Jessica said, “The best thing about this machine is my mom doesn’t have to help me do therapy anymore.”
Jessica’s parents are divorced, and she lives with her mom. Sometimes I feel bad that my parents and Jenny have to get up early to help me with my therapy or stay up late when they have other things to do. Even though they don’t actually do the therapy by hand they still stay with me, and I like it that they do. I could imagine how hard it must have been for Jessica and her mom. At least I had two parents and my sister to share the responsibility.
“The other great thing about the vest is you can do your nebs at the same time as you’re doing the vest, since you don’t have to lie down in all the positions. So it saves time.”
The machine is pretty expensive, but my parents’ insurance covers it.
When I first got it, Dr. Mallers told us it cost about as much as a car! I liked the treatment the vest gave me because I coughed up a lot of stuff and my breathing felt much easier afterwards. I don’t know which treatment I like better, though. When someone pounds on me, it’s almost like a massage, which can be pretty nice. Mom used to say that therapy was our “bonding” time. I know what she means.
My parents brought Jenny and Alec to visit me that night. They also brought Chinese food for dinner. The hospital food was pretty gross, and the nurses were getting mad at me for not eating enough of it.
I had a different therapist that night. Her name was Elyce. She brought the vest machine again.
“Can I have pounding tonight?” I asked.
While Elyce did my treatment, I thought about what it might be like for my parents to actually have to do my therapy for me every day. It would be nice to have the one-on-one time with them, but I already have that. I would feel bad, though. It’s a lot of responsibility for parents with a sick kid. Having to work so hard to keep me healthy. They would never get a break from it. Not ever.
Chapter Eighteen
Jessica and I spent a lot of time in the hospital hanging out with Matt and Maria. They made the hospital seem fun. When I was finally starting to feel better, they decided to “initiate” me.
One night, we stayed up playing cards and eating pizza in Matt’s room. All evening Jessica and Matt had been exchanging funny looks. I couldn’t figure out what was going on between the two of them. At midnight I found out.
“We’re going for a little walk,” Jessica said.
“Where?” I asked. We weren’t allowed off the floor without a pass.
“You’ll see,” Matt said. Maria giggled.
“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked Maria.
“Of course, but I’m not telling!” She giggled again.
Jessica looked around. “All clear.”
There were no nurses in sight because it was so late at night. I wondered where the nurse was who always sits at the front desk. Maybe it was her break time. We walked down the long back hallway. Matt kept looking behind us to make sure we weren’t being followed by any nurses. When the elevator arrived, Matt pushed the button marked ‘B’ for basement.
“What’s in the basement?” I asked. It felt like Halloween all over again, and I thought about Diana. She would probably love this adventure, wherever we were going.
Before anyone would answer my question, the elevator doors slid open, and we all stepped out. Right in front of us was a sign. ‘MORGUE.’ An arrow pointed to the left.
“Are we going to the...?” I started.
Matt and Jessica were smiling, and Maria was giggling again.
“No way!” I yelled, and turned back to the elevator. But the doors were already shut, and the indicator showed the elevator was up on the third floor. The next thing I knew, I was standing outside the door to the morgue.
“Do you think there are any dead bodies in there?” Jessica asked.
“Of course there are! It’s a morgue,” Matt said.
“You have to go in first,” Jessica said to me.
“No way!” I said again, because maybe they hadn’t understood me when I said it the first time.
“Go on,” Maria urged, still giggling.
What if there were dead people in there? What if Maria’s sister, Alicia, were in there? Maybe they forgot to bury her last month. What if we got caught? What if I don’t do it and they call me a chicken? The last thought made me reach for the doorknob.
“Go on. You can do it,” Matt urged.
I closed my eyes, held my breath, and grabbed the doorknob. I started to turn it. It was locked. Boy, was I relieved!
Behind me the three of them were roaring with laughter.
“You knew it would be locked!” I said.
“Of course,” Matt said. “You don’t think they would leave the door to the morgue unlocked in the middle of the night, do you?” He was laughing so hard he started coughing. Jessica and Maria were coughing, too. They all looked so funny that I started laughing. And then, of course, I joined the coughing. We must have been making an awful racket down there laughing and coughing because a security guard found us. Busted!
“What floor are you from?” the guard asked.
“Nine,” Maria told him, trying to catch her breath.
The guard escorted us all back up to the ninth floor. The elevator doors opened, and he shooed us out.
“Get back to your rooms.”
He wasn’t going to follow us or tell the nurses where we had been. He was cool.
“Thanks,” Matt said to the guard, as we got off the elevator. We snuck back to our rooms. None of us got caught.
Chapter Nineteen
At the beginning of my second week in the hospital, Dr. Mallers told me I had to stay one more week.
“Sometimes we like to keep kids here for ten days or even two whole weeks,” she explained. “Occasionally we let them go home with their IV but in your case, since you were pretty sick when you got here, we would like to keep you for another week of antibiotics.”
“Okay,” I said. I wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t see much of a choice. I was worried about school, though. Kelly had come to the hospital twice to bring me my homework, but I was still worried about falling behind. It’s not so easy to do homework from classes I haven’t actually been to. Jenny was helping me with some of it. But I was still worried.
