My Stupid Girl

by Smith, Aurora

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “She is lying in bed. Why don’t you get the car started? Make sure it’s warm in there. I will pack some clothes. You can carry her out when we’re all ready. I don’t think she should try to walk.”

  “Yes, okay,” I said, shoving my boots on and getting my car keys so I could warm up the car in the garage. All the while I fought the dread and frozen feeling I got in dreams when I tried to do something fast, but could barely move. When the car had been started and the heat jacked up, I raced back into the house. Grandma had been moved to the couch, and dressed in warm, comfortable clothes. I reached over to Mrs. Tessa and wrapped my long arms around her, not being able to express my gratitude towards her fully with my words. Then I bent down next to my grandma. She put one little hand on my head and swept my hair out of my eyes with the other. I hadn’t realized my hair was in front of my face, probably from years of that being the norm for me, I guess.

  “It’s going to be fine, don’t worry too much hon.” She said it gently but I could still hear her ornery tones in between her tired reassuring pats.

  “I know, you’re going to be fine.” When I said it, I knew neither of us really believed it. “Are you ready?” I asked as I leaned into her hand that was now on my cheek.

  “Yes, let’s go. You may have to help me walk.” I didn’t even let her try. I just picked her up like she was a small child. Her little body felt so frail in my arms, like she could crumble in my hands if I wasn’t extra careful with her. I placed her carefully in my car and ran back into the house for a blanket that I then wrapped around her, making sure her feet were tucked in. I buckled her in and then kissed her forehead, she swatted me off telling me I was jinxing her.

  “Stop spoiling me.” She spoke with as much energy as it takes a Chihuahua to fall to its knees.

  “I will not.” I said, smiling sideways at her. I appreciated her extra effort to make me feel less worried. It worked, for the most part. She smiled with closed eyes for the twenty minutes it took to get her to the hospital.

  I went way too fast, hardly stopping at stop signs and running every yellow light I came upon. I stopped for a little family crossing the street on a morning walk. The four of them were like a picture, but they were seriously irritating me by making me stop and wait for their two toddlers to decide they wanted to get up and walk like they were being told to. The father kept coaxing the kids to move and apologizing to me with sorry looks as the mother started to rifle through her purse for something.

  I gasped and swallowed a lump in my throat. I should have thought about a purse. It was sure to contain Grandma’s insurance cards and ID and other important things. I didn’t know if she was allergic to anything, what kind of medication she was taking, or if she had anything else she needed like glasses or something. We wouldn’t even be able to get into the hospital without it, would we? My mind started racing with my options. I seriously considered turning around until I saw a purse on the floor next to Grandma’s little feet. Mrs. Tessa must have tucked it in there when I went back to get the blanket.

  I think that’s when I fell in love with Mrs. Tessa. I was going to ask that forty-something woman to marry me when I got back home.

  The hospital had hardly any cars in the lot at eight in the morning, so I was able to park right next to the ambulance area. I walked around to the passenger’s side of the car, grabbed the purse, and picked Grandma up, blanket and all. I carried her into the emergency room. She was huffing and puffing the whole time about how she wanted a wheelchair and she wasn’t a child. Her words weren’t very effective, for once. Which was nice.

  “I’ll get you a wheelchair when I find one, but hold your horses for right now. Someone might steal you and try to make you their grandmother if I left you alone.” I teased, trying to make her feel less frightened. I knew she was scared; I could tell by the way her body shook. I could feel it, even with her stick body wrapped inside this big blanket. To be fair, she was not the only one of us who was petrified.

  “Can I help you?” A woman with flaming red hair spoke from behind the massive counter.

  “My grandma needs to see a doctor right away.” I spoke firmly, praying that they didn’t ask a ton of questions. I didn’t want to share her business with everyone in the waiting room.

  “Wheelchair.” Grandma whispered from inside the bundle of blanket.

  “Can I have a wheelchair please, for her?” I tried not to sound bossy, but I kept my voice firm. I wanted them to hurry.

