Search and Destroy

“Hours and hours and hours,” the nurse says. “It seems like forever now, but really it’s just a blip.”

She aims a flashlight at my daughter’s blond head and in seconds detects first one nit, then another. The half-hearted comb-job I’d delivered after the chemical shampoo has not done the trick. So here is what awaits: hours and hours of picking under bright light. “Sunshine’s your best friend here,” the nurse says. She is telling me this not just as a nurse, but as a mom and grandma; she’s been in the trenches with those critters. She will not yet give me what I’ve come seeking: a “nit letter,” a phrase that suggests a paper teeming with tiny white eggs sacs, not a declaration of their total absence.

My rushed attempt to kick a case of lice has failed, leaving me with nothing but the nurse’s words and my own stark sense of failure—as if I’ve been handed a different sort of doctor’s assessment, one to carry home and toss onto the stack