This morning came earlier than I had anticipated, ushered in by the familiar clack of a dog’s toenails against the hardwood floor and the cold, attic air upon my nose and ears. With a rainy drizzle steadily dripping along outside my bedroom window, the circumstances were ideal for sleep long into the early afternoon hours.

I recall being a little girl and waking up in the middle of the night, sick to my stomach and scared. Clad in a little blue nightgown and clutching a stuffed animal, I would totter into my parent’s room awakening their sleeping lumps with an apologetic whine for help. This morning, it was my mother who approached my slumbering self with news of unease.

Where her stomach had been quite upset the day before, today the situation had worsened and she had received orders from her doctor to visit our local emergency room. “It must have been the almonds I ate” she theorized as I maneuvered her Prius onto 1-95 towards the shoreline emergency center, memories of a more menacing sickness brewing in both our minds.

About seven hours later, after an all to familiar foray into the world of MRIs, Morphine, EKGs, Catscans, and waiting rooms, here I sit, processing it all. My mom’s border collie, Spin-o is asking me to take him out for a walk, a lengthy one at that as he has waited so patiently all day long.

I am no stranger to responsibility…nor should I be, I am twenty years old and every day more of a woman of heart and mind than ever before. I have seen my share of hospitals, of heartache and of victory and have taken it all in stride. Yet, sometimes I feel like I am once again a timid, nightgown clad, little girl, looking for someone to hold her hand, and whisper reassuringly, that it’s all going to be ok.