The Importance of Waiting

Riley's doctor told him over the phone that he had no chests available. He called the hospital every couple of hours, that day and the next and the day after that. What we really got for his trouble was, she's resting. When he asked if he could at least speak to her, or FaceTime, what about FaceTime? Riley didn't yet understand that you had to be sedated to tolerate having a polyvinyl chloride tube jammed down your throat 24-7 while a machine did your breathing for you. Or that the virus produced lesions of a lung tissue which scarred over and made it still harder to breathe on your own progressively harder, minute by minute, day