by KD McCrite
On Tuesday afternoon, the first week of September, right after the first day of school, I walked with my Mama and my older sister Myra Sue along the shiny gray floors of the hospital corridor. I seriously doubted anything in ole Isabel’s experience to this point had prepared her for the actual pain of a concussion, a broken nose, a broken arm, four cracked ribs, two black eyes and a purple knot on her forehead the size and color of an Easter egg. This is what her husband Ian reported to Mama this morning, after Isabel’s accident. I figured Isabel probably had a good case of the whiplash as well, but I’m no doctor.
Now for a girl of my age (which is eleven) and education (I am in the sixth grade at Cedar Ridge Junior High), I’ve always been pretty good around blood and scrapes and runny noses. I’m no sissy like Myra Sue who is fourteen and in high school. But that day was my first experience in the hospital. I have to tell you, I felt downright woozy. Even Mama looked queasy. Maybe it was because of all the busyness and the noise: phones ringing and people talking and nurses scurrying up and down the hallway with clipboards. I guess it made us both want to lose our lunches, but if Mama could buck up and face it down, so could I. We redheads are pretty tough.
Those nurses didn’t bother to make eye contact with anyone. I wondered if they ever looked at the people they took care of, or if all they did was scribble on those clipboards and read what other people wrote.
In one room we passed, the door stood wide open and a blonde-haired lady was barfing right over the edge of her bed and onto the floor. And in the hallway, a gray-faced old man was lying on a hospital bed right out in the open so everyone had to step around him. He kept raising one thin white hand every time a nurse passed. None of them bothered to say to him “good morning” or “excuse me” or, “Are you having a heart attack?”
I smiled at him, hoping to make him feel less invisible, but he just looked at me as if he was on his way out of this world. He’d probably be dead a week and half before anyone from that hospital noticed.
I looked around and saw a chubby nurse with short frizzy brown hair and great big pink-framed glasses. She was just standing there staring at nothing on the wall.
I walked right up to her and said, “That old man over there needs some help. I think he’s dying.”
She looked at me over the top of those glasses.
“I hardly think you qualify as an expert.”
“But—”
“Children have no business on this floor.” She moved away from me, and her pale blue-green scrub pants made shish-shish noises as she walked toward the desk where two nurses were sipping coffee. “Charlene, I keep telling them that kids don’t need to be up here; they’re always underfoot. Has the office changed the minimum age?”
Well, as I said, I’m just a little bit under the age of twelve, which is the minimum age to be a visitor on the floor, so I hurried to catch up with Mama and my sister before I could be thrown out for trying to save that old man’s life.
I felt downright sorry for ole Isabel if she needed anything because I don’t believe anyone in those aqua outfits had time or interest enough to actually take care of the sick and injured.
Right then I promised myself to never, in a million years, go to the hospital in Blue Reed, Arkansas unless I was in a big hurry to be ushered out of this world and in to the next.
“There’s Isabel’s room,” Mama said as quietly as if we were in church. “Room 316.”
“I hope she isn’t asleep,” Myra Sue whispered, her eyes big and scared. She dearly loved and adored Isabel St. James.
Somebody, somewhere, dropped something loud and metallic and it clattered a good ten seconds before it finally collapsed.
“How could she sleep in all this racket?” I asked in a perfectly reasonable volume given all that was going on around us.
“Shh,” Mama cautioned. “We’re in the hospital.”
“Yes, you dork,” Myra Sue added. “Speak appropriately.”
I hardly saw the point, especially when about ten feet behind us that frizzy-haired nurse yelled for Kelly, who hollered back at her from the far end of the corridor. Apparently Nurse Frizzy had wanted Diet Dr. Pepper, not Diet Coke, and in case you’re wondering, the vending machine on the third floor of that hospital has never, ever sold Fanta Orange, and probably never will. Kelly said so. In fact, she yelled it right down that big shiny hall so all of us could hear.
Mama tapped on the door which, unlike most of the doors we’d passed, was half-closed.
“Entrez-vous,” came the unmistakably miserable and somewhat nasally voice of Isabel St. James.
With her shiny blond curls flying, Myra Sue left us in the dust as she rushed into the room.
“Isabel!” she shrieked in the most un-hospital-appropriate and unladylike manner you can imagine.
“Dearest girl!” Isabel did not shriek, but her whimper was not exactly genteel, either.
