Anonymous,
IA.

My mother had left the hospital to go home for a while, take a long hot shower,get fresh clothes for us both,and other little errands. Since I was a toddler of 3 or 4 years old I couldn’t be left alone in the hospital Pediatric Intensive Care ward,so my mother left my father there in the room with me. English was not his first or even second language and being White whereas my mother was Black placed him at even greater disadvantage to get any respect from the gossiping nurses. He was not even given basic rights of privacy, because the door was left wide open instead of closed as was when my mother was with me. His plan was originally to just sit there by my crib while I remained basically unconscious under heavy sedation until my mother returned, but I woke up,fussy and inconsolable. Unwilling to summon the haughty nurses for assistance as recommended, he attempted to remove me from the crib to rock on his own, tangling the various tubes and wires attached to me until a tube draining fluid from my lungs was dislodged and an alarm was set off. Within seconds a team of doctors and nurses and techs came crashing through the door. In the melee I was snatched from his arms which enraged him so that he let loose with an impassioned denunciation of his discrimatory treatment, but since he spoke his native Slavic tongue, it sounded as if he were ranting like a lunatic though and security was called. It took 5 policeman to wrestle this 2 meter tall plus professional athlete to the ground,so that he could be put down with a shot like some mental patient. My mother,who was just returning from her break, was horrified and silenced the staff with the words, “That’s my husband! That’s her daddy!” It had never occurred to the staff that maybe just maybe, this despised foreigner,had the legal right to there in the hospital. Chocolate skinned woman+Fair skinned man=ME,a gray eyed dark haired bilingual dual citizen. Had my father been Black, no one wouldn’t have questioned him comforting his own child.