What did pretty bad mean?
A broken neck? Something with his head? Whatever it was, Joe wasn’t going to … to die or anything, was he? He couldn’t die. Not now.
As I got close to the Hennepin County Library, I saw a brief gap in traffic along York Avenue, so I darted across the first two lanes, then ran along the median until it was safe to cross the last two lanes. I kept running, as hard as I could, all the way across the Target parking lot. My arms and legs ached. My lungs burned. But I didn’t slow down.
I thought about how when I was little, I used to worry about Joe dying. He always told me my real parents had died (before I found out he was my real parent), so I thought that if my real parents could die, then he could die, too.
“I’m not going to die, T.J.,” he promised.
But everybody dies sometime.
Some guy honked at me as I zipped across 66th Street. I flipped him the bird and kept right on going. I was almost to the hospital now.
I scrambled up a small grassy hill next to the road, crossed another parking lot, speed-walked past a couple of office buildings, and finally, I found myself panting outside the hospital’s emergency entrance.
The door whooshed open as soon as I stepped on the mat and a cold blast of air conditioning hit me when I walked inside. The dimly lit lobby was practically deserted. An older woman dressed in a pink smock sat at an information desk in the corner. She had her nose buried in a thick paperback.
I walked over to her and pounded my hand on the counter to get her attention. “My dad’s in here somewhere,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “But I don’t know where he’s at. I don’t know what room.”
“Is he a patient here?” she asked.
“Yes!” Didn’t I just say that?
The lady slid her chair over a few feet and parked herself in front of a computer. “Patient’s name?” she asked.
“Joseph Wright,” I said, my foot tapping against the wall.
She typed something on the computer, then squinted at her screen. “Looks like he’s in ICU, bed 5.”
“ICU? What’s that?”
“The Intensive Care Unit.”
My foot stopped tapping. “Is that bad?” It sounded bad.
The lady smiled uneasily. “I don’t know. If he’s in ICU, that means he’s being monitored.”
“Monitored for what? What’s wrong with him?”
“I can’t answer that. You’ll have to speak to his doctor. Or maybe your mother should speak to the doctor. Is she with you?”
“No,” I said. “There is no mother.” Not one who counted at a time like this, anyway. “There’s just me.”
“Oh. Well, why don’t you take the elevator over there to the third floor? Turn right and go through the double doors. That’s ICU. The nurses up there can help you.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I dashed over to the elevator and pushed the button. I pushed it three times before the doors finally opened. A guy around my dad’s age was already in there. He wore tan shorts and a white shirt, and carried a huge bouquet of daisies and some other white and pink flowers. He smiled when I stepped into the elevator. I smiled back and moved to the other side of the car.
I watched the numbers on the panel above the door light up as we passed each floor. The elevator dinged when it stopped at the third floor. I got out and turned to the right, but when I got to the double doors, I stopped. There was a sign with big black letters posted on the door: Intensive Care Unit. Absolutely no live plants or flowers beyond this point.
Whoa. Were some people so sick they couldn’t have flowers? Was Joe that sick?
Oh, no. I massaged my forehead. This wasn’t happening.
“Excuse me? Can I help you?”
I turned to the nurse who had come up behind me. She was big. In fact, she was so big her smock was sort of bursting at the seams. But she looked at me with such concern that I wanted to melt.
“I-I’m here to see my dad.” My voice sounded small and wobbly even to my ears.
“Is he in intensive care?” the nurse asked.
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“What’s his name?”
“Joe,” I choked out. “Joseph Wright.” My bottom lip trembled.
“Oh, child,” the nurse said, wrapping her arms around me. I let myself fall into her because it felt so nice. Like falling into a nice warm bed and then being covered with a huge, fluffy comforter fresh out of the dryer.
“It’s okay,” she said, patting my back.
I will not cry … I will not cry … I bit down hard on my lip and blinked back the tears that welled in my eyes. I never cried. But the way that nurse kept patting my back made me want to. I pulled away from her.
“Do you know my dad?” I wiped the back of my hand across my nose. “Is he in there?” I nodded toward the double doors.
The nurse reached into her pocket and pulled out a small package of tissues. I shook my head when she offered one. I just wanted to find my dad.
“He’s in there,” she said, stuffing the package of tissues back into her pocket. “But he’s in pretty bad shape.”
“How bad?”
The nurse didn’t answer. Instead she asked in a really gentle voice, “Is there someone here with you?”
I was getting awfully tired of people assuming there was someone here with me. “Just tell me how bad he’s hurt, okay? Please?”
I could tell by the sad way she was looking at me that it was pretty bad. “He’s got a broken leg, a broken back, and some internal injuries,” she said finally. “We still don’t know the extent of all his injuries.”
I swallowed hard, then stood up a little straighter. I could handle this. “Can I see him?” I asked.
“You can …” She hesitated. “But you have to understand he’s pretty banged up. I’m not sure you’ll even recognize him—”
“I don’t care. I want to see him.”
“Okay,” the nurse said. “He’s under sedation, but you can see him for a little bit if you want to. No more than ten minutes, though, okay?”
I nodded.
The nurse led the way through the double doors, and I followed her into a huge, brightly lit open area with a desk in the middle and little glass rooms on all the sides. A telephone rang. The nurse turned toward the sound, frowned, then turned back to me. “I’m sorry, but I have to get that,” she said. She pointed toward a darkened room across the way. “Your dad’s over there.”
