Things that go barf in the night

Seventeen years ago, while living in Southern California, Kelly and I were jarred from sleep one night by a horrendous crash we were convinced was breaking glass. Creeping nervously through the dark, fearful of intruders, I was relieved to find that what we’d heard was a fluorescent light panel falling from our kitchen ceiling and shattering into a million pieces on the floor. Still, that was a pretty scary sound.

A few years later, still in Southern California, Kelly and I woke to the sound of our apartment creaking and squealing like a worn-out rocking chair as the Northridge earthquake ripped through the area. Even without the shaking, that was definitely a scary sound.

And then last year, while living in Foster City, I was just nodding off to sleep one night when our carbon monoxide detector pierced the darkness with its shrill cry. Because we'd had a series of what we believed were false alarms on another detector earlier in the week, hearing the new one go off was cause for concern. And it was another scary sound.

Yet, none of those sounds holds a prayer in the "scary" department to the one I heard last night. Exhausted and short on sleep after a very early morning departure by Kelly, and having been alone for the day while she’d met with her firm's other partners in Sacramento, I was enjoying some deep and overdue sleep when, at roughly 2:30, I heard Zoë, a foot or so from my face, whispering to me.

"Daddy, I just threw up all over my bed."

Now that was a scary sound.

You see, in our family, Zach is the "stomach" kid and Zoë is the "cold" one. Zach tends to come down with vomit-inducing bugs at least once or twice a year, and because he's been that way since a very young age, he's well versed in the "get to the bathroom and over the toilet" routine, even when struck during the night. Meanwhile, Zach seems immune to colds, and when he catches one, it passes quickly.

Zoë, on the other hand, brings home every cold that passes through town (or school or store or who knows where else), no doubt in part because she still sucks her thumb. Oddly, she’s rarely had stomach ailments, and vomiting is so foreign to her that when she became carsick a few months ago after a big breakfast followed by a mountain drive, it actually scared her when she threw up. In spite of being nearly five, she didn't understand what was happening.

So, needless to say, when Zoë woke up last night with a hankering to hurl, she had no idea what to do. And so she did...well, nothing. She just sat up and barfed all over herself and everything around her. And realizing this was probably the case, I leapt out of bed the instant I heard her, fearing the worst—but it was so much worse than that, as I was about to find out.

As Zoë and I approached her room in the dark, trying not to wake the rest of the family, I began to feel, well—there's no way of putting this delicately—dampness under my feet. And chunks. Accompanied by a horrible stench. And we weren't even to her bedroom yet. When we arrived there and turned on the light, it was not a pretty sight. In fact, it was downright scary, straight out of The Exorcist.

I'll skip most of the gory details and just say that Zoë had eaten quite a bit Saturday night, and every last bit of what she’d consumed was making its presence known. On her comforter, on her sheets, on her throw rug, on her toy box...on everything, basically. And it was about that time that I realized "it" was all over Zoë, too. And that she'd been dripping it as she'd walked around the house. And tracking it all over the carpet with her feet. Ick.

After getting Zoë into the bathroom to isolate the mess, I was relieved to see Kelly emerge from our room, because much as I wanted her to sleep, this was definitely a two-person job. So, while she took to cleaning up Zoë and pulling her hair back into a ponytail, I stripped the bed, wiped down everything else in her room, and spot-cleaned the carpet. Then I took the big Costco-sized carton of disinfecting wipes and, concerned for Zienna's health, attacked every surface with which I thought Zoë might have had contact, going over them twice to be sure. And then, as Kelly got Zoë dressed and ready to return to, um, sleeping bag (We are, after all, living out of boxes, and linens are in short supply!), I mopped the bathroom floor in a hurry so we could all get back to sleep.

Or so I thought. Because just as I finished mopping, Zoë called out to me, announcing she was about to throw up again. Poor kid, I thought, but no problem, really, because to head off any more messes, I'd placed at Zoë's side a ridiculously large plastic bowl. And it might well have helped, except that Zoë again proved she was a rookie at ralphing by sitting up, placing the bowl in her lap—with her ponytail dangling straight into it—and doing the deed. Of course the mess went into her hair, onto her nightgown, and onto the sleeping bag. Back to square one.

The rest of the early-morning hours passed slowly, as Zoë called out to me for assurance or to change a movie like clockwork each time I nodded off. And there was one other episode of vomiting shortly before dawn the nature of which was, believe it or not in light of what's been shared already, too graphic to tell here. But when Kelly and I finally gave up and crawled out of bed, it had been a very long night, and our bleary eyes were proof of that.

As for Zoë, after last getting sick around 6:30, it wasn't two hours later and she was asking for French toast. And shortly after that, she was dancing, singing, and asking to come out of her room. Now it's mid-day, and she's asking for lunch and to play a game. Go figure.

And me? I'm running on autopilot and looking forward to tonight so I can finally get some sleep. At least I hope I can. I’m still having flashbacks of the latest scary sound to wake me and reflecting on the saying, "People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one." Amen to that, brother.