  “Yes, give us a second and an orderly will bring one. Come around here, sir, and we will take your information.” She smiled kindly at me and it made me a little less anxious. She led me around the corner to an in-processing area and sat my grandma on one of the two chairs sitting next to one another, facing an old woman who did not look the least bit kindly. She just looked really bored, and kind of irritated. I started tapping my leg irritably when she began speaking.

  “What’s the problem, sweetie?” She spoke to my grandma in a sharp, snappy voice that made me want to cut my ears off. I could feel my temper rising so I got up and walked over to the soda machine. I needed a little caffeine. I wasn’t tired anymore, but my head was pounding and racing with a million different things, all of them impossible to focus on completely. For one, if I heard that old hag at the counter call my sick grandmother “sweetie” one more time I was going to Hulk out.

  It had just been a weird week. I wanted my life to go back to some kind of normalcy again. I wanted Grandma healthy and snapping at me to stand straight and look people in the eye. I wanted to see Lucy every weekend. And I was starting to feel guilty about egging Rachel’s car. I remember when Michelle and Isaiah had done that to my old Rabbit. The paint had peeled right off. I hadn’t cared about the crappy Rabbit, but that custom-painted BMW was not a cheap car. I might have to figure out how to send Rachel some money anonymously so she could fix it without the money coming out of her pocket. Or her parent’s pocket. Whatever.

  I had no doubt in my mind that they could afford it, but still. Lucy’s father once told me that if I did something I couldn’t tell my mother about, then it was really bad. There was no way I was going to tell my grandma I egged a girl’s car. She would get up on those little legs she could barely stand on and whoop me into next week.

  That image made me laugh. But then it brought me back down to the present situation.

  I knew my grandma was old. She was going to be eighty-seven this year. At this age, I knew I should be expecting her to start getting sick, and eventually pass away. What made me so miserable and anxious was thinking that she might have a painful death. She deserved better than that. A lot better.

  I couldn’t let myself start thinking this way. She was going to be fine. These kinds of things happen to older people all the time. She was going to be fine and I would help make her life easier from now on. I threw my soda away and went back to where Grandma had been sitting just minutes before, but she wasn’t there.

  No one was there.

  The cranky woman at the in-processing desk was gone. My grandma’s chair was empty. Nothing was there, not even the blanket. Maybe the Rapture had come and my unsaved butt was left behind. I poked my head back around and saw the woman with the red hair. When I asked what happened to the old woman I was with her face lost the smile.

  “Oh dear, she fainted. They rushed her back.” As she spoke she buzzed me through the door that I had sprinted toward the second I’d heard “fainted.” I ran through the door, down an empty hallway, and into a giant desk, where a nurse greeted me. Businesslike sympathy met my panic. I knew something was wrong.

  “Just tell me. I’m Doris’ grandson.” She gave a tight-lipped hospital smile. The kind that’s not really fake, but it’s not happy. It’s just so people don’t freak out.

  “Your grandma was taken to Radiology for some tests. She’ll probably be a while, but we can take you to the room where she’s been admitted if you’d like to wait for
her?”

  “Okay, alright, thank you.” I felt a little guilty for jumping down her throat.

  An orderly took me to a single-person room on the third floor, where there was a shower and TV. This was not a cot in the ER, this was designed for a stay longer than a few hours. It felt lonely, cold, and un-welcoming. I hated that my grandma was going to be in here, but at the same time I was glad that we had gotten her to a doctor. I also felt guilty that I had let it get this bad. I had known for a few months that something was wrong and I’d let her talk me out of taking her to someone. She always said that she just had a cold and would get better soon enough.

  I sat down on the chair in the corner of the room, facing the bed that my grandma would be sleeping in for who knew how long. Why was I being so negative? Probably because losing Grandma scared me more than anything else right now. I had lost Lucy, and that had hurt so badly I still wasn’t even close to over it months later. I didn’t know what it would feel like to lose the only mother I ever had.

