The Waiting Room

My brother is on his way to the emergency room.

I made him promise me that he would call me to keep me posted on what was going on. Then I made him put his girlfriend on the phone so she would promise to call me and keep me posted.

So now I sit and wait.

It's nothing super serious. He thinks he might have strep throat, and he spent the better part of an hour on the phone with me, each of us Googling symptoms and images of sore throats.

Love is willingly looking at images of throats that resemble something out of a "Friday the Thirteenth" movie. Mom and Dad apparently did something right with this whole parenting thing.

He wasn't sure whether to get it checked out. He was an accident-prone kid growing up, so he's been in emergency rooms before. But those were from cuts or concussions sustained playing in ball games. Not something with an unclear diagnosis. He didn't know whether this was strep. He, like I, never had any sore throats Luden's Wild Cherry coughdrops couldn't cure.

And as for his supposedly older and wiser sister? The only time I've been in a hospital since birth has been to visit ill relatives, console a friend who had been in a car accident and to take a single tai chi class. I try to steer clear of the medicine house, and it has politely steered clear of me.

So we were trying to figure out what was going on. He's in Massachusetts; I clearly am not. So I listened to cell-phone transmitted descriptions of the symptoms and tried matching them up against whatever IDoctor site I could find.

Finally, I told him I think he should have it checked out. "Better to know one way or the other so you can deal accordingly. And if it is strep, if the rapid test comes back positive, they can get you on drugs and you'll start to feel better. Drugs are good."

My brother is straight edge. But he agreed with me on this one.

So now he's on the way to the hospital. And I'm letting my cell phone charge so I can take the late night calls. I already called my mother (who had been worrying about him all day) to let her know what was going on. Because otherwise, she would have stayed up all night.

I made her promise me that she would go to sleep. I made her promise me that she wouldn't worry if she didn't hear from me, because I was going to call her before she left the house at 7:30 tomorrow morning. I made her promise that she wouldn't try calling him while he was getting checked out.

She promised on all counts, and then she thanked me. For what, I'm not sure. For being a bossy bitch?

As I prepared to hang up, she chuckled sleepily into the phone.

"It's fun, isn't it?"

"Isn't what?" I asked.

"Being a parent."

I had to laugh. I really was in Mom Mode.

"Oh yes. Tons of fun. Now go to sleep, honey."