Our teen daughter and I shared a bonding experience this week that I know I will never forget.
During a routine follow-up medical appointment for Z at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the entire facility went into lockdown over reports of an armed man at the hospital.
A hospital active shooter lockdown is not an experience I ever wanted us to share, but if Z had to go through it I’m glad we were together.
During Z’s appointment, our doctor suddenly received a hushed message from another staffer. We were then quickly shepherded into a small utility closet with several other patients, family members and staffers.
There, we sat in cramped proximity on the floor in a small, dark room trying to be as quiet as possible. A few nurses whispered to us that an armed man had been seen and the hospital was on a “Code Silver” lockdown.
To call this a terrifying experience is an understatement. Everyone locked down in that room with us knew that this could be a potentially deadly situation. It seemed to take forever to get updates from security about what was going on.
Although I had to remain calm for Z, who was also trying hard not to freak out, inside I was quaking. The healthcare professionals around us were calm, strong and wonderfully helpful – but I could tell they too were taking this threat very seriously and had to be terrified.
I was extremely impressed with the caring, professional demeanor of both our doctor and the nurses locked down with us. We’ve always known that NCH is an amazing place for healthcare, but now I’ve seen this team in a true all-hands crisis and they are absolutely the best.
At some point – I have no concept of time at all – they moved us patients and family members to a bathroom without a window and with a lockable door. There, we could keep the lights on and either sit or stand. That’s where I took the above photo of me standing protectively over Z.
The lockdown seemed to drag on forever, but we began to get updates that our building was “clear” and the threat had moved to a different part of campus. We still had to remain on lockdown, but our fear eased up a tiny bit. At that point, a staffer came around to hand out water bottles and juice boxes to help soothe the patients and family members. Talk about top-notch care!
We were able to text during the lockdown although our phones of course had to be on silent. I found myself wishing that Twitter was still the way it once was – it used to be so clutch in times of crisis! I texted E not knowing if I should worry him or not, but ultimately deciding that he would want to know.
He immediately got in his car and jetted down to the vicinity of the hospital, feeling that he just had to be close to us even if he couldn’t help per se. Once he got there, he shared with us that there were plenty of police cars and news crews onsite.
Time seemed to move interminably slowly. One lady prayed, one cried softly and Z and I tried to keep ourselves as calm as we could. There was a father and daughter pair in the same room with us and he was very protective and reassuring, which certainly soothed Z and I as well. I realized at one point that Z and the other pediatric patient may have been the only two in the room who had been actively trained in this kind of active shooter drill; it was my first experience facing this specific fear personally.
It’s notable that, unless you’re in the armed forces or have been through police academy or are an American child age K and up, you likely have not been trained in how to handle the threat of a stranger with an assault rifle.
Of course, we now know that the reports of an armed man at Nationwide Children’s were unconfirmed and there was no threat found. I guess it was all just an exercise in extreme caution. Some might even call it a “false alarm.”
But we didn’t know that at the time. Our lived experience was that it all felt pretty darn real and terrifying. Every sound we heard outside of that locked room made us tremble in fear.
If I learned anything from this experience, it’s to focus on what truly matters. Z and I had been squabbling over something pretty minor just before her appointment. I’ve also had minor arguments with E in the last week or so. All of that seemed utterly meaningless in the face of a potentially life-threatening situation.
I am going to take this experience to heart as a pre-holiday gift. I’m going to try to be more mindful of what and who truly matters. I’m going to focus my attention on my family in a loving and nurturing way, rather than nit-picking over minor details that aren’t important in the grand scheme of things.
At least I’m going to try.
