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121

WACO

IND-I had asked that Buddie be allowed to see me, when he arrived, for I knew he would get in somehow and a forced entrance might cause difficulties. Soon I heard a clatter of feet on the stairs, "Hello, Bud, do you know you have a little black-eyes, black haired baby sister?" Who do you want to see first, the baby or your Mother?"
"I want to see my Mom"
Buddie looked so happy and told me that he was glad the baby was a girl, which amazed me. He are 8 had said "you always got just the opposite of what you wished for." He had kept saying he wanted a brother, so he would get a sister just like his little cousin! When the baby was brought in, Bud looked worried, and asked me if she would have to have all those things done to her, too. What things? Enemas and tonsils and drains. Sam was all right. A call from the house, said, Sam wanted to be brought up in the wheelchair. I begged them to ask him to wait until the next day, for I knew I could never play up for him... and I had to. 
I didn't know for some time, that when Sam had been told that I was at the hospital, he thought it was part of the morning "funning." He shouted my name louder and louder, then getting no response, HAD GOTTEN out of bed, by himself, and walked all over the house, from end to end, evenlooking in the closets! He had been helpless for months, his body was just a skeleton, his hip joints just ball and socket joints which had so appalled and upset me, that I had ceased watching him have his bath. 
Yet he walked all over the house looking for me. Had they not gotten my message, I daresay, he would have walked to me.... and died?
The next morning, down the corridor came Sam, in the wheelchair, clasped my hand, we blew a kiss to each other, and Sam, emaciated Sam, sat at the foot of the bed, facing me. (I learned later that one of the nurses had had hysterics, because he looked "so dug up" and I was so very ill.)