were taken to the children’s emergency room in another section of the hospital.

Six hours in, the girls were checked, and now the question was what to do next. I have no one I could just dump my kids on for a day or two, and, honestly, even at this point, I still believed that I had nothing serious. I thought that just like the girls, I would be looked at and told to go home and let it be till the flu passed.

But I was not even in the middle of the wait. The emergency room was overflowing. Not sure what type of full moon it was this Monday, or which demons came out of where — but the amount of OD cases coming to the hospital was staggering. And, as each was a true-life-or-death situation, it pushed the rest of us back.

My head starts swimming again… I will try to finish cohesively.

After a lot of pretty words, speaking to three government agencies and whatnot, the hospital social worker passed our case to emergency child protective services. Half delirious, I agreed that my 14-year-old Drago could keep the kids safe for a few hours.

But when the emergency worker came and collected the girls, I asked, “Wait, an adult is coming to help her, yes?” — “No.” She said, “It’s legally complicated, you see, because you need to sign the kids over to us for a while and…” On and on she went, explaining. Drago and I gave each other a long look. Like the one she gave me when she was born. Clear, smart, frightened yet confident.

She was shaking, my girl. And I felt something in me turn to ice. No one gives a fuck. No one. “Don’t worry, Mom.” She says, “I got this.” I nod. And they leave. And so my 14-year-old functioned as a single mother for the whole evening.

The house was in a catastrophic condition: I vomited all over the toilet, so she needed to clean it. There were no dishes at all; it’s all in the sink. She used disposables. She cleared the garbage, fed them, and showered the little ones. Her nerves were raw every time I called — but my babies got it.

At night, she could not settle Piggy, who was anxious and misbehaving, and Drago was at the end of her nerves. Thankfully, my neighbour came to help. Now, knowing that they are finally asleep, I finally had time to leave the anxiety and see how I was feeling.

There is a very specific clarity that comes to you in a life-or-death situation. When you don’t stand on the edge of the abyss but actually fall into it. I found that clarity. It was clear that for years, I denied what was obvious: my ex-husband is a textbook narcissist. How else would you explain him knowing his little girl is going insane with the responsibility of an adult, while I am in the hospital, half dead, and enjoying his fucking honeymoon as if nothing?

It was also clear that we are on our own. The government apparently believes that being 14 makes you qualified to be a single mother of three, I say, smirking with disgust, because there was no official help. At all.

At some point, as I was lying there in the hallway on the stretcher, I asked for water. The nurses, swamped with junkies threatening them and people screaming or peeing themselves, needed to clean, and did not get to me for a full hour. I thought I would die then, I swear. I cannot explain to you how small, how insignificant, how dead and prideless one feels begging for water for an hour while feeling like their insides are burning, begging in people’s faces — who just turn away and don’t even bother to answer.

At around 11 pm, 13 hours after I got into the hospital, my fever finally broke, and I was able to sink into some blessed sleep. For exactly 10 minutes. When the nurse checked me and saw that there was “no more medical reason for you to be in the hall,” I was unceremoniously transferred to a wheelchair and wheeled into the main waiting room. I waited two more hours before I gave in and went home. I could not sit; the pain was excruciating.

The kids woke to see me home and were very relieved. I looked awful, but I was better than before, and I thought I could deal with the rest at home. In the morning, the kids were organized and went to school, and I called my GP to explain my symptoms. She prescribed me antibiotics, and I felt significantly better after the first dose.

This was Tuesday already. So around 5 pm, I received a call from the hospital. “Ma’am,” She says, “It is not negotiable. You must go back to the emergency room. You have a bacteria in your blood that cannot be treated with simple antibiotics at home; you can go into sepsis at any moment.”

Calm. I become so very calm when I dance with death. We are old dance partners, you see, so we know the drill. “I am not arguing with you, ma’am,” I tell her back, “I am telling you that I have no one to leave my children with, and I will not wait another 14 hours to be admitted. It is not an option.” She sang the same old song of social workers and help, and I just said, “Thank you for calling, I will think about it,” and we hung up.

I put the kids to sleep after talking to them, telling them everything, and left for the hospital when they were finally out. I was hospitalized within 4 hours this time; apparently, the lady who spoke to me on the phone made some comments in the chart that sped up the process.

Apparently, while caring for the kids for those 10 days when they were sick, when I was sick myself, I got so dehydrated with the vomiting and the rest of it that I triggered a severe infection in my kidney. Which, in turn, released E. coli into my bloodstream. That is the culture they took, and she said that, usually, they keep the culture for 5 days, but mine was so aggressive that it tripled in the 12 hours of incubation they gave it.

The kids had to deal without me another morning. It was hard to watch my Drago being so damn stressed over the phone, even though everything went “well” and the kids got to school and all. I told the doctors to figure out a protocol for me to do at home, because I am not staying.

Thankfully, despite the infection’s severity, the response to the antibiotics was equal, and the relief was immediate. The doc gave me a prescription for some very heavy antibiotics, strict orders to come back if I am incapable of keeping the meds down and a warning of the side effects: nausea, dizziness, disorientation, diarrhea, etc.

That was Wednesday. Today is Friday. I help when I can, but mostly the kids are glued to the TV. I ask them every morning whether they want to stay home or go to school; they choose to go to school, so they are self-motivated to get organized in the morning. They go on their own and come back with the school staff.

We survived.

I wanted to tell you all this because writing is a very tall order at the moment, and I have not written to you in a while. I hope you now understand why.

I got to close my eyes again. 
Yours, 
Oxy.
April 17, 2026.

Help me find him: Have you seen this man?