SCREAMING IN TONGUES

The sun was still shining, though low in the sky, when the paramedics crashed through the doors of the emergency room with a doomed kid. His parents had found him crumpled in a corner of the garage, a plastic bag gooey with airplane glue covering his nose and mouth.

He was 10, maybe 11. Blue at the base of his fingernails but still warm. We lifted him onto the table and made a huddle around his stillness. A nurse cut away his shirt. Someone else's fingers prodded the boy's neck in search of a pulse, while someone else tried to find a vein in his arms to start an IV.

From my position by the boy's head I looked over the huddle to a corner of the ER. The boy's parents were there, hugging each other and staring at us through shiny eyes. Their lips moved but all I could hear then was the head nurse demanding my attention.

"Hold this," she ordered -- "this" being the tape around an IV she had just started in the boy's neck. I commanded my hands to quit shaking; they ignored me. The boy stared up at me through half-closed eyes. His eyes were brown. His lips were blue. Globs of glue still hung on the skin around his mouth and nose, like snot from an especially vicious sneeze.

Paddles were prepared and a shout of "clear" made me step back. The boy's body jerked.

"Thank you, Jesus!" his parents shouted. Then something that sounded like "Mechla ombida zeffernostis!" And then more words beyond my comprehension. Charismatics, someone in the huddle whispered, just before the boy got another jolt to the chest.

"YES, JESUS!" The parents were almost overcome with joy, seeing their boy move on the table. "ESLAM TEEKA BOPEDONIUS!!" And now his mother began to scream, a low siren that climbed in pitch and intensity before ending in a series of whoops and gibberish. Her husband joined her in mid-scream, like a nightmare "Row You Boat" singalong.

"Again," the head nurse ordered, and once more the boy jerked several inches off the table. Three sets of round red marks sharply contrasted with his pale skin. My nostrils flared at the smell of burnt hair.

We worked for the better part of a half-hour on the dead boy before giving up. As I walked out of the ER to smoke a fag I heard his parents still screaming in tongues, lapsing into English only to thank Jesus with great fervency.