The medical people seemed to think she would be fine. But — Jim would remember this clearly — there was a fireman there, standing back, and he looked Jim right in the eye and shook his head very slowly. “It’s like he was telling me, ‘Hey, if that was my daughter, I would take her to the hospital right now,” Jim would say. So they went.
•••
The first thing the trauma doctor said was that he needed to speak to both the mother and father at the same time. There was something hard in his words. Lyda whispered in her father’s ear: “I don’t like his voice.”
The trauma doctor then said that the neurosurgeon was on the way, and that Willa had a fractured skull and would need immediate surgery, and if the surgery was successful, he said, the baby could still have long-term brain damage.
The only word Jim and Jeni heard was “If.”
They waited for the neurosurgeon, the worst 45 minutes of their lives. Too many horrible thoughts filled them in those minutes. But the point of this story is not tension — in the end, the neurosurgeon came, and he said that because Willa’s head was so soft, she would not need surgery. Instead, she was put under — essentially put into a coma — and (as the surgeon had hoped) she began to recover. The surgeon said: “If it had been you or me with our hard heads, it would be a different story.” Willa seems perfectly healthy. She turned 1 year old this week, the same day that Jim’s old boss George Brett turned 55.
No, the point is not tension. The point is that during those terrible 45 minutes, the worst of Jim Cosgrove’s life, his daughter Lyda grabbed each of her parents’ legs and started singing, in a tune from somewhere in her head, “Let’s stick together. Let’s stick together. Let’s stick together.”
•••
It’s a strange thing … that crazy day has reconnected Jim with baseball. The Royals heard the story and sent Willa an autographed jersey and invited Jim and the family to sit in a suite during a game. Jim and the family have been back to a few games since then. Lyda loves baseball. Willa, for a 1-year-old, seems to love baseball, too.
These days, Jim thinks a lot about his Dad … baseball really can do that. He thinks a lot about his daughters. He worked with Lyda on her song, added a few words, but mostly kept it as he remembered her singing it. The song was perfect that way.
•••
Jim Cosgrove’s new album “Upside Down,” which includes the song “Let’s Stick Together,” will be released digitally on his Web site www.mrstinkyfeet.com. It will be a “You pick the price” offer, meaning you choose how much you want to pay for it.
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