Free Escape Points by Michele Weldon Page B

a few hours and the operation was uneventful.
    For months into years, he wore red plastic earplugs when swimming, and I was always careful washing his hair in the tub. At bath time I cupped one hand around each ear as I carefully poured water from a plastic cup over his head to rinse the suds from his scalp. I bathed him simultaneously in the tub with Brendan to save time, and Brendan would imitate me and cup his own hands over his ears. Brendan was a little more than a year old and would sit in the tub behind Weldon and splash and giggle until I washed his hair.
    Like the doctor had promised, one day the tiny cylindrical tubes fell out and he had no more ear infections. He had outgrown them like so many pairs of his gym shoes and corduroy pants.
    It was almost closing time at the emergency care center when the doctor wrapped Weldon’s ear with a large bandage that made him look something like the illustration on the cover of The Red Badge of Courage . When he woke up in the morning, his ear was filled with fluid again, only this time it throbbed painfully. He was not happy.
    Of course, it was my fault. I should never have taken him there. The doctor was an idiot, didn’t know what she was doing. Why did I take him there? An assistant coach drained Peter’s ear in his garage just a few days before. The garage.
    After checking the instructions for a follow-up, I made an appointment with an ear, nose, and throat specialist. The office was in Berwyn and we had a 6:30 evening appointment the next day.
    That day it snowed unforgivingly. I drove two hours in crawling traffic to get from my office to the high school to pick up Weldon, and another hour and a half to get a few miles to the new doctor’soffice. The windshield wipers were little protection against the driving snow.
    “Why don’t you just leave me alone?” He was shouting most of the way.
    I was very upset and fought back tears. “I am only trying to do what is best for you.”
    We arrived before 8 PM , after I called the office repeatedly to beg for them to stay open. They did. This doctor was not so forgiving.
    “You cannot wrestle with this ear for at least two weeks,” he told Weldon.
    Now I had done it. I had taken away his chance to win at wrestling, to place at state.
    He fidgeted in the chair as the doctor told him he would drain it again and this time stitch it down—literally sewing the front of the ear to the back—so the ear would not fill up with fluid. The doctor told him wrestling was a dangerous sport.
    “My son plays soccer, why not try that?” the doctor asked.
    I didn’t tell him Weldon already had. It was all wrestling all the time now, no more baseball, no more basketball, no more soccer. Wrestling was it.
    When the doctor turned his back to Weldon and toward the tray of instruments, Weldon shot me a look that would melt many fainthearted parents. I didn’t care. I was going to fix what was wrong. I was not going to let my son have the ear. No matter how much he hated me at that moment, I felt I was right. I was going to fix this.
    It was December and the season was heating up. Weldon said he had no choice; he had to compete. When I stopped Powell at a meet, frantic about Weldon’s ear filling again with fluid, he told me not to worry, that it would be fine. Weldon did need to wrestle. He was fine.
    This was crazy. He had an injury, for God’s sake.
    Almost a week after Weldon got the ear, after the trip to the emergency care and twice to the ear, nose, and throat specialist he despised, I e-mailed the boys’ pediatrician, Dr. Sharon Flint. We developed a friendship over the years, seeing each other at the boys’ annual physicals. We also attended the same church when I livedin Oak Park, our kids were roughly the same ages, and we went to some of the same parties. Our birthdays were a day apart, and we had breakfast to mark the occasion every year. I explained Weldon’s condition to Sharon and she gave me the name of a specialist