For the Good of My Grandsons: A Short Story of Fiction

It was after two a.m. when Mimi called the ambulance. Joe didn’t want her to, but her husband’s choking cough had her terrified. The medics arrived in less than five minutes and the first thing they did was give Joe oxygen. The choking stopped but not the cough. It was decided to take him to the emergency room.

Four hours later, as the sun was rising, Joe was given a diagnosis of sorts.

“It might be bronchitis or it might be whooping cough…”

“Whooping cough?!” Mimi interrupted.

“Doctor,” Joe interjected.  “I had all my vaccinations as a child.”

“Yes, well,” the doctor rubbed his eyes. “You’re in your sixties. The vaccinations wear out with time and there’re these young parents who think they know more than the medical establishment and refuse to have their children inoculated and so the disease is out there.”

“I thought schools wouldn’t take kids without their vaccinations,” Mimi spoke slowly trying to digest what she’d been told.

“Lots of those children go to private schools.” The doctor shook his head with disgust. ‘I’m giving you an antibiotic to stop you from being contagious if it is whooping cough. Also some cough medicine and an aspirator. You need a few days of bed rest. I’ll contact you as soon as we have the results from the blood test and we know for sure what it is.”

The doctor signed Joe’s discharge and sent him on his way.  Joe followed instructions and once home collapsed into bed. Mimi showered and set off for work. Extra coffee and chocolate got her through the day but she was exhausted by the time she arrived home.

Still, she couldn’t stop thinking about the doctor’s words. Instead of an early night she sat down at the computer and composed an email. Dear ---, it read. In light of the wide outbreak of measles, whooping cough, and other diseases once controlled by inoculations, I urge you to pass a law fining all private schools, kindergartens, and day care centres which accept children without their required vaccinations. She sent it out to every government official connected with education or health that she could think of. In the morning she sent a copy to the editor of the local paper. Mimi was pleased to see they printed it the next day. She was even more pleased with the positive responses her letter received. Some of the legislators agreed with her email and her initiative was gaining momentum. A week later she was interviewed on the six o’clock news.

Mimi was passionate as she spoke calling the parents who didn’t give their children the required shots parasites. “They’re counting on everyone else to do what they don’t want to do. We’re giving our children shots, dealing with their fevers and crankiness afterwards and they benefit from it. It’s not right!”

The interviewer tried to be fair. “A lot of those parents are worried their children will develop autism from the vaccinations.”

Mimi had done her homework. “That study was proven to have had false data. Its author lost his medical licence.”

She was proud of herself for speaking so well. Not everyone was as enthusiastic though. In fact it was on her way home that she received a phone call from her older daughter.

“Mom,” Rachel plunged straight in to her complaint. “How could you call parents who don’t vaccinate their kids parasites?”

“Well…”

“Don’t you know you’re talking about your own daughter?”

“What are you telling me?” Mimi asked warily.

“Karen didn’t give her boys their shots.”

“Are you serious?” Mimi gasped.

“Yes, and she’s very hurt you called her a parasite.”

Mimi resolved she’d call her younger daughter as soon as she arrived home but Karen pre-empted her.

“Mom,” her daughter’s voice was shrill. “If you get your law passed I’ll have to quit work. I’ll have no place to send the boys.”

“Why aren’t you giving them their vaccinations?” Mimi kept her voice calm, but her pulse raced and her stomach clenched.

“Dan won’t hear of it,” Karen exclaimed.

“Why not?” Mimi had always thought her son-in-law to be a reasonable, pragmatic man not given to hysteria.

“Growing up his next-door neighbors had a son with autism. They were told it was from the shots. Nothing will convince him otherwise. Please,” Karen’s voice was tearful. “stop this law.”

“I may have started the snowball, but it gained its momentum on its own and it’s out of my hands.”

“At least, stop pushing it! Think of your grandsons!”

Mimi pictured Karen’s freckle-faced boys whom she loved as much, if not more, than Joe, being disabled by polio or becoming sterile from mumps.

“I am thinking of them,” she spoke emotionally. “I’m sorry, Karen.”

Five days went by and Mimi didn’t hear from either of her girls. And then she got a 

What’s App from Rachel. Check out Facebook. She did and saw what Karen had posted.

An Open Letter to My Mother,   

I don’t know what has happened to the open-minded, tolerant mother you were. Parents make the best choices they can for their children and it’s wrong for the government to interfere in their decision-making. I love you, I always will, in spite of your cruel actions but I expect you to stop your campaign against my family and others like us who have made an educated decision not to inoculate our precious children.

As Mimi read the letter she felt her heart beating and face flush. Tears sprang to her eyes.

“Joe,” she called somewhat hysterically. “Read this!”

Her husband complied and Mimi tried to breath normally.

“What do you think I should do?” she asked plaintively.

“Well.” Before he could speak further Joe was hit with a whooping cough fit; the blood test had come back positive. While she watched him struggle for control her resolve set in. She had no need of her husband’s advice.  Sitting in front of her computer she composed her own letter just to her younger daughter.

Dear Karen,

There are no words to describe the love a mother has for her child and you, Dan, and the boys are as dear to me as my own life. I would do almost anything to prove that love to you but just because it’s my daughter doing something wrong, I cannot claim that it’s right. I pray with time you’ll understand that what I’ve done is not against but, rather for the good of my beloved grandsons.  I pray that someday you will forgive me.

Love, your mother

 

courtesy of babycarecambodia