Sting

It wasn’t really the sort of thing that one could have prepared for, save for carrying an EpiPen, maybe. But, even then, they would have had to rush her all the way across the camp to the infirmary to get the injection and, chances are, it would have happened anyway. The camp is pretty big, and the soccer field is on one side and the infirmary is on the complete opposite side, with the massive lake in the middle. So I don’t think that anything would have happened differently, although, for her parents’ sake, and the sake of the counselors, some of whom seemed pretty traumatized, I wish that it had. I wish this for her sake, too, of course; although, where she is, she might be better off. Who can know?

That Thursday was a fairly typical day at the camp: hot, humid, and bathed in sunshine. Why they made us do our swimming lessons first thing in the morning and not in the afternoon, when the temperature was at its highest, always mystified me. It still does, actually, even all of these years later. Maybe if we had been swimming that afternoon instead of playing soccer it wouldn’t have happened. But, again, who can possibly know? There are things that are known and things that are unknown and the ‘should have, would have, could have’ of that day fall into the latter category.

So, there we were, running around the field after lunch in the blazing sun, sweating and shrieking with the abandoned joy of blameless youth. There must have been at least twenty kids on that field, maybe more. It could have happened to any one of them, and then I wouldn’t be telling you all of this. But it happened to her, to Leigh, of all people. Leigh, who was only just spending her first summer at camp, because her parents were overly protective and had been reluctant to let her out of their sight until she was ten years old. Leigh, whose family had just moved to the area from some tiny town in the Midwest, hoping for better jobs and more opportunity. Leigh, who happened to be severely allergic to bee stings, though she didn’t know it yet, as she had never had one before.

I remember hearing a girl cry out, as if in pain, and I saw Leigh stop where she was. Kids went zooming past her, but she just stood there, frozen and looking at her arm with a face that was a mix of surprise and burgeoning tears. It seems like she stood this way for hours, but I know that it couldn’t have been more than three seconds. What happened next is burned into my brain forever: her lips, and then her entire face turned puffy and she toppled to the ground like a house of cards someone had blown on. A deep scarlet flush crept up her neck and over her forehead as she lay on the ground. By this point campers had crowded around her and a few counselors were running over, their clipboards flung to the earth and their mouths open. Someone shouted “Give her space! Give her space!”, as if backing up would magically open up her airways, which were quickly closing, suffocating her, strangling her. Leigh’s whole face was red by this point and she desperately wheezed and clawed at her throat. The counselors tried to perform CPR when they reached her and someone took off for the infirmary and the camp doctor. We all just stood there, watching as her clawing slackened and her eyes rolled upwards. Then she was still, forever still.