Isabel looked like she’d been beaten with an ugly stick. She lay black and blue and purple against the white pillow and sheets. Both eyes were black. Her nose was all bandaged and her lips were twice their normal size. Her left arm was in a sling, and I don’t think she or any of the busy nurses had bothered to comb her short, dark hair since her car wreck and it stood out all over her head. I have to say, I’ve seen ole Isabel St. James look much better, and that’s saying something, because believe me, even on her very best day, she’s no prize in the looks department.
For a minute, you would have thought Myra Sue was going to jump right up on the bed with Isabel, but she stopped herself and tenderly hugged the woman. Isabel attempted to kiss her cheek with those big, ole swole-up lips, then looked past her at Mama and me. She reached out her bruised right hand.
“Lily! April!” she said with a little more spirit than you might have thought. “Oh, it’s so good to see you both. I thought I might never see another living soul.”
We hugged her as gently as possible. She moaned but she didn’t scream, for which I was grateful. Isabel can put on the dog pretty good when it comes to High Drama, and that’s the honest truth.
She looked past us. “Didn’t Grace come with you?”
“No,” Mama said, “She has come down with a cold this morning, and she won’t leave her house until she is sure she’s no longer contagious. You know Mama Grace.”
“She said used up a whole box and a half of Kleenex day before yesterday,” I put in.
Isabel shook her head. “And she won’t see a doctor.”
“You know Grandma,” Myra Sue said.
“Stubborn to the very core,” said Mama.
“And then some,” I added. “I just hope she don’t get the pneumonia.”
“When I called to tell her about your accident, she said to tell you she’s praying for your quick recovery,” Mama told Isabel.
Isabel lay back against the pillows and sighed. “That’s kind of her. But after everything I’ve been through in the last eight hours . . .”
Her voice trailed into nothing as Ian came into the room. He looked worse for wear, let me tell you—all wrinkled and droopy, with bags under his pale blue eyes and his shirt half untucked. Ian usually looks well-groomed, even in work clothes. Right then his wispy blond hair was wispier than ever and he had mud on his shoes. He saw us and smiled a little bit. Ian’s not so bad once you get used to him.
“Afternoon,” he said wearily. I have to say, we three Reilly females greeted him with a lot more enthusiasm than his wife did.
“Is that my coffee?” Isabel said to him without so much as a howdy-do. Have I told you yet that she can be rude? R-u-d-e, rude.
“Yes. I had them brew it fresh for you at Gourmet Coffee, just like you told me.” He peeled back the little tab on the lid. Steam came out and the smell of coffee temporarily overcame the icky stink of medicine and sick people.
“There’s a coffee vending machine at the end of the hall,” I told him. “Right next to the machine that sells potato chips and gum and Oreos.”
H
e gave me a tight smile. “She didn’t want that.”
“Oh.” Enough said.
“And where are my cigarettes?” Isabel took the Styrofoam cup from him.
Ole Isabel says she’s going to quit smoking, but your guess is as good as mine as to when that will be.
Ian hesitated. “Your doctor said you must not smoke until he’s sure you’re all right,” he said finally. “You might have injured your lungs in that accident, lambkins.”
She glared at him from her black and blue eyes.
“Have a little pity, can’t you? I am in deadly pain, I’ve totally lost the use of one arm, and I haven’t had a cigarette since . . . since . . .” Her look of outrage fled as panic replaced it. “Oh! Oh! I can’t remember the last time I had a cigarette.”
She leaned toward Ian in desperation, “I might have brain damage, darling! Oh! Oh, please don’t leave me, darling!”
See what I mean about High Drama? Good grief.
“Oh, Isabel!” hollered Myra Sue, as if someone was taking out her own personal appendix without her permission.
“You’re recovering from a wreck, Isabel, so it’s only natural to have a little memory lapse or two,” Mama said soothingly, a complete Voice of Reason.
“Yes, lamb,” Ian murmured, all sweet and kind. “The doctor said your concussion was mild.”
He tried to smooth her messy hair but she jerked her head away.
“A lot you care. Or know. And I can remember just fine what happened right up until I . . . until I . . .”
It was obvious the way she visibly grasped for memories that she couldn’t remember right up until Whatever. I tried to help.
“Why don’t you just tell us what you remember, then maybe all the rest of it will come back to you?”
She dragged her pitiful, bruised gaze from her mister and looked at me. When her swollen lips parted in a smile, I saw where her two front teeth were chipped. I wondered if she knew about that. I bet she didn’t, because if she did, she would already be screeching for a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon to give her a mouth transplant.
“You always have the best ideas, April,” she said.
