“Wake up! We have to take Melanie to the hospital!” those were the only clear words I heard as I was awaken from a sound sleep at three in the morning. I threw the covers off and heard something smash against the wall in the darkness, later I would find out it was my cell phone had somehow been whipped off the night table by the covers as I threw them off - I have so much bad luck with cell phones.

“what’s going on?” I asked as I jumped into my clothes and could feel myself starting to hyperventilate.

“she’s having trouble breathing!”

My niece was laying on the sofa, her breathing was shallow and rough sounding.

She looked up at me and through labored breathing and said, “I love you with all my heart.”

Any tough guy, macho facade I may have had at the time just melted as I said, “I love you too baby. You’re going to be ok.”

“ok,” she said and closed her eyes.

I kissed her on the forehead, wrapped her in a blanket and buckled her in her seat, then I jumped into the driver’s side of the car and drove to the hospital, well, more like flew to the hospital with my emergency lights on. Calls were made as we drove to the hospital, so my niece would have three of the important people in her life there with her, her mom, her grandma and myself.

My mom and sister took her into the emergency room while I parked the car. By the time I got back they had already taken her back and put her in a room so I sat in the waiting room waiting and watching the other people who were there with their own sick children, but not really paying attention to them. My thoughts drifted from memory to memory of other visits to the waiting room. I thought about the time when we brought my nephew in for almost the same exact thing and how rough that experience had been. I thought of the time I was sitting in the waiting room and my mom told us she had cancer and I thought of the time so many years ago as I waited on that Easter Sunday for the paramedics to come out and confirm that the little girl I loved so much had been killed by a drunk driver and how my life would change forever after that. I let the thoughts come and go, but I didn’t linger on them long. I was there for my niece and had to focus on that.

I thought of the look in her eyes as she struggled to breathe and how she said she loved me with all her heart and how she didn’t question my words when I said she was going to be ok. She had no reason not to believe me, I never lie to the kids. I want them to know that no matter what I will always tell them the truth. This time I didn’t know what was going on but I had to believe that she was going to be alright and that was all she needed. I had to go outside to be alone and clear my head.

Please let her be ok.

My sister was waiting for me when I went back inside the waiting room. “She wants you. She wants her uncle.”

When I walked into the room, she reached out to me and called out my name. Her eyes were rimmed with tears. “I threw up.” She cried.

“It’s ok.” I said pushing her hair from her forehead.

The nurse came in, “we need to give her a shot because she threw up her medicine.”

my niece looked up at me with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen. “I don’t want a shot. It’s going to hurt.”

“It will hurt for a little bit, but then you’ll feel better after that.” I told her as she reached for my hand.

“Ok.” she knew I was telling her the truth.

The nurse wiped a spot on her leg, then jabbed the needle in. My niece held my hand and then she cried. The nurse put a “Hello Kitty” on her leg and right away my niece started to feel better. As the nurse prepared the breathing treatment I ran my fingers through my nieces hair and said to her, “I love you with all my heart.”

She smiled at me. “I love you with all my heart too.”

The nurse put the breathing mask on her and soon she was sound asleep. I watched her late into the night and then into the early morning as she inhaled the mist that helped open up her airways so she could breathe. I don’t know when, but sometime during the early morning hours I rested my head next to hers and slowly fell asleep.

“Everything was going to be ok.”