Mothers Beach

 My wrist started buzzing. 

It was my watch alerting me to the fact that my daughter was calling.

I was somewhere between Harris Drive and Great Hill, halfway through a three-mile beach run on a waning family vacation. 

Modern technology can be a miracle or a curse, and my brain was still wrestling with which type this would be as I went digging through pockets for my phone before my daughter's call went to voicemail. 

Curses. 

Panic was in her voice.

A week-long, feeling-off sort of stomach had graduated from the female relegation to an urgent concern.

"I feel like I'm dying, and I can't move. I need you."

She hung up.

When I called back, the hollow sound of her retching answered. 

I had left her father and dog on the sandy beach only 15 minutes earlier. The pair had probably managed to lumber down to the surf, maybe a quarter-mile from the car, at least by my panicked calculations.

He answered on the first ring. 

I told him about the call and my Gray's Anatomy mind going straight for a ruptured appendix and a mother's intuition that erring on the side of caution would mean an Emergency Room visit just to be safe.

Head toward Mothers Beach. I'm headed your way.

I was running again, only faster. My throat now filled with anxiety as all my huffing and puffing stayed cordoned off from my surroundings behind a mask. I have grown accustomed to laboring in filtered air. 

The watch on my wrist is alerting me to intervals that I ignore. I only turn it off when I'm finally seated on the passenger side as we speed towards "home." Only I hadn't been effective in turning it off.

As we pulled into the driveway, the watch congratulated me on having beaten my fastest 5k. 

I make the beeping stop as I sprint up the pathway and into the house. Her grandmother is already there as I pinball around the house, gathering supplies.

I am surprised my bag already contains all the things a mother would need for just this moment - including a thermometer. Another miracle, since I was never the mother who prepared. 

We are on our way to the car as she holds the magic wand in her mouth until it beeps ...

And once again, after I switch its reading from Celsius to Fahrenheit, so I can understand she hasn't got a fever without Googling conversions. 

"That's good," I tell her confidently without knowing for sure that it is.

Her father makes it all the way to the driver's seat before I send him back into the house for a bucket, just in case. We have a half-hour's ride ahead of us.

I seem calm, though I can't see it for myself. I feel like static electricity and chaos combined. I am just glad not to be driving. 

I am sitting next to her in the backseat as she writhes around, seeking a position that provides some comfort. Eventually, she lays down as I stroke her forehead and press on her side. 

We breathe together to stave off panic: inhale deeply, try to match the same length of exhalation. Inhale. Exhale.

We are two minutes away from the hospital when she finally vomits and realizes the pain receding.

When the nurse asks about the scale of discomfort, she 

subtracts eight points from the car ride, leaving her with a manageable in not slightly embarrassing 2.

They take blood and vital signs and wait for results. The rule out the bad and the ugly, though the doctor returns to the room with an ultrasound machine to screen her kidneys. They seem unremarkable.

After a couple of hours, we are released with an advisory to check in with her primary doctor and repeat a specific test in a few days.

The chances are high, the doctor tells me, the reason for her pain could remain a mystery unless whatever the ailment gets worse.

It's all spelled out on the sheets they handed us before they sent us on our way. We followed the exit signs to the parking lot and drove back to grandma's house. 

I am thankful my mother's intuition isn't usually right.