The second time Kelly visited she had a big stack of cards the kindergartners had made for me. Kelly and Jessica helped me tape them up all over the wall. There were so many cards, and they were so big, I had to put some on Jessica’s side of the room. Jessica didn’t mind. She didn’t have any cards of her own.
“You don’t get too many cards when you come into the hospital twice a year. People forget about sending them after a while. I don’t care, though.”
But I could tell it did bother her. We put my cards up all over the room.
* * * *
After Dr. Mallers told me I would have to stay another week, I picked up the phone and called Kelly at home. I knew she would be there. It was Thursday afternoon.
“Can you bring me more homework?” I asked her.
“Sure,” she said, “and guess what?”
“What?” I was getting a little bit bored in the hospital, so I didn’t mind Kelly’s guessing games.
“I have a surprise for you. Can I come up tomorrow?”
“I would love that,” I said. I really missed her. “But what’s the surprise?”
“You’ll see!”
* * * *
And the next day I did see! Kelly came into my room followed by Zoe, Shayna, Diana, Nicolle, and Lily. Wow! I was definitely surprised, but I was also a little bit embarrassed. There I was lying in bed and practically half my class was there to see me. Thank goodness I had put on a T-shirt and sweatpants and brushed my hair to look halfway decent for Kelly’s visit.
“Surprise!” they shouted.
“What are you guys doing here?”
“Visiting you,” Zoe said. She handed me a great big bouquet of flowers. “This is from
all of us.”
I read the card, “We hope you’re feeling better soon. Sixth grade just isn’t the same without you. Love, Kelly, Zoe, Shayna, Lily, Nicolle, Isabella, and Sara.”
“Isabella and Sara couldn’t come,” Kelly explained, “because they both got grounded for failing the history test we had on Tuesday.”
I felt bad that they were grounded. I didn’t feel bad that they hadn’t come to visit me, though. I still wasn’t sure exactly how I felt about them. In fact, I wasn’t even sure how I felt about everyone else coming to see me. But so far it didn’t seem too bad.
“This is from all of us, too,” Shayna said, handing me a big box of chocolate chip cookies. “I made them.”
I opened the box right away and within five minutes half of the cookies were gone.
“Are you sure you didn’t bring this for all of us?” I teased Shayna.
I told my friends all about my adventure to the morgue. As I expected, Diana thought it was cool and asked if we could go there.
I told her, “No way!”
We took a walk down the hall instead, and I introduced them to Matt and Maria. Jessica had already gone home. We rode the elevator down to the cafeteria and snacked on potato chips and juice from the vending machines. It was still a little weird walking around attached to my IV pole, but none of my friends seemed to care. Or even notice much. They were all too busy filling me in on what I had missed at school.
The most important news was that all the girls had been asked to the Winter Dance by the boys in our class. Even shy Diana had a date: Bill Harrell, the tallest boy in our class. The news that made me nervous was that Zoe had been helping Kelly in the kindergarten. But I was only upset about it for a few seconds.
Zoe said, “But don’t worry, Tory. The job is definitely yours when you come back to school. Liza asks for you every day. Besides, I get enough little kids with my brother Jack and his friends.”
I felt lots better when she told me that.
Kelly looked at her sparkly purple watch when it seemed like we had finished enough juice and potato chips to feed the entire hospital.
“We have to get going. My mom is picking us up out front in ten minutes,” she said. I walked everyone to the main entrance and said good-bye to my friends in the lobby. It was a bummer not being able to leave the hospital, even to go out on the sidewalk.
“Thanks for the cookies and the flowers,” I said.
“Come back to school soon,” Lily said.
“I’ll be back in a week. Try to have fun without me.” I laughed.
“I’ll call you tonight,” Kelly said.
I waited with them until we saw Kelly’s mom drive up. I pushed my IV pole over to the elevators and went back up to the ninth floor. As I walked back to my room, I was thinking about how nice it was that my friends had come to visit me. When I stepped into my room, I thought for a moment I was in the wrong one. There was a boy sitting in the chair near the foot of my bed. He must have heard me coming because he turned around. It was Potter Murphy! What was he doing in my hospital room? How did he know I was here? I wanted to pretend that I didn’t know it was him and turn right around and walk out of my room.
“Hi, Tory.” Potter looked nervous. But he smiled.
“Hi, Potter.” I wanted to ask him what he was doing here, but that would have sounded rude.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“A lot better, thanks.”
“That’s good.” He seemed relieved. “The nurse said you would be right back. She told me it was all right to wait in here.”
“Potter, how did you know I was here?”
“Oh, uh, well, there was a rumor at school, you know, since you’ve been absent for a while, you know. Some of the kids were saying you were seriously sick, and you had some, um, like…weird disease?” He said it almost like a question, as if he knew it probably wasn’t true.
“I didn’t think it was true,” he went on, “so I asked my mom to call your mom to find out what’s wrong with you. I mean…well, to find out if, um, if what the kids said was true.” He was blushing, and he looked embarrassed.
I was surprised, but thought I knew exactly who had been spreading rumors about my “weird disease” at school. Isabella and Sara.
