After - More Waiting

It's a short drive to the hospital,
but still too long
for my mom's anxious nerves.
Baby sits in her car seat,
a wet towel on her hands.
Too much all at once is overload
sending her into shock - a mercy?
Not crying, just whimpering,
shaking like a leaf, and 
staring sightlessly straight ahead.

At covenant they gave her morphine,
wrapped her hands, and waited
two hours for an ambulance.
A family friend from church
was working in the ER that night
so he stopped in to give the baby a blessing.
More waiting, until mom, impatient,
decided to just drive
to the hospital with a burn unit
they wanted to send her to,
forty minutes away.
With narcotics on board, you'd think
nothing had happened.
She chattered like a squirrel
all the way to Hurley
where they did a debridement
to cut off all the dead, burned flesh,
then re-wrapped those little hands.

She picked up three
new stuffed animals that day:
a small, blue-green
beanie-baby bear, a sheep
(but the label said rabbit?)
with soft plush fur that didn't matter
because she couldn't feel it
through the bandages,
and a little brown horse
that sat like a dog and smiled.
They also gave her a little
patchwork quilt. She called it
her "Magic Carpet Ride"
and sang about it all the way home.

(Side note - the horse wasn't received until a later date when she went back for another debridement.)