  Anger flared up at my father for limiting my time with her, but I beat it down. I reminded myself that I wasn’t going to dwell on it. It was done. There was nothing I could do about that anyways. Even if I’d had fifteen years with Grandma it wouldn’t change her getting old and sick.

  I rubbed my eyes furiously, trying to ease the sudden, painful memory of the first time Lucy had told me she loved me. That night, as I sat on her window ledge listening to her mother talk about how forgiveness was a choice, that was a powerful night for me in more ways than one. It had been the start of an actual relationship with my dad. I pulled my phone out and looked at the little message Lucy had sent me a few hours earlier. It was like a painful caress, looking at her words. I kept hoping that maybe she would still call me back.

  For a few seconds I felt bad that my mind was all over the place, but I couldn’t do anything about it, so I just let it. After a while I discovered that the seat reclined into a sleeping position, so I laid it back and tried to catch a little rest.

  I lay awake in that room for twenty minutes before I turned on the TV to distract me. Twenty minutes turned into an hour and that hour turned into two hours. I went a little insane in that little amount of time. At one point, I fell asleep for five minutes. But when I woke up and I saw it had only been five minutes, that made it seem even longer.

  After over two hours I couldn’t take it anymore. I got up and left the room to go find food. I was hungry. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate. Sometime on the plane, I guessed. My last real meal had been lunch the previous day, with Anthony, Marty, Lindsey, and Dillon. My going-away meal. It felt like years ago.

  The hallways were long and beige. I hated the color beige. Come to think of it, I hated hospital food too, but I didn’t hate it as much as the stupid beige color. The walls in my room had been that color when I was growing up. I spent too many nights sitting in my room, begging my body to fall asleep so I could get a few hours break of being afraid of my father. I shook my head again, reminding myself for the second time that it was done. I had forgiven him.

  The thought of those nights made me feel sick, and less hungry. But I still needed something to do. I couldn’t go back to that room and wait another two hours for no one to show up and for no new information. Idiots.

  I shook my head. This was definitely one of those days where I was having to constantly choose to be forgiving. I wondered if, at some point, I would give up and just be really angry. I hated this feeling of being angry at everyone. So much of it had gone away because of the love I had in my life in the past year, especially my grandma and Lucy. They were the reason I didn’t have a constant, ongoing monologue in my mind that consisted of over-thinking, internal arguing, and being angry about things that didn’t matter.

  Like the color beige.

  I walked into a quiet cafeteria filled with round tables. A few doctors and nurses sat looking exhausted, cradling big cups of coffee in their hands like lifelines. Beige walls and hospital food. Win. I bought a coffee and a donut. The donut was gone before I even sat down at the big table in the far corner of the room. My leg started twitching as soon as I sat, ready for something to happen. Too much caffeine and not enough sleep.

  “David?” My name rang out from the front of the cafeteria. Whoever said my name wasn’t sure if it was me or not. I looked up and saw that Sean, from Lucy’s church, was standing there, his arms out, welcoming my presence whole-heartedly. I stood up, stunned to see someone I actually wanted to talk to there, in front of me.

  “Hey, Sean. Do you work here?” I took in his blue scrubs and the big meal he held.

  “ Yeah, I work here man. I’m a male nurse.” His face dared me to laugh. “Chicks dig it.” He winked at me as he dug into his meal.

  “I didn’t realize you traveled all the way over here for work.”

  “Yep. Do you mind if I eat?” His fork paused in midair.

  “Yes, please, eat.” It was slightly embarrassing that he even thought he had to ask. Work rules, I guess. I wished I was more like him. He was cool and so confident. He looked like he was about twelve and a half but I looked up to him, because he knew what he believed and who he was. He had been super open about the church thing, and now he was teasing me about how awesome he was because he was a male nurse. And he meant it.

  “What are you doing here, Dave? Someone you know in here?”

  “My grandma is sick. They are doing tests in Radiology?” I wasn’t sure if I was remembering it correctly. Sean groaned.

