The second-worst time in my life.

Yesterday Orson and I were having a late-breakfast. He was buckled into his booster-seat. I went into the kitchen for a moment. Orson pushed himself away from the table, fell over backwards, and hit his head on the metal floor-lock of the rear sliding door of our house.

He screamed, I panicked and felt his head. There was a soft-spot. I called 911 (never done that before) and the guys arrived shortly thereafter. Paramedics are, apparently, schooled in making you think there is nothing wrong at all, and that you may be overreacting. That soft spot? Just the bruise. And about that part, they were right.

"Is he bleeding from his nose?" one asked. No, I said, that was plum juice. He laughed. "And we're supposed to be professionals." They asked if we wanted to go in the ambulance, though they would have left me there if I had asked them to. I guess that's their job. By the time we were ready to go, Toni had returned from an interrupted yoga class and she went in the ambulance and I followed in the car, loudly cursing myself and trying not to say out loud that I had killed my own child.

Friday morning, pre-op.

It was a long day in a thankfully empty E.R. at University Hospitals. Toni stayed with Orson - who seemed fine. He hadn't passed out or vomitted (a fact we would recount a million times, always with the same surprised reaction from whoever was asking this time) and was smiling and generally being himself. The paramedics thought he would just have a large bump. The folks at the E.R. thought he may have a slight dent, but nothing serious. I particiapted in the harrowing act of strapping Orson down to take X-rays, then left to pick Zelda up from school.

I stayed with Z. all afternoon, an afternoon that went from sunshine to dreary storm clouds and back again, until Kelly came over. Meanwhile the reports from Toni went from, "you were overreacting" to stomach-churning horror. Yes, there may be a dent, but it's nothing serious (and the X-ray computers shut down for awhile for good measure) then they decided there was a slight fracture but he may be able to go home - but they'd need to run a CAT scan - and finally the diagnosis that he had a depression fracture, which may or may not be pressing against his brain, and they would need to operate.

I broke my son's head and now he requires surgery. There's no more delicate way to put that.

Returning to the E.R. I met the team. The best pediatric neurosurgeons at Rainbow Babies' and Children's Hospital, which is to say, the best pediatric neurosurgeons in the world. It was at this time that I remembered to say I was grateful I was living in Cleveland, and not, say, in Baghdad, or Baalbek. Or Chicago.

Friday morning, pre-op. Parents attempt to put on a brave face.

They would make an incision, try to "pop-out" the fractured skull if they could, or remove it if they couldn't, repair it with absorbing plates and pins and put it back. There would be no dent, the plates and pins would eventually disolve. And they would check the membrane around the skull to be sure it is intact, repair it if not, so there would be no complications as he grows older.

That was announced in the late afternoon. And hearing it described that way, by those people, I felt a slight relief to the anxiety I had been enduring since ten that morning. Knowing something could be done was better than any fear of what it was they were actually saying to me.

Toni spent the night with O. I went home to take care of Zelda. This morning we visited both of them before taking Zelda to school, and then I returned to the hospital for the surgery, scheduled for ten, though they didn't get to him until twelve-thirty. A two-hour operation was predicted.

After sobbing silently for maybe half a minute, I pressed everything back down again and we were free to have lunch together while the operation took place.

Friday afternoon, post-op.

Toni was a bit delirious. She'd had lunches at the cafeteria at U.H. many times before, usually on our way out of midwife appointments at MacDonald. But this was different. I didn't rush her, I told her not to get addled, to decide what she wanted first, then pick it up (there are several counters offering a wide variety of food, from healthy to not) and buy whatever she wanted. We sat at a table and I said, "Welcome to my world."

Sitting in that atrium, anxiously stuffing my face is something I have been doing on and off for five years. But I'd never done it with her. First when she was in labor with Calvin, then a few times after Zelda was born (that was all right) and then when Orson's delivery had stalled. I am sick of eating in the atrium at University Hospitals. But at least this time she was sitting there with me.

We went to the waiting room, where we made cellphone calls and were generally miserable. As two-thirty approached, I commented that they would certainly not be getting us right at two-thirty.

I was wrong. The doctor walked in right at two-thirty. Everything went according to plan, the fracture was bigger than they thought, and pressing down on the brain a lot, so it was a very good thing they went in. The membrane was intact. The surgery was successful. Orson was going to be fine.

We caught sight of him a they wheeled him by. He was awake! He was himself. He is Orson.

The rest of the day we took turns holding him, trying to comfort him when the morphine waned. Toni and Orson are there now. I am home with Zelda and her MP (Con.)

Accidents happen, they say. But this was stupid. The one thing I did right was call 911, everyone else who has kids and has commented on it admits they wouldn't have. Even Toni - though if she'd been there, I don't believe she'd say the same thing. But if awful, stupid accidents like this must happen, I am intensely grateful everything else went right.