It made me angry, I recalled, looking down at the pool. I would think, here I am lying awake, filled with anxiety, listening to my daughter struggle for breath with her heart racing and all I want is a cigarette, but if I get up, ride the elevator to the street, smoke and come back, the first words out of my wife's mouth will be, Where were you? I could lay awake for hours listening and yearning for a cigarette and getting angrier and angrier all the while. Other times, I went out to smoke regardless of what my wife would say. If she woke up, we fought bitterly in whispers. Sometimes she didn't. Other times, my daughter's lips would look blue in the dark and I'd haul her off to the emergency room. Sometimes my daughter would come out of it right there. Other times she'd still be struggling for breath when the doctors showed up, and they'd give her a shot that would have her bouncing around and talking at a hundred miles an hour within minutes. In any case, I was always happy to get back home to my wife. Coming back home to my wife with my breathing daughter was a pleasure and a relief. They'd go to bed together, and I'd sit out in front of the building and smoke, I recalled looking down at the blue water in the pool.

With my son, it was money, I recalled, looking down on the pool. My son came toddling out of our bedroom, gagging on blood and vomit. I remember it exactly. He wandered in there just fine, but when he came out he was gagging on blood and vomit. At first we thought he had the flu. Then he said, I ate money. He was sharp for a toddler. As chance would have it, there was a hospital right next door.

That country was chock full of hospitals, I recalled, looking down on the pool. It was the richest country I've ever been to. You couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a hospital. They were everywhere. Of course, the hospital next door was an Arab hospital but it was right next-door. I must confess the Arab hospitals did not enjoy my fullest confidence. Half the wings seemed to be named after terrorist groups, and all the beds were pointed towards Mecca. Also, it had been my experience that Arab doctors never explained anything and prescribed too much medicine. Once they gave my wife so many antibiotics that the inside of her mouth turned black.

In this instance, I recalled, looking down on the pool, it was better than nothing, and it was right next-door. There was no emergency room. The receptionist took me to a doctor who sent us to another doctor and so on. I carried my son all over that hospital running from doctor to doctor. They couldn't get the coin out with their hands. I followed this veiled receptionist all over the hospital. We rode around in the elevators. I ended up in the basement in an abandoned room with my choking son. The receptionist left. Then a doctor came in and took my son away behind some swinging doors. I don't know how long I stood there. It was dead quiet. There wasn't a soul around. There was no place to sit except behind a tiny desk with a magazine open across the top. The magazine was open to a full-page spread of shiny medical equipment. I couldn't read the script though it was familiar to me. I had been surrounded by that script for years, but still I couldn't read it. I spent quite some time in that little room looking at that familiar script I couldn't read. Eventually someone came and got me. As it turned out, when the doctor put a tool down my son's throat to pull it out, the coin slipped into his stomach. It showed up in his diaper the next day. My wife spent the night with him in the hospital. The nurse saved the coin for us in a little plastic bottle. Around noon, she said it was safe to go home but we could stay longer if we wanted to.