Glass Floors

Evan's first seizure was the lose-consciousness-fall-in-the-floor type once called "grand mal" and now known as "generalized tonic clonic."

The day after the accident, 6-year-old Katie lay in a hospital bed on the right side of the room, her forehead covered by a huge bandage. My husband lay in another bed on the left, unbandaged but unfocused. 10-year-old Evan lay in the bed beside Bill, each of them green and pasty under the fluorescent light over the beds. I sat on a beige vinyl visitor's chair between the beds.

A movie played on the television suspended from the ceiling. At a commercial, Evan stood and started to the bathroom. Halfway cross the room, he collapsed. By the time I got to him, his body was stiff, his limbs jerking.

The nurse who answered the call button would not touch him. "I can't. He's not a patient," she said.

Evan came to while I was scrambling for help. I lifted him into a wheelchair and rushed him to the emergency room, where the long search for answers began.

In the weeks that followed, we never knew when it would happen again. Bouncing across the family room, riding a bike in the street, balancing on a ledge in a parking lot. Every step was treacherous.

I felt as though the floors were glass, thin glass that might shatter at any moment and send us plunging into the dark, bleeding and broken.

There's no feel-good ending to this little tale, no "and then I woke up." Not sure why, but that glass-floor feeling has been with me over the last few days.

Eerie.