Osteogenesis Imperfecta

It is 1980, and denim and neon is everywhere. The lobby of the emergency room is playing Call Me by Blondie on tinny speakers that barely cover the din of the hospital chaos. It smelled of tobacco smoke, panic, lysol, and microwave popcorn. A woman with wildly curly hair, wearing jeans and wringing her hands is crying. Her voice is loud and anguished, with a strange touch of boredom mixed in, like she has been here before. A young boy, maybe five or six, is seated in a wheelchair beside her, his jeans cut down one side from hip to ankle, exposing a limp and broken thigh. 

His face does not betray the pain his little body must be enduring, as Osteogenesis Imperfecta, the disease that causes brittle bones in roughly one in every twenty thousand humans, has made him ever so tough. He admonishes his mother, telling her to calm down, his one good foot tapping the beat to the song now playing, I wanna be your lover by Prince. His plaintive tenor sharp and pointed as he tries to be heard above the noise. A nurse in green scrubs, briskly swoops the wheelchair away, her footsteps in time with the music. The boy’s mother runs after them, her reeboks squeaking on the linoleum floor. 

In the ICU and pushed out of his immediate reach. She is handed a stack of papers, data and facts and instructions on how to prevent broken bones in children. It falls open, the perforations unfolding like an accordion. The young boy hasn’t stopped talking about Prince, music offering him something to hold onto in his traumatic experience. The dot matrix printing on the folds of paper explains the disease Osteogenesis Imperfecta, and the irritation on her face is obvious. The young boy sees this and knows, because he too is already familiar with OI. 

His small voice pipes up, “this isn’t my first rodeo, doc.” Nurses approaching with a metal cart filled with plaster, gauze, rubber gloves and dishes, gently guide his mother out into the hallway.