Kasey & Ivy

by Alison Hughes

  “Anyway, you made it, ha, ha! That’s all that matters, ha, ha!” Dad said. The sullen porter ignored him, practically dumped me out of the wheelchair into a real chair, shoved my chart across the counter at the clerk and left in huffy slow motion. The clerk glanced up, and Dad bounded over to her.

  “Kasey Morgan is here for her bone scan,” he said, dropping his voice at the last two words as though they were a private, terrible tragedy. Thankfully, the nuclear ladies were all very matter-of-fact and calm. A whole department of poker faces. I fit right in.

  Turns out a bone scan has three parts, Nina:

  1) A pinching, stinging injection of “radioactive dye” (I’m not joking—almost exactly like Spider-Man experienced, I believe);

  2) More sitting around waiting and getting anxious;

  3) The scan itself.

  The needle hurt a ton. I didn’t watch. Trust me—it’s better not to watch. Whether it’s nuclear stuff going in or blood coming out, it’s way better not to watch. I dug my nails into my free hand and turned my head and studied a picture that was hanging on the wall. It was a photo of a young dad holding his baby who was just about to get a needle. Only, the baby didn’t know what was coming, and the dad did. The baby was smiling in an interested way at that shiny, pointy thing, and the dad was looking away, his face scrunched up, wincing horribly like he was in pain, like he was the one getting the needle. I glanced over at my dad while the needle was pumping me full of nuclear substances, and he had the same expression as the dad in the picture!

  The nuclear-needle lady seemed very relieved I wasn’t a screamer. She said that even some adults are screamers and fainters when it comes to needles, but I was “amazingly calm.” You can tell people that one, Nina. You don’t need to mention that I was tasting blood from biting my cheek as the needle was searing its way into me.

  After the needle, it was disappointing to discover that the radioactive stuff didn’t make me glow in the dark like people do in the movies (not even a very faint, greenish shimmer around the teeth). It also didn’t, for instance, give me the ability to climb walls. It’s not like I tried in the bathroom or anything (which would be silly and germy as well, unless you really scrubbed your hands afterward), but I’m pretty sure. All that pain for nothing.

  So now we sit and wait for the scan. Thank goodness that first clerk gave me this pad of paper and a pen so I can write to you, or I really would go out of my mind. Dad and I talked a little, but then we ran out of things to say. The magazines are hundreds of years old and pulsing with diseases and nuclear waste, no doubt. So I’m not touching those. The TV is blaring some stupid talk show, where the hosts scream-laugh and shout over each other in a fake friendly yet competitive way. Everything, apparently, is shriekingly funny. I am using all my poker-faced concentration to block them out.

  Dad doesn’t seem fussed by this germy hospital, Nina. Not at all. He touches everything. It’s almost as if he makes a point of touching everything just to annoy me. Magazines, walls, the nursing desk, the underside of his chair. Seriously, I half expect him to actually lick something. Or try out a somersault, just so he can sample the floor germs. And then he pulls out a pack of gum, puts his hands all over it while opening it and offers me a piece! As if, Dad. As if.

  I have to go. The clerk just dropped a hospital gown in my lap and told me “everything off but undies, honey!” Right out loud like that, in front of my dad and an old man sitting in the corner. Honestly.

  I scrambled into the little cubicle to change. It only had a curtain as a door, and no amount of pulling that thing from side to side could close the gaps. First the stretcher paper, then the curtain…does nobody measure these things? So much for dignity and privacy.

  The hospital gown shook my poker face, Nina. It was hideous. Gown! What a word to use for a dreary sack of worn-out cotton. It was more like a sheet—huge and faded hospital greenish blue, just like everything else. I swear, it was like a hospital invisibility cloak. I blended right in with the walls. I could probably have escaped except someone might have noticed my head and sandals zipping down the halls.

  But worse, far worse—the gown only had two ties, at the back! And one was broken.

  Help!

  This is not how I wanted to face a scan of my bones.

  Your slightly radioactive friend,

  Kasey

  Three

  Dear Nina,

  Scanned.

