“Shit. I just drove it last night to pick up dinner. Is it the battery?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
“Stay on the phone with me and try it again.”
She stepped on the brake and pressed the ignition button, and that’s when she noticed something illuminate on the dashboard: REPLACE KEY BATTERY.
“Shit. It’s the battery—not the car’s, the key’s.”
Rob let out a sigh of relief. “We can deal with that.”
“Can we?”
“Definitely. We have an extra fob.”
“Where?”
“I think . . .” He made a rustling noise. “Oh. Crap. I have it.”
“Great.”
“Sorry. Oh! But I think I have extra batteries somewhere in the house. Try the junk drawer in the kitchen. Just replace the battery and you should be good to go.”
She closed her eyes and took a calming breath. On most days this wouldn’t even be an issue, but feeling like she did, she could barely dress herself, much less perform a mechanical task she’d never done before.
“Okay. I’m on it.”
She hung up and plodded back to the house, where she searched through the junk drawer and several others for the batteries. She couldn’t find them. They weren’t in the basement either, nor were they in the buffet in the dining room, nor the media console in the family room. Just when she was about the dissolve into a heap on the floor, she remembered: Hadn’t she seen a strip of small lithium batteries in Rob’s sock drawer? She raced upstairs—well, “raced.” More like lumbered. She yanked open his sock drawer, and there they were, all ten of them.
“Hallelujah!” she cried. Then she needed to lie down for a minute. All the moving and shouting had taken it out of her.
She finally made it downstairs and laid the key fob and battery in front of her. The problem was, it was entirely unclear how to get the battery out. Obviously it was inside somewhere, but how were you supposed to open the damn thing without breaking it?
Found batteries. How do you open fob?
Rob texted back:
No idea. Check manual?
“God, fucking help me,” she said to herself. She managed to walk back to the car, open the glove compartment, and find the manual; when she got back inside she opened it. She’d started seeing floaters a few minutes earlier, which meant reading the minuscule instructions was next to impossible. There were illustrations, but they made it look so easy. It wasn’t easy! How was she supposed to get the top off, like the picture showed? She jabbed at it with a pen, then a butter knife, then a paring knife, but nothing worked. She slammed it on the counter once but decided not to repeat that maneuver, both because she worried she would break the fob and because she didn’t actually have the energy. By this point, she was sweating but also shivering, her back and chest beaded with sweat. Another fever was coming on, she could feel it. She started bawling.
“I . . . just . . . want . . . to . . . see . . . a . . . doctor!” she cried into the air. No one was there to hear her, of course, but she felt better just letting it all out.
She rubbed her eyes and nose on her sleeve and stared down the key fob. It was just a key fob. It wasn’t a bank safe. She could do this. She had to do this.
She grabbed the paring knife again and wedged it between a ridge in the side of the fob, and at last she felt something give. The plastic top popped off.
“Yes! YES! Oh, thank you. THANK YOU!”
She popped out the battery and pressed in the new one, and moments later she was hoisting herself into the driver’s seat of their Jeep. The car turned on, and she threw it in reverse down the driveway. In her delirium and excitement, she hadn’t checked the urgent care address, so she didn’t know where she was going. Actually, she hadn’t even picked an urgent care. Like Rob said, there were at least seven close by, but her brain was too foggy to remember where any of them were.
She grabbed her phone, pulled up the map app, and plugged in “urgent care.” A smattering of red dots appeared across the map of their area. She picked one at random—the one that seemed closest to her house—and got directions: a five-minute drive. She could do that. She would make it.
If anyone she knew had seen her driving, they would have stopped her and offered to drive her instead. She looked terrible. She felt terrible—cold and clammy and feverish. But it didn’t matter. She was going to get herself to urgent care, and some doctor was going to make her better. She believed that now. All she needed was a prescription for something from a medical professional who knew what he or she was doing. Help was moments away. She was counting down the seconds.
* * *
From the moment she pulled into the parking lot, something seemed off. The lot was packed. At first she figured the cars were overflow from another lot, but when she walked through the front door, the waiting room teemed with people as well.
This virus is even worse than I imagined, she thought. By the looks of it, at least thirty people were also waiting to see the doctor. Could she really wait for that many people to go ahead of her? Not really. But at the moment, she couldn’t fathom getting back in the car and attempting to find another office. This one would have to do.
She signed in at the front desk. It was one o’clock in the afternoon, and already the place was on its eighth page of sign-ins. This virus was a beast. It was going to take out all of Montgomery County.
The receptionist looked her up and down. “Insurance and ID.”
Amy handed over her cards. The woman threw a clipboard at her, catching Amy off guard.
“Fill this out,” she said.
“Here? Or do you want me to have a seat?”
“Do I look like I care?”
Amy looked around to see if she was the only one who thought this woman rude beyond all reason, but no one seemed to be paying attention. She decided to fill out the forms at the counter, mostly because she didn’t want to lose sight of her cards. She didn’t know this woman at all, but she didn’t trust her.
