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No worries.

Let me begin with: No worries. Paul is perfectly fine.

And if you’re single, and looking for tips on how to create a happy marriage, I can help. Commit to a person who is smart, can make you laugh, is your very best friend, and is more optimistic than you.

Then you can survive seven hours of emergency room panic with only one serious breakdown in the women’s washroom while your partner sits next to your son as he sleeps on the waiting room floor.

(Did I mention that Paul is completely fine? Okay. Just making sure. I don’t want y’all to be panicking over there.)

Wednesday night, Paul told me that he’d seen a drop of blood when he peed. Todd was alarmed, but calm, and I channelled my incipient hysteria by cleaning both bathrooms until they were gleaming. Because I hadn’t seen anything but pee in the toilet, we decided to wait until morning and make a doctor’s appointment.

At half past four, Paul woke up and asked for some water. He drank it and then threw it all right back up. Then he said that his stomach hurt.

I am famous for losing it when I’m scared or worried. Witness, the time Paul put a chickpea up his nose, and Todd and Kite completely correctly ended up asking me to go away - far away - because my screeching was not exactly helping. This time, though? I was outwardly completely calm. Inside, I was a deranged lunatic running through the streets naked, but outside? The picture of relaxation.

We called a cab and headed for the emergency room. When we arrived, a toddler whose only word was “Mama” was crying and crying. Paul looked worried, so I told him that the baby was just scared because he didn’t understand what was going on. Paul was scared, too; when they hooked him up to a heart rate monitor and the nurse asked about his health we could actually hear his heartrate increase when the questions seemed onimous. She said to go into the waiting room and that someone would let us know when the doctor could see us.

Paul was very tired, and soon fell asleep on the waiting room floor as Todd read to him, waking up three times to throw up again. Todd and I passed the time playing cards and shoring each other up. A very nice housekeeping person scoured the entire hospital for a pillow and a blanket, completely on his own. We hadn’t said a word.

A middle aged Scottish woman with red hair, waiting with her husband, came over to see us. “Has he even seen a doctor?” she asked.

“No,” we chorused.

“How long have you been waiting?”

“About five hours,” said Todd.

“That’s disgusting,” she snarled, and shot an evil look at the reception desk.

But, actually, we were thrilled that it had been so long. If they’d rushed him into a room within ten minutes, I’d have been hyperventilating.

Inside, where Paul couldn’t see me.

After six and a half hours, we were able to see a doctor, who was encouragingly relaxed about Paul’s non-circumcision. He sent Paul’s pee off to be tested (tired and punchy by then, we conjured images for Paul of mad scientists making Pee Soup back there in the lab) and came back half an hour later, smiling widely.

“Not a drop of a drop of blood in there!” he crowed, “Not one red blood cell! He has a virus, that’s all. You guys go home. I think he’s going to be completely fine.”

Indeed, by the time we arrived home, Paul was asking for food, which he kept down with no problem at all. Todd ran out for some sickie supplies (mineral water, crackers, and, I confess, Jello) and by the time he was unpacking the groceries, I was falling asleep. I stumbled into the bedroom and passed out for the next four hours, waking up feeling perky and energetic.

When I woke up this morning I found out that an ongoing problem fellow parents are experiencing had gotten worse. And, you know, I care, of course I do, but the rage I’d have felt on Wednesday morning had turned into a sort of zen acceptance. I’m still going to work on doing my part to fix it, but any kind of angst I’d have felt has been taken up by a running loop of “Paul is healthy, Paul is healthy, la la la, Paul is healthy…”