  It was a weird experience, but at least it didn’t hurt.

  The room was huge and dark, like some freaky science-fiction movie set. The gigantic, circular bone-scanning machine sat right in the middle of the room, making a low humming noise. The machine had a bunch of scurrying attendants. One of them tried to make small talk with me. “How old are you? What grade are you in? What school do you go to?” The things adults always ask. Why, I wonder, don’t they ask something honest, like “So, how do you feel about being fed into this nuclear monster we got here?”

  I had to lie down on a stretcher by the machine’s mouth. Thankfully, there was more of that incredibly thin, too-narrow sheet paper protecting me from the germs, diseases and leaked radiation of all the thousands of people who had been scanned before me. I’m being sarcastic, Nina. I’m letting you know because in writing it’s hard to tell.

  It was so chilly in that room. When I asked, I was told the machine likes it that way, and what the machine wants, the machine gets, apparently. I was absolutely shivering in my hideous hospital gown with the one tie missing on the back. Then one of the machine people said, “Oh, you’re cold” and went and got a blanket for me. A warm one! They have this magical cupboard in the scanner room that keeps blankets toasty warm as if they’ve just come out of the oven. The machine person tucked it right around me like a mom at bedtime (which made me feel tearful, but I blinked hard).

  It was heavenly to feel heat rather than radiation soaking into my shivering body. I somehow felt less afraid. Comforted. It truly is amazing what a blanket can do. It was one of the nicest things anyone ever did for me. I think every home should have a blanket-warming cupboard. And apparently, the machine couldn’t care less whether you’re under a blanket or not, which made me wonder why I had to be in the gown, but whatever.

  The bone-scanner people kept telling me how safe it all was, how they did this a million times a day. But then how come Dad couldn’t come in with me? And let me tell you, Nina, when that machine started to rev up, all the people in the room scrambled into a separate little room pretty quick and slammed the door shut! Which, of course, made me think they were lying about the safety thing. It was just me versus the nuclear scanning machine. It was a lonely feeling.

  The scanner people watched through a window and talked to me over an intercom. Only it wasn’t the “Can Tanner Zapetti please come to the office” kind of announcement we usually get at school. (Is he still destroying things, by the way? Write back, Nina. Please. You know things are weird when I’m even missing Tanner Zapetti.) They were bone-scan-related announcements like “Stay still,” “Now the machine will scan your legs,” and “Breathe normally.”

  I’ve discovered that when someone tells you to breathe normally, it’s very hard to do. In and out, in and out—you start to notice your breathing, coming in through your nose and mouth and filling you up, and the rise and fall of your ribs, and as you notice it, it doesn’t seem normal at all. It speeds right up, and then you sort of try to slow it down, and you worry because none of it feels normal anymore. Breathing isn’t something you should think about, because once you do, you ruin it. Anyway, I hoped the machine couldn’t sense my totally abnormal breathing. Because what then? I wondered. Would it spit me out?

  I closed my eyes tight during the scan and tried not to panic as the machine swooped around me, scanning all my bones from every possible angle. I could tell when it was close to my face because behind my eyelids it got darker. When the machine lost interest in my head and moved on, it got lighter.

  And I trie
d not to imagine how to the machine I must look like a little skeleton lying there. That was an upsetting thought. All my little skeleton bones lying there, especially the skull—my skull—with those grinning teeth and eye holes and no real nose. All the parts that really make us who we are, the parts that we look at every day, like hair and eyes and skin and noses, stripped away, leaving just the bare bones.

  I searched around in my mind for something else to think about. The skull thought reminded me of last Halloween because Kyle went as a little skeleton—very cute and not in the least bit creepy, although he thought he was. Remember he kept making that kack! sound he thought a skeleton, given vocal cords, would make? Anyway, that distracted me. It seemed very important, with my eyes squeezed shut inside that big machine in June, to remember what costume everybody wore last Halloween. Lots of zombies. We had a good time dressing as each other, hey, Nina? Nobody got it, so we had to put those nametags on, but I guess that’s the price of a costume you don’t buy at the store. Lizzy as “the yard” was hilarious. Remember? She wore a poncho of fake grass, and she and Mom glue-gunned fake flowers and plastic toys onto it. And she had that felt potted shrub as a hat! My sister just doesn’t care what anybody thinks.