“So what did your mom tell you?” I asked Potter.
“She said you have a disease called…” He hesitated before he said, “sixty-five roses.”
“It’s called cystic fibrosis.”
“Yeah, that’s what my mom said. She said it wasn’t contagious or anything and if I wanted to visit you, it would be okay.”
I wondered if he would still want me to be his date for the Winter Dance now that he knew I had CF.
“Yeah, it’s okay that you’re visiting me. It gets pretty boring in here. I like when people come to visit,” I said.
“Will you...?” he started, “I mean, are you going to get out of the hospital in time for the Winter Dance?”
“I’ll be out way before the dance. I only have to stay here for one more week.”
“That’s good. I thought maybe you wouldn’t be able to go to the dance with me.” Potter’s cheeks were red again.
“I can still go,” I told him. Relief made me smile at him.
He smiled back.
Potter’s mom was waiting downstairs in the lobby for him, so he didn’t stay very long.
“I brought you these,” he said, handing me a get-well card, a magazine with pictures of TV stars on the front of it, and a chocolate bar. “My mom said you might be bored in the hospital, so I brought you something to read.”
“Thanks, Potter.” I smiled again.
He smiled, too, but it was a nervous sort of smile.
“Well, uh, I’ll see you when you get back to school.” He got up to leave.
“Thanks for visiting me.”
When he smiled again he didn’t look so nervous.
I couldn’t wait to call Kelly!
Chapter Twenty
I left the hospital fourteen days after I went in, and by then I felt great. Better than I had felt since school started. And I was home in time for Thanksgiving. We had two days off from school for the holiday. On the next Friday, Mom took Jenny and me to the mall so we could start our Christmas shopping. Mom wanted Alec to come along, but he said he would do his Christmas shopping later. Alec always leaves things for the last minute. Jenny wanted to do her shopping alone, so Mom asked her to meet us at the food court for lunch. When we got to the mall, Jenny took off, Christmas list in hand.
Our first stop in the mall was my favorite store, Sparkle Dust. Mom said I could have a new dress for the Winter Dance. I brought two dresses Mom liked and two that I liked into the dressing room. I used to let my mom come in with me when I tried on new clothes, but now that I’m almost twelve I thought she should wait outside the door. I pulled off my sweater and jeans. I dropped my T-shirt on the floor with the rest of my clothes. I put on the first dress that Mom picked. It was red with a big white bow in the back. I opened the dressing room door. “Mom, I look like a six-year-old!”
Mom agreed. Neither of us liked the other one Mom had chosen, either. When I put on the green velvet dress I picked out, I knew it was what I wanted to wear to the Winter Dance. I opened the dressing room door again. “This is it.”
“I think you’re right,” Mom said. “Turn around.”
I turned around and the skirt spun out in a full circle. This was definitely the dress I wanted.
“I think the socks have to go, though,” Mom said.
I looked down at my feet. I was wearing a pair of red socks with big white snowflakes on them. I giggled. They definitely did not go with green velvet.
Then Mom said, “Okay, get dressed, and I’ll meet you at the register.”
While I got back into my jeans, turtleneck, and sweater, I thought about Potter Murphy. I hoped he would like the velvet dress as much as I did.
My old dress shoes have a strap across the top. Th
ey’re for little girls. I told Mom I was old enough for a pair of heels. We headed to the shoe store. I found a cool pair of black patent leather pumps with a small bow on the front and heels that made me at least two inches taller. After I walked around the store for about five minutes making sure that they wouldn’t hurt my feet, Mom agreed with my choice.
We were ready to start the Christmas shopping part of the trip when we ran into Liza and her mother. I introduced them to my mom.
“We bought you a Christmas present,” Liza said.
“You did?” I was surprised, but excited, too.
“Yes, but I can’t show it to you now because it’s not Christmas yet. Right, Mommy?”
“That’s right, Liza. Tory will have to wait for her gift.” Then to me, Mrs. Frank said, “Liza picked it out herself, and she even paid for it with her own money.”
“You did?” I asked Liza. I was impressed.
Liza nodded her head and smiled. Her bottom teeth had grown in. Mom invited them to join us at the food court for lunch at one.
“Please, please, please, Mommy!” Liza begged.
“We would love to, but Liza’s little sister is with her Granddad, and I told them we would be home for lunch. Thank you for the invitation, though.”
Liza looked sadly disappointed, but she didn’t pester her mom anymore. Liza’s mom rested her hand lightly on Liza’s head. “Liza, why don’t you ask Tory if she would like to come to our house tomorrow for lunch.”
“Can you come to my house for lunch tomorrow?” Liza repeated.
I looked at my mom. “Can I?”
“That’s ‘May I’ and yes, you may.”
“Goody!” Liza squealed.
“Then we’ll see you tomorrow at noon,” Mrs. Frank said.
It was getting late, and we still hadn’t bought one single gift. The mall was so crowded. It’s always crowded on Black Friday, but that’s the day Mom starts her Christmas shopping every year anyway. If it were up to me, I would do all my Christmas shopping in July when there’s hardly anyone at the mall. Plus, I wouldn’t have to drag my winter coat around.
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