Once she’d finished filling in the information, she handed the clipboard back to the receptionist, who tossed Amy’s insurance card and driver’s license back on the counter.
“Have a seat,” she barked, as if Amy were trying her patience. Maybe she’d had a long day, with all of these sick people. Amy was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Still, she couldn’t see why the woman needed to be so rude about it. It’s not as if Amy wanted to be here. Given the choice, she’d rather be pretty much anywhere else in the world.
There weren’t any available seats, so Amy found a place to stand in the back corner of the waiting room. She could barely keep herself upright, so it would be a miracle if she didn’t pass out before the nurse called her back. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. Whoever was called back next, she would take their seat. That was the only thought that kept her from crying.
The room was noisy. Not with people talking—no one really was—but with lots of ambient sound. Sniffling. Creaking. Scratching. A lot of scratching. Amy opened her eyes and looked around. Something was off, but she couldn’t put her finger on what. The people all seemed so . . . fidgety. Granted, she wasn’t exactly in top form and wasn’t acting herself either, but most of the people in the room didn’t seem very . . . well, sick. She knew there were lots of reasons someone might go to urgent care—sprains, shallow cuts, fever, sore throat. But the people around her seemed more anxious than anything else.
“Katrina, you’re up.”
A nurse held open the door to the back part of the office, and a rail-thin woman arose from a chair and went to meet her. The woman’s ash-blond hair hung in straggly waves, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup.
Okay, so maybe some of these people do look sick, Amy thought. She made for the woman’s empty seat and snagged it before a middle-aged black man could beat her to it. She sunk into the vinyl seat, her sweatpants squeaking against the sticky black surface.
“Katrina, baby, hurry u
p. We don’t have all day.”
Amy tried to mask her surprise, but she was sure her face broadcast her disapproval. What kind of nurse talked to a patient that way? Frankly, what kind of nurse said “you’re up”? It sounded so unprofessional.
“There you go. Good girl. Back we go.”
Maybe the nurse already knew her. That would make sense at a primary care office or some other doctor’s office that had regular patients. But who would be a regular at urgent care? If you had that many “urgent” situations, you probably should be seeing a specialist because there was probably something wrong.
Amy folded her hands in her lap and waited.
Ten minutes.
Fifteen.
Thirty-five.
At forty-five minutes, she started having an internal debate. Did she get up and speak with the receptionist to ask how much longer it would be, thus risking her seat being taken by another patient? Or did she hold on to her seat, but risk sitting for another two hours, in which time she could go to another, less crowded urgent care facility? She looked at the clock on her phone. It was getting close to two o’clock. Sherrie would pick Noah up at three, and though she’d bring him back to her own house for a while, she’d eventually bring him to 120 Sycamore. Amy wanted to get in another nap before having to be “mom” again. She decided to take her chances on the seat. If someone took it, another one would open up eventually.
The receptionist raised an eyebrow as soon as she clapped eyes on Amy. “Yeah?”
“I just wanted to check on how things are moving along. I’ve been waiting for about forty-five minutes and—”
“Some people been waiting longer than that.”
“I’m sure, but I was just wondering if you had an idea of how much longer it will be.”
“Let me look into my crystal ball.” She picked up a pencil holder on her desk and shook it. “It says the doctor will see you when he sees you. So there you go.”
Amy was speechless. How had the office not fired this woman already? As she tried to find the right words, she overheard someone in the hallway beyond the receptionist’s desk say, “Shit. Should we just tell them to go to the ER?”
She got a sinking feeling in her stomach. Had she chosen the wrong urgent care? As Amy looked around, she noticed how dirty the office was. The floor was littered with gum wrappers and plastic bottle tops and random pieces of paper. How had she not noticed that before? Probably because she was so sick. She desperately wanted to see a doctor, but she was becoming worried that no one here would be able to help her.
The door to the exam rooms opened beside her. “Amy Kravitz?”
“That’s me.”
The receptionist huffed. “Looks like it’s your lucky day.”
She followed the nurse down the hallway to an exam room. “Kravitz, huh? You related to Lenny?”
“No relation.”
“That would be pretty cool, huh? I guess you’d have to be black, though.”
“I guess . . .” Amy had hoped the nurse would make her feel better about the quality of care here, but she was quickly realizing her hopes would probably not bear fruit.
She followed the nurse into an exam room. “Have a seat on the table.”
She went to sit on the table but stopped when she realized they hadn’t replaced the protective paper. The table itself was ripped and dirty, and she swore she saw mucus in the far corner. “I . . . think it needs paper.”
“What? Oh.” The nurse went for the roll of paper but jumped back when she saw the mucus. “Aw, come on. Gross.”
She wet a paper towel and wiped it off. She stretched a clean sheet of paper over the table. “Right. Up you go.”
Amy was about to ask if the table should be sanitized first, but before she could the nurse started in with questions.
“So what brings you in today?”
Amy described her symptoms.
“And what’s your pain level?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m in pain, per se. More achy and uncomfortable and generally miserable.”