  Anyway, last Halloween got me to the end of the scan.

  Then all the cowardly nuclear people came out of the safe little room they’d been hiding in, the lights brightened, and there seemed to be a general feeling of relief that the scan was over. The second I stood up, they were crumpling up the paper with my germs on it and smoothing out new paper for the next victim.

  “Done,” I said to Dad as the nurse walked me back into the waiting room. I snatched up my clothes from the little locker I’d left them in and escaped into the change room with the annoying curtain.

  But you know what, Nina?

  I wasn’t done.

  Your friend, who has a bad feeling about all this,

  Kasey

  Four

  Dear Nina,

  As we drove out of the city, Dad said we were supposed to go straight back to our little local hospital after the scan.

  “Doctor’s orders,” Dad said with an apologetic tone in his voice.

  We drove back to Ridgevalley in silence, except for when Dad pulled into a drive-through. I gave him my order, because it seemed silly not to get a burger and fries out of this whole ordeal. It wasn’t Dad’s fault, and he was being so nice.

  Ridgevalley Hospital is so much smaller than the Royal Vic. Way smaller. I hadn’t realized that until now. It actually looks quite peaceful. Until you get inside.

  What is it about being inside a hospital that makes you feel sick? Or if not exactly sick, then helpless? I feel weaker here than I did at home yesterday, for example. Is it the horrible disease that may be devouring my very bones? Or is it just that I’m in the hospital and everyone’s treating me like a patient? It’s confusing. If you get treated like a weak hospital patient, you feel more weak-hospital-patient-ish, if you know what I mean. More scared and sorry for yourself.

  I’m in a new hideous hospital gown (yay!), and I am wearing a plastic bracelet stating my name, my date of birth, my doctor’s name and my patient number. Yes, I have a number, Nina. Not just 12, like on the back of my soccer jersey. Like a prisoner—number 348652. How hard to remember is that? Good thing it’s bolted around my wrist. I am now sitting alone in a four-bed hospital room (number 212). I can hear Dad talking to the nurses down the hall at the desk. He’s trying to get some answers about when I’ll be able to go home. Patient number 348652 is really, really hoping she doesn’t have to spend the night here.

  Think of it, Nina! Night, in the hospital. It’s a very creepy thought. Nurses padding around in those soft shoes that nobody wears but nurses, sick patients coughing and moaning and lying in beds next to complete strangers, germs scuttling around because they never sleep, all the doors open, no locks… How could anyone ever feel safe enough to sleep? I can’t decide whether it would be better to have another person in this room. On the one hand, I wouldn’t feel so isolated. On the other, they might be a complete creeper or a cougher.

  I really, really hope I don’t have to be here overnight.

  And if all that isn’t enough to worry you, Nina, here’s another thing. This hospital has lots of patients, but there don’t seem to be any children. None. Well, one—me. But isn’t that weird? I haven’t seen one other child here. Only old people. I’m not just meaning adults, right? Really, really old people.

  And you know how old people creep me out, Nina. I can’t help it. The slowness. The teeth. The tendency to be super crabby. You would probably point out that I’ve never really known any really old people, and that I’m generalizing from that lady who runs the corner store and whose false teeth click and chatter almost independently of her mouth. I would then point to Norm the porter. He was a recent old person I’ve known, and he was miserable. So that’s two.

  Anyway, I’ll let you know when I find out what is going on.

  Oops. Nurse alert! Bustling into the room, pushing some rattling equipment.

  Got to go.

  To be continued.

  Have you noticed how I’m doing that little swirl thing? Like they do in books? It means that last part is over and time has passed, but I still have more to say before finishing this letter. WAY more.