  “Sorry, David. Radiology takes forever.” He gave me a sincerely apologetic look. I felt compelled to talk with him about some of the stuff I’d been wondering about lately.

  “It's crazy you’re here, actually.” I said, feeling suddenly embarrassed about bringing any of this up.

  “Why's that?” He asked in between gulps of coffee and inhaling pancakes. Pausing for a minute to collect myself, I jumped in.

  “I was just wondering how you became a Christian. Did you grow up in a religious family?” I asked. We’d start with this. Maybe we’d work our way to my real desire: the desperate need to be convinced that God was real and that he could somehow make my life better if I believed in him.

  “Ah, that’s a funny story actually.” He dabbed his mouth with a napkin before shoving more food in it. “About three years ago I was living with this girl that I was crazy about. She was beautiful and smart.” He gave a little chuckle. “She was a ballerina.”

  “Wow, you don’t look like someone who would date a ballerina. But I’m one to talk.” I laughed along with him. It felt good to talk to someone my own age, my own gender, and to laugh. I felt tension release from my shoulders. I relaxed and settled into my seat, hoping this was the longest story I ever heard. This was the kind of distraction I wanted.

  “Exactly.” He took another big bite of his pancake and looked at this watch.

  “Do you have to go?” Panic rose in my chest. I was going to have to go back to that stupid beige room with the terrible reclining chair.

  “No, no, I’m good. I’m done with my shift, actually. I was just so hungry I couldn’t wait until I got home. Anyways, I was living with this girl Sarah, and my friend Luke kept inviting me to go to church with him, like all the time. It was really annoying, actually.” He smiled at me, knowing I knew all about it. “I always kind of wanted to go. Luke seemed like he really liked it and he was a good guy. But I was just afraid that they were going to tell me to give everything up, like Sarah.” I nodded. I definitely understood that. “I had a scholarship to go to New York to do music. Sarah and I were going to move there together and live happily ever after.”

  Sean put his fork down and gave me a thoughtful look. “One night Sarah went out with some friends and she didn’t come back until late the next morning.” His eyes went un-focused; he was remembering it, reliving that evening. “She never answered her phone, the entire night. I thought she was dead somewhere because she had never done anything remotely
like that before. I spent the whole night pacing the hallways, calling every person I knew, driving around town looking for her. It was the worst night of my life.”

  “What did you say when she came home?” I tried to think of what I would do if Lucy had done that to me. Whatever it was, I would probably feel bad about it afterwards. Per my temper, that’s usually what happened.

  “Well, I was upset that she didn’t call me, of course. But what totally flipped me out was that she didn’t even care. She was asking me what the big deal was.”

  “Wow.”

  “So, I did what any respectably desperate person would do, I called my buddy, Luke. He was on the way to one of those middle of the week bible studies but I didn’t care, man. I just wanted to feel better; I was desperate. My world was falling apart in a matter of a few hours. Sarah obviously didn’t care about me the way I cared for her, to not even care how worried I had been about her.” He shook, his eyes reflecting a terrible memory he wanted to forget. I could relate to that feeling, all too well.

  “So you went to one of those bible studies? Was it the church you go to now, the one that…” I stammered, but got over it. “That you go to with Lucy?”

  “No, but I’ve been with this one for a long time. I love it.”

  “So, did it help? I mean, obviously…” I heard my voice pleading with him to convince me that I should do the same thing that he had.

  “It was amazing, I went in pretty skeptical, but everything they said spoke to me, right to my heart, you know?” He put his hand over his chest and smiled. “For me, I know I was always looking for some way to feel complete. God is what did that for me. I have tried a lot of different ways to feel good; none of them worked. This one feels right, all the time. There’s no point where I feel like there’s something better I could be doing or anything to feel guilty about. That in itself is different from any other feel-good thing, you know?” Sean shook his head and looked kindly at me, his eyes back in focus, now holding a question.