“But if you had to give it a number. Like a five? A two?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a three.”
“Okay. And have you had any lacerations prior to these symptoms beginning?”
“Sorry?”
“Have you had any lacerations prior to these symptoms beginning?”
“Lacerations? Like . . . cuts?”
“I guess so.”
Amy was baffled. What did cuts have to do with a virus and possible sinus infection?
“Um . . . no.”
“Any gunshot wounds?”
“What?”
“Gunshot wounds. You have any?”
“No.”
The nurse typed a few things into the computer. Then she grabbed a blood pressure cuff and attached it to Amy’s arm. She stared at it for a long while. “Hmmm. I think this one is broke.”
“I . . . think you need to squeeze the pump,” Amy offered. She didn’t care if she sounded snarky. This woman was supposedly a medical professional. What kind of nurse didn’t know how to take someone’s blood pressure? Was anyone in this office competent? Also, she wanted to correct the woman and tell her the word is “broken” not “broke,” but right now grammar was the least of her worries.
The nurse glared at Amy. “Uh, yeah, thanks.”
She squeezed and squeezed, until the cuff was so tight around Amy’s bicep that she thought she might cry. “Ouch,” she winced. “That hurts.”
The nurse sighed. “Like I said. It’s broke. Let me get another one.”
She left and slammed the door behind her, and Amy heard a stream of obscenities as she chatted to another employee. “Watch out for the bitch in room three. Telling me how to do my job. I mean really.”
Amy started panicking. She shouldn’t be here. Whatever this place was, it wasn’t a competent urgent care center, and she no longer had faith they could correctly diagnose her, much less make her better. She grabbed her purse and snuck out of the room, heading down the hallway.
“Hey, where are you going?” the nurse called after her.
“I changed my mind,” Amy said.
“Yeah, well, good riddance. We still get paid anyway.”
Amy wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but she figured she’d deal with the financial fallout later. She burst into the waiting room and headed for the door, but as she opened it, she bumped straight into Julian.
“Julian—hi.” Amy self-consciously tucked her hair behind her ears. She knew there was no way she looked anything other than terrible.
“Hey,” Julian said. He sounded as uncomfortable as she felt. “How did you . . . what are you doing here?”
“I have the cold of the century. I’ve been out of commission for six days. Rob and I agreed it was time for me to see someone.”
“Ah, got it. Yeah, I think I’m fighting something similar myself.”
“Yeah, well, a word of advice: Don’t waste your time here. I just left in the middle of the appointment because the nurse couldn’t figure out how to take my blood pressure.”
“Yikes.”
“That’s putting it mildly. I’ll probably have to wait another hour at another urgent care, but I’d rather do that than risk my health at the hands of one of these clowns.”
Julian glanced over Amy’s shoulder. He hesitated. “Eh. I’m already here. Might as well take my chances.”
Amy shrugged. “Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.” She doubted that was possible.
“Julian, baby, come sign in,” the receptionist called across the room.
“Sorry, gotta run. But good luck to you. And hey, thanks for all of your help with the fund-raiser. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem. Once I’m back on my feet I can dive back in.”
“Sounds great. Take care.”
He walked past her into the waiting area and as the door shut behind her, she thought how odd it was that the receptionist already knew his
name.
Chapter 17
Amy eventually got better. She found a competent urgent care, where the nurses knew how to use blood pressure cuffs and the doctor diagnosed her with sinusitis and prescribed a course of antibiotics. Rob was furious when he heard about her experience at the first urgent care and had already filed a report with the Better Business Bureau. She wouldn’t repeat that experience for all the money in the world, but she did get a lift out of seeing Rob all riled up on her behalf.
For her part, Amy had gone onto Yelp to write a scathing review and was astonished at how many people had identical experiences to hers. One woman, who went with her eight-month-old, was told that babies don’t have sinuses. Another found feces on the exam table. Another was prescribed penicillin even though she had an allergy. The complaints went on and on. Why hadn’t Amy checked here first? If only she hadn’t been so deliriously sick and impatient, she could have saved herself hours of frustration.
But now she was better, which meant she could get back to helping with the Food Fight gala. She didn’t mind helping—some of the tasks, like helping with the menu, were actually pretty fun—but it was starting to feel more like a job than like helping a friend. She didn’t want to feel stressed the entire evening of the event because she somehow felt responsible for it. Part of her worried, as Rob suggested again and again, that she was diverting time away from potentially more productive and lucrative work to help Julian get a fresh start.
Nevertheless, she was in too deep now to abdicate responsibility. The fund-raiser was in a month, and she had already taken charge for many aspects of the evening. One issue she was determined to resolve was figuring out what all of these community centers and other recipients of Food Fight’s help actually did. Amy knew the money raised at the event would be distributed to these places to bolster their programming, but Julian had merely given her a list of groups to include in the reading materials, rather than explain what each group did to improve access to healthy food. He didn’t have to provide details, but Amy knew people would be more likely to pony up if they knew exactly what their money was going to support.
The Last House on Sycamore Street Page 20