ER

I like emergency rooms. At face value I probably shouldn't. We think of them as traumatic, scary, violent environments. They take watch over the criminals and the victims, the sick, the hurt and the poor. Ugliness. But when you get pass the common areas you enter into a place where you are cared for by people who have given over their lives to help those who are experiencing their worse. And this is where you enter a weird kind of peace you can't find anywhere else.
I received the classic "cliche" phone call no parent wants to hear. "This is Officer Ward do you know where your daughter is?." I wanted him to stop. I heard more, things like.... unconscious, side of a road, ambulance, hospital. I left my late night job and drove to St. Vincents. (All hospitals should be named after saints.) I had to wait before I could see her. I waited while they cared for her. The gravel was washed from her face and the vomit from her hair. I was not treated by the doctors and nurses like the parent who could not control her child and when I walked into her ER room I did not see the teenage girl who made some very poor choices. I saw my little girl asleep under stark white sheets and wrapped in a white heated blanket. Her head on a pillow and her long blond hair smoothed and out of the way.
The room was spotless and silent and I received unconditional respect from the staff. They let me sit for awhile. Questions were later answered and details taken care of. The admittance person brought up my daughters last visit to this very same ER. We brought her in at 1:00am, a four year old little girl with a raging fever that brought on seizures and dehydration. I was nine months pregnant with her sister. I laid my head on her gurney and slept while the IV fluids worked their magic and stabilized this child and we brought her home.
Now it is 1:00am twelve years later. Again I lay my head on her gurney and sleep a little while the IV fluids work their magic. The doctor checks in, the nurses come and go. They care for her unconditionally and clean up more vomit and give her more fluids. They bring me a pillow and warm blankets and assure me that this will pass and we will all be alright. They remind me that we have all done this, she is not the first teen to drink too much and there is no shortage of them in the ER.
I doze. The room is silent except for some white noise from hospital monitors. And there is a peace in the room.