“Okay. Thank you,” I said. But she was already gone.
I took a deep breath, then forced my legs to carry me the rest of the way to Joe’s room. I stopped just outside the door and slowly poked my head around the corner. All I could see was a white blanket that covered his legs and feet. One of his legs was a lot bigger around than the other one, like there was a cast or something on it, but I couldn’t actually see the cast through the blanket.
I took another breath, then stepped into the room. I edged closer to the bed. My eyes followed the white blanket from Joe’s feet up to his stomach and chest. Several wires ran under the covers to a machine next to the bed. I watched his chest rise and fall a few times before I raised my eyes all the way to his face.
I gasped.
That nurse wasn’t kidding about the bruising. A big white bandage circled most of Joe’s head, but even in the dark I could see that the skin that was visible between the bandages was a blend of nasty shades of red and purple. Even his eyelids were purple. A fat, bluish tube was taped to his mouth and ran to a machine beside the bed.
I went over and sat down carefully on the bed. I was afraid to move at all because I didn’t want to jar him in any way.
This looked bad. Really bad.
“Joe?” I said softly, my eyes glued to his face. “Can you hear me, Joe?”
No response.
The only sounds in the room were the hum of the machine with a bunch of lights that stood next to the bed and Joe’s steady breathing in and out through that tube. It sounded
scary. Like that machine forcing air in and out of Joe’s lungs was the only thing keeping him alive.
I shifted on the bed so I could reach under the blanket and hold his hand, but his hands were tied down. His whole body was tied down. Why would they tie him down? I wondered.
I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat there and watched him breathe. In and out. In and out.
After a little while, I wiggled myself in between Joe’s arm and the bed railing, then slowly leaned over and laid my head down on the pillow next to Joe’s shoulder. It smelled like soap and bandages and medicine. I watched his chest rise and fall and listened to his raspy breathing. As I listened, I tried to match his breathing with my own. As though my breathing could somehow make him better. After a little while, my eyelids grew heavy. I pulled my legs up onto the bed and shifted around so I didn’t take up much space. I lay on my side, my back resting against the hard metal bar of Joe’s bed and my forehead resting against his shoulder. I just needed to rest my eyes for a few minutes … then—
“Hey, you can’t sleep here!”
What?
“You can’t sleep here,” the voice repeated. “You aren’t even supposed to be in here for more than ten minutes at a time.”
For a second I wasn’t even sure where here was. Then I smelled those medicine-y bandages, I heard Joe’s raspy breathing, and I felt the bar on the hospital bed pressing into my back.
I was at the hospital. With Joe. And I had fallen asleep.
I lifted my head toward the voice and blinked because the light out in that main area was so bright.
“You have to get up. You have to leave,” a woman in a nurse’s uniform said. But it wasn’t the nice nurse from before. This nurse was shorter and skinnier and had a tangle of reddish curls all around her face.
I started to sit up. I squinted at my watch: 12:04 a.m.
I groaned. The last thing I wanted to do was walk all the way home at 12:04 in the morning. I wanted to stay here. With Joe. I was about to ask the nurse if there was someplace else I could go here in the hospital, but a machine out in that main room beeped and the nurse hurried away.
I propped myself up on my elbow and glanced down at Joe. He hadn’t moved an inch the entire time I’d been here. If anything, the bruises on his face had gotten worse instead of better. I ached when I looked at him.
I got up off the bed and tiptoed over to the doorway. It looked like the emergency, whatever it was, was in the room directly across from Joe’s. That room was all lit up and people in uniforms bustled in and out.
Maybe they were busy enough over there that no one would notice if I stayed with Joe just a little longer. There was a straight chair in the corner of the room and a curtain that hung from the ceiling beside the chair. I didn’t dare pull the curtain all the way closed. The nurse would notice that. But maybe I could slide it over a little, just enough to hide behind.
I checked to make sure that nurse wasn’t coming back. Then I arranged the curtain and chair so that the only way anyone would know I was still here was if they came all the way in and walked around the bed. I scooted the chair as close to Joe’s bed as I dared. Then I sat down and waited to see if I was going to get caught.
I heard someone come in a few minutes later and do something with one of the machines on the other side of Joe’s bed. I couldn’t see who it was, but I could hear them. I barely breathed. They came back and did the exact same thing about half an hour later. If they came back after that, I never knew it because eventually I fell asleep again.
Buy Yes, I Know the Monkey Man Now!
About the Author
DORI HILLESTAD BUTLER is the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction for young readers. Her middle grade novel SLIDING INTO HOME has received numerous awards, including an Honor Book Award from the Society of School Librarians International. Butler lives in Coralville, Iowa, with her husband, two sons, a dog, a cat, and a fish named Willie, who keeps her company while she writes. Visit Dori Hillestad Butler’s website at www.kidswriter.com.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by Dori Hillestad Butler
Cover design by Loraine M. Joyner
Book design by Melanie McMahon Ives
ISBN 978-1-4804-6710-1 (ebook)
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Also Available from Peachtree Publishers
and Open Road Media
Yes, I Know the Monkey Man,
the sequel to Do You Know the Monkey Man?
Also by Dori Hillestad Butler
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Do You Know the Monkey Man?: A Novel Page 17