When I, the devoted husband, answered the phone and heard a hint of panic in the Mrs.’ voice, I was willing to go anywhere to help. I imagined myself called to a scene of imminent danger, one plagued by violence, to counter the effects of crime or accident. I steeled myself for a journey to the emergency room or an overgrown ditch beside some forgotten road.
Still, what I heard surprised me.
“I need you to come down here to the jewelry store right now,” the Mrs’. voice insisted. “Our daughter has shoved a bead up her nose and we can’t get it out.”
I grabbed my hat and rushed outside. My office is only a few blocks from the store and I booked it down Main Street like a man on a mission to save his baby from inhaling expensive gems. If I’d had a portable siren, I’d have strapped it to my head.
“I’ve called the doctor,” the Mrs. said as soon as I stepped through the shop door. “They’re going to fit her in as soon as we can get there.”
I reached out and took my beautiful, sweet, two-year-old daughter into my arms. She was smiling and acting as if nothing unusual had happened, proving she has not only the storage space, but also the unshakable nerves necessary for a career in jewel smuggling.
As we headed to the car, I said to the clerk, “After we have this dug out of her nose, we’ll make sure to get it back to you.”
She looked a little befuddled. “No,” she said. “That’s all right.”
On the way to the pediatrician, I heard the full story.
When my wife’s grandmother died a couple of years ago, she left our daughter a box of plastic costume jewelry. On occasion, my wife has allowed our little one to play dress-up with some of great-grandma’s things.
One of the necklaces, a string of dark blue beads, had broken and the Mrs. had taken it to the jewelry store to have it fixed.
“She was sitting on the counter while I was talking,” the Mrs. said. “We heard her laughing and saw she had two beads stuck in her nose. We got one out, but she pushed the other one deeper in.”
I was instantly grateful she hadn’t been playing with a stack of $17,000 diamonds.
At this point, apparently, our neighborhood jeweler stepped in and attempted to solve the problem. I mean, he has a lot of experience removing jewels from small spaces, right?
As I have been told, he laid our daughter on the floor and peered up her tiny orifice using his loupe to get a good view of what was going on in there.
I can only imagine another customer, upon seeing this, would have been inclined, after purchasing a new brooch for mom, to ask if the owner didn’t have a minute to spare to determine what had been causing the earache that had been needling her for the last couple of days.
“Well,” the jeweler said, issuing a final diagnosis, “I don’t think I ought to mess around with this.”
The Mrs. agreed and called me.
At the doctor’s office, we were able to see her regular doctor, a round-faced boyish man whom our daughter has been seeing since birth. Dr. B is shy with a wonderful, comforting manner. On the day our daughter received her first vaccinations, the room was flooded with tears and cries of “No! No!” as soon as he entered with the needles. But, after a few minutes, thanks to his warm personality, Dr. B was able to get me calmed down.
This day, after inspecting the situation, he stepped out and returned to the room with a small plastic rod that, when attached to a small light, looked for all the world like a miniature light saber. I mean, if Luke Skywalker, in his effort to overthrow the dark Empire, had ever been called upon to extract a forty-year-old piece of cheap costume jewelry from the nose of a toddler, I feel sure this is what he would have used.
“What is that?” I asked.
“It’s an ear speculum,” Dr. B. said. “Normally, it’s used for getting out ear wax, but.…” He trailed off and shrugged as if to say, “Sometimes you just have to improvise.”
My daughter lay down on the examining table. She seemed to be thinking, “Hunh, so this is what happens when you cram jewelry up your nose. They take you to the doctor and everyone pays you a lot of attention. I bet I get a lollipop out of this.”
Dr. B. inserted the probe and after a couple quick flicks of his wrist the bead was lying on the outside of my baby’s face covered in, well, exactly what you’d expect a bead dug out of somebody’s nose to be covered in.
We all stared at it.
“I need to save that. I need to fix the necklace,” the Mrs. said to Dr. B., then added, “I mean, I’m going to wash it first.”
Dr. B. plucked the bead up with a piece of gauze, dropped it into what looked like a urine sample cup, and handed it to my wife.
On the way out, we asked our little Chud what the lesson of this experience had been.
“Don’t stick any beads up your nose,” she said.
Indeed. A lesson that, sooner or later, we all must learn.
