Chapter 3: nothing about this felt over

The week before we left for Los Angeles, I talked myself back to CHEO. Not for a checkup. Not for a follow-up. For an emergency.

Evelyn was still sleepy. Still heavy. Still just… off. And I couldn’t explain it in clinical terms. I couldn’t chart it or present it like a case study. But I knew.

She was here, but not quite.

And something told me I couldn’t get on a plane without knowing what I was taking with me.

So I called neurosurgery. Explained the sleepiness. The quiet. The way her eyes seemed to float just behind her focus. And maybe it was the tone in my voice—calm, but definitive—or maybe it was just luck. But someone listened. And we were booked for an emergency MRI.

Not a full workup. Not the kind that requires anesthetic or recovery rooms. This one had a name that almost sounded cute.

Rapid FIESTA.

That’s what they called it. An acronym for some kind of fast imaging technique that gives you just enough data to know whether the house is on fire. Not diagnostic. Not detailed. But fast.

They didn’t sedate her. There wasn’t time.

Instead, they swaddled her in a blanket, slid her onto the tiny padded platform, and told me I could come with her into the scan room. No contrast. No gown. Just me, holding her ankles lightly while the machine pulled her and me into the tunnel.

I kept my hand on her the whole time.

The scan took five, maybe ten minutes. Just enough to check the shunt. That’s all they were looking for—was the device working? Was there visible fluid buildup? Was the pressure rising again?

They scanned. I held my breath.

The machine thrummed. Evelyn lay still.

The techs were quiet. That was the hardest part. The silence after the image, when no one looks you in the eye. When they say, “We’ll let the team review.”

That’s the moment you realize what hospitals don’t say is just as loud as what they do.

Eventually, they told me what I already half-expected but still wasn’t ready to hear:

“The shunt looks fine.”

Technically, that was good news.

Clinically, it was the best-case scenario.

But emotionally, it didn’t land. Because I still knew something was wrong.

We were cleared for travel. No one stopped us. No one handed me a diagnosis or a warning. Just a vague assurance that things looked okay. That there was “nothing concerning at the moment.”

And so, I packed our bags. I smiled at relatives. I printed the boarding passes. I prepped bottles and downloaded movies and pretended I wasn’t walking through an airport with a baby who had just come out of an emergency brain scan.

I told myself she was okay. That I was okay. That we were cleared, after all. That maybe I was just overreacting.

But here’s the truth: nothing about this felt over.

The scan didn’t soothe me. It gave me a window, not a resolution.

There’s a strange kind of grief that comes with being told your worry is unconfirmed.

Not wrong. Just unproven.

And so I boarded a plane with a child I couldn’t quite relax around, holding my breath from wheels-up to wheels-down.

In the photos from that trip, I look relaxed. Evelyn looks beautiful. But in my memory, every moment had a thread of static running through it. I kept checking her pupils. Watching the curve of her fontanelle. Lifting her lids gently while she slept.

I was carrying two things on that trip:

A baby.

And a question no one could yet answer.