As I rode the elevator up after a long day’s work, I thought about my perfect plan: I would kiss Emily goodnight at her normal 9pm bedtime, Jan and I would have a relaxing dinner together, pack for the next day’s trip to America, and we’d all get a very good night’s sleep in preparation for the long flight ahead. As I turned the key to open the front door, my phone rang. “Are you almost home?” said a frantic voice on the other end. I opened the door and found Jan standing on the other side of the threshold with Emily in one hand and her phone in the other. We both hung up and Jan proceeded to explain how Emily hadn’t been feeling very well. And then Emily vomited. Everywhere.

Jan explained that this was the third time that Emily had vomited in the past 10 minutes. And I’m not talking about your normal, run-of-the-mill, everyday baby spit up. No, this was vomit: substantial and projectile. Apparently, Jan and Emily had spent the previous day with a couple of friends who had just recently recovered from a nasty bout of gastroenteritis and, though they were feeling better, were still contagious. Emily punctuated Jan’s story by throwing up again. After throwing up eight times over the course of an hour and a half, I packed our little girl up and rushed her off to the emergency room. It was approaching midnight.

The stress of the situation had made my back seize up even worse than it already was but leaning on Emily’s pushchair helped me survive the dozen blocks between our house and the hospital. It was either escort Emily to the hospital or stay at home and pack for our trip: a job at which I would be utterly useless. So I volunteered for ER duty while Jan stayed at home to pack our bags.

I arrived at the hospital and was immediately directed to the pediatric ward (yes, free 24 hour emergency child care) where a doctor was with us in only five minutes. A half hour of uncomfortable observation was ended with another upchuck. Emily was a little shaken at first but the crew of friendly nurses quickly settled her nerves – until they started jabbing her with all sorts of medieval torture devices. They wanted to perform a blood test and hook our little girl up to an IV drip to avoid dangerous levels of dehydration. It took three nurses plus myself to restrain a writhing and surprisingly strong Emily while they tried to stick her with really long scary-looking needles. One nurse explained to me that Emily has very thin veins, thus the repeated jabbing attempts in both wrists, forearms, and ankles.

Blood was finally extracted, solution was finally inserted, and our hero was free to “relax” while the tests were run. My little pin cushion sobbed herself to sleep and I stood watch for the next three hours. Why would a hospital vending machine contain nothing healthier than Twix bars, chocolate cookies, and Coca Cola? So much for dinner.

With nothing to do but wait for a few hours, my adrenaline-powered autopilot slowly turned off and the reality of the situation started to hit me. I had no doubt that Emily would be OK, but seeing one’s tear-soaked 11 month old daughter asleep on her stomach under a white hospital blanket with an intravenous drip attached to her bandaged left ankle is a sobering sight.

At 4am, the doctor told me that the blood tests had all come back negative, removed the IV from Emily’s foot, prescribed a gentle regimen of slowly administered clear liquids, and declared it all a simple case of the “48 hour stomach flu”. The nurses lovingly waved goodbye as Emily and I headed home with just enough time to pack my bags before the cab came to bring us to the airport at 7am.

The flight went as well as could be expected – if by “well” you mean that Emily only vomited once and generously passed her gastro on to Jan who spent most of the flight either on the plane’s toilet or in her seat completely drained of all life and color. I luckily escaped contamination… until a couple of days later. By the time Jan and Emily were feeling better and joyously bouncing about in the swimming pool at my cousin Cookie’s house in Chappaqua, I was praying to the porcelain god with a fever so high that I was actually hallucinating. I vaguely remember something about having to “click” into position by rolling over in bed every half hour to maintain some sort of laser alignment that would aid in my sweaty recovery. But my 48 hours were soon over, as well, and we were all finally able to start our three week holiday, albeit fours days late.