  Are you sitting down, Nina? Because it’s bad news. You probably already figured that out. Nobody ever has to sit down for good news. I’m shaking as I write this, as you can possibly see. Where is a comforting warm blanket when you need one?

  I have to stay here overnight. In the hospital. By myself. “Under observation” until a specialist has a look at my bone scan. Dad told me this with the nurse looking on. He sat on the bed and held my hand and told me very gently, with that wincing look like the dad in the picture where his baby was getting a needle. I didn’t cry, and not only because the annoying nurse said brightly, “Kasey’s a big girl. She’s going to be a brave girl.” Easy for her to say. She gets to get away from the creepy old folks and go back to her safe home tonight. No, I didn’t cry because it was hard enough on Dad as it was, plus he has to go home and break it to Mom and the others. I put on my poker face and pretended to be very calm.

  But I’ll let you in on a secret, Nina. I don’t feel very brave. Or calm. I’m just plain scared. Don’t tell anybody.

  To make sure I don’t do a runner, the nurse hooked me up to a bodyguard named Ivy. She’s a tall, pole-like machine on wheels with a liquid-bag face and long tube arms feeding into a needle that’s taped right into the back of my hand (another big needle—didn’t cry, but I can still taste blood from that raised lump where I keep biting the inside of my cheek). So Ivy and I are actually semipermanently attached, like Siamese twins. Technically, her name is IV, short for intravenous (I asked), which is apparently Latin for “into your vein.” Latin always sounds so impressive, but it almost always seems to be just basic description. Anyway, I’m calling her Ivy, which is prettier and friendlier.

  I’m going to need all the friends I can get here, Nina. Because not only do I have to spend the night here, pushing Ivy around, but when I asked the nurse where all the other kids are, she said there are no other kids in the hospital. None! The children’s ward is closed for major renovations, so any serious emergency cases go into the city, and all other children (right now, only me—slow time for kids, apparently) are put in the “old folks’ ward.” So the good news is, I must not be a serious case. The bad news is that I’m in the geriatric ward. Old people, rooms and rooms of them, as far as you can see.

  “So you see, Kasey, you’re special!” said the nurse. “All the old dears will love having a child around.” I smiled like I was supposed to. But behind my fake smile, I felt sick.

  I’m not used to old people, Nina. My grandparents aren’t even old really. I mean, they’re older, but they still hike and travel and golf and email and everything. They actually tire us all out when we visit them. They’re not li
ke the old folks here. I don’t know if you can even imagine how old some of the old people are here. Picture the oldest person you’ve ever seen or can even imagine. Then add a few years.

  Now I’m feeling guilty and mean. Here I am, complaining that I have to spend one night in the hospital when most of these old folks look like they practically live here. They have pictures propped on the tables by their beds, and plants and flowers to make things more cheerful, but this seems to be their permanent home. How sad is that, Nina?

  Maybe I can be useful cheering them up, even if I’m only here for one night. What do you talk about with super-old people? Health is out, obviously, because we’re all in the hospital. Food? The weather? Mom says the weather is always a safe topic for just about any occasion. “Sunny out there, hey?” can lead into “Better than last June!” or “But the plants could sure use some rain.” It’s boring, but it’s a start.

  Dad has been trying to cheer me up.

  “Nice big window,” he said, looking down at the hospital workers throwing bags of I-hate-to-think-what into the big dumpsters below. “Natural light,” he continued, tapping on the glass. He wasn’t letting go of the wonders of the window. He was touching everything again—the windowsill, the wall, the back of the chair, the curtain around my bed. Anything that could hold or transfer germs.

  “Here’s the button for calling the nurses, Kasey. Right here. Give it a good long squeeze if you need them, okay? And ooh, gadget time! Let’s see what your bed does!” He grabbed the remote. I braced myself, remembering how he recently broke our TV and took almost two weeks to assemble our swing set. First he raised and lowered the upper part of the bed, then the part under my legs, and then he crunched me up like a folding chair by raising both parts. “Cool!”

  “Okay, okay, Dad,” I said in a strangled voice (being crunched at the time). “Excellent bed demonstration. Now stop.”