Skyward

It was times like these he wondered if he’d made the right choice to dedicate his life to saving birds. Most biologists connected with wildlife conservation understood from the get-go that the job required long hours and endless dedication. They loved their work, couldn’t imagine doing anything else, but the job took its toll on their personal lives, not to mention their bankbooks. He sighed. Putting his wallet back into his pocket, he knew his answer would be yes.

When he looked up again, he saw a minor commotion over at the toy aisle. A few people were bending over something on the floor.

“Marion!” he blurted out, and took off at a run. He pushed through the small cluster of people to find his daughter lying on the floor ashen-faced with her eyes rolled back, jerking uncontrollably. His heart rate zoomed. Kneeling, he scooped his little girl in his arms and began loosening her hood and jacket with shaky fingers.

“She just fell down, like she fainted!” an elderly woman exclaimed. “I saw her.”

A slight trickle of blood oozed from her mouth. Had she bitten her tongue? He tried to wedge open her mouth but her teeth were clamped tight. His mind fought through a horrifying panic as he tried to diagnose Marion’s problem. Epilepsy? Fever? He felt choked and his hands shook. This wasn’t some hawk or an eagle. This was his daughter and he didn’t know what to do.

He looked up at the wall of onlookers, eyes wild, and shouted, “Will someone call an ambulance?”

Accipiters: The Woodland Darters.Accipiters are agile, determined hunters. Their shorter, rounder wings and long tails are adapted for the quick bursts of speed and weaving through branches and brush needed to hunt other birds. Accipiters include sharp-shinned hawks, Cooper’s hawks and goshawks.

3

Harris never realized how mere weeks could change an entire life. In less than a month’s time, his hard-won routine was turned upside down. There were times that he could almost hear the gods laughing at his hubris for believing he’d had everything in control.

Still, he was lucky. He knew that, too. Things could always be worse, had been worse.

He stood in the main room of the small Cape Cod house watching his daughter as she lay peacefully on the sofa. She was enveloped in a cocoon of pillows and wrapped in an old yellow-and-brown afghan. Clutched to her chest was the ever-present doll, Gaudy Lulu. Marion’s blue eyes, fringed with pale lashes, stared fixedly at the cartoons on the television. Her wispy blond hair curled behind gently pointed ears that protruded a tad too far. A smattering of faint freckles bloomed over an upturned nose.

To look at her now, she appeared like any other normal five-year-old girl watching television.

But she wasn’t.

Marion had juvenile diabetes.

Diabetes. He still couldn’t reconcile it in his mind. When the doctor had given him the diagnosis that night in the hospital, he’d felt the floor open up to swallow him. He’d stood staring back at the doctor, mouth agape. Of all the possibilities that had spun madly in his worry-crazed mind while pacing in the hospital waiting room, diabetes had never occurred to him. Sure, he knew a little about the disease. Diabetes meant there was too much sugar in the body. People with diabetes needed insulin. But these were adult people, not little children. Not five-year-olds who had never had a serious illness before.

But later, once he began reading about the disease, he recognized all the symptoms that had been there all along if only he’d really paid attention. The excessive thirst, increased urination, weight loss, irritability—they were all warning signs of Type 1 diabetes, the rarest and most severe form of the disease.

That was when the guilt set in. A gnawing, insidious, ever-present self-loathing that he could have let her condition get so bad that her sugar dropped low enough to cause convulsions. He felt like the world’s worst and most pathetic father.

Only he didn’t have time for guilt. Living with diabetes was all-consuming. Nothing was easy. He couldn’t even make Marion a snack without worrying about what calories she was taking in and watching for reactions. For the first time since becoming a father, Harris was afraid to take care of his own child.

He looked again at his daughter curled up on the couch watching TV. How sweet and innocent she appeared. And how deceiving it was. He shook his head, took a deep breath and braced himself for what was coming.

“Marion? It’s time to do the test.”

Instantly, all sweetness fled from her face as she jackknifed her knees to her chest, locking her arms tight around them. “No!” she shouted.

“Come on, honey. You know we’ve got to do this.”

“No!”

Harris released a ragged sigh. So, it was going to be another fight. As he walked toward her, she backed up against the armrest and cowered in the corner of the sofa, her hands up, nails out, to ward him off. She looked just like one of the wild, terrified birds when he reached to grab them—all glaring eyes and talons ready to attack.

As with his birds, he moved toward her in slow strides, murmuring assurances in low tones. Then, swiftly, he grabbed hold. Marion reacted instantly, shrieking and kicking at him as viciously as any wild bird.

“No! I don’t wanna. No, no, no!”

Her screams ricocheted from the walls to reverberate in his head. She was an amazingly strong child for such a skinny thing—and wily. When he tried to pick her up, her legs sprang straight out and she began kicking and pummeling with bunched fists even as she began sliding from the sofa.

“What in heaven’s name is going on in here?”

Harris recognized Maggie’s voice over the shrieks. So did Marion. She paused for just a second, then renewed her fight with even more vigor. He tightened his grip as she tried to wriggle away.

“Oh, no you don’t,” he said to his daughter as he hoisted her back up onto the sofa.

“It sounds like you’re committing bloody murder in here,” said Maggie, entering the house.

“That’d be easier than this,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ve got to prick her finger for a blood sample. Ouch! Marion, stop kicking me.”

Maggie chuckled and came forward. “It might help if you took off her shoes.”

“Be my guest.”

Maggie reached out and, with the same skill she employed with birds, quickly took hold of Marion’s feet and in seconds had both shoes removed. She kept her grip on Marion’s legs. This seemed to make Marion even madder and she tried all the harder to kick and wiggle her way free, her face turning beet red.

“Lord, she’s stronger than a great horned owl.”

“She bites like one, too. Quick, grab hold of her left hand.”

Once Maggie took hold of her hand, Marion’s screams heightened in pitch to near hysteria.

“She’s holding her breath. Quick!”

Harris wiped the sweat from his brow with his elbow, took aim, quickly pricked the finger, then with split-second timing, dabbed the test strip against the bright red drop of blood on her fingertip.

“Got it,” he said with triumph.

The fight seemed to flee from Marion’s little body as she exhaled a defiant cry, then slumped, defeated and sobbing, against the pillows.

“There’s got to be an easier way,” Maggie said, checking her arm for bruises.

“If there is, I’d like to know what it is.” He reached over to pat his daughter’s head but she slapped his hand away.

“I hate you!” she cried, scrambling from the sofa and running off to her bedroom like someone escaping an inquisition.

Harris ran his hand through his hair when the bedroom door slammed shut between them.

Maggie raised her eyes to heaven. “How often do you have to do this?”

“I have to check the blood sugar six times a day, then I get to give her a shot of insulin three times a day. At least. That’s six to nine pokes with a needle each day.”

“Lord have mercy.”

“Yeah. Mercy on me. She tried being brave at first, now it’s just total war.”