“Masha,” I whispered.
The happy warmth of the daydream vanished, and I looked down at Mrs. Song. She blinked back at me. She blinked a lot, Mrs. Song, but you got used to it.
“You okay?” she asked. She never spoke Chinese with me in front of Sunny. Somehow she understood it was my secret. Mrs. Song just got stuff like that.
“Yeah, are you okay?”
She squeezed my hand. “Hat looks good on you,” she said.
“I like the flowers better,” said Sunny, climbing on the chair next to the bed and switching on the little TV-like thing hooked to the wall.
“Don’t touch that,” I told her. “Get down.”
“It’s a heart monitor,” she said. “I’m going to check Mrs. Song’s oxygen level.”
“Your oxygen level is going to be zero after I strangle you if you don’t turn it off and get down from the chair.”
The curtain swooshed open.
“Hello,” said a nurse with a doctor behind him.
“What do we have here?” he asked, looking at Sunny.
“I was just about to check her oxygen level,” Sunny said.
“How about we take over from here, okay, sweetie?” he said, smiling at Sunny like she was the cutest little thing ever. If only they could all see her crispy little black heart like I could, no one would be smiling.
“I’ve been studying a lot about anatomy and physiology,” Sunny said. “So I can help.”
The nurse and doctor chuckled. People were always chuckling at Sunny.
“I’m sure you have,” said the doctor as he picked up Mrs. Song’s chart, even though I could tell that he was sure she hadn’t. Neither of them even looked twice at my giant hat or my panda pajamas.
“Are you three related?” the nurse asked.
“Uh, no, she’s our neighbor,” I said, moving a little closer to Mrs. Song. “My sister, Sunny, and I came in the ambulance with her.”
“Name?” he asked.
“Mrs. Song,” I said.
The nurse looked up at me. His eyes looked tired. “Your name,” he said.
“Oh, uh, Masha,” I told him.
“Well, Marsha,” he said.
“Masha,” I corrected.
“All right, honey,” he said, reaching for Sunny’s hand. “Why don’t you and your sister sit out in the waiting room while we take a good look at your neighbor? And then we’ll call you back in, okay?”
“No,” whined Sunny, “I want to stay here and help.”
“Let us get a quick look,” said the doctor. “And then we’ll call you right back in. It’s only fair since you got a head start on her diagnosis in the ambulance. We need time to catch up.”
“Okay,” Sunny said. “But don’t do any of the good stuff, like the EKG, without me.” Sunny turned to me. “An EKG is a test that shows the electrical signals in the heart.”
“I know what an EKG is,” I said, even though I didn’t.
I looked down at Mrs. Song and squeezed her hand. She patted my arm and blinked, letting me know that it was okay, she understood. It’s funny how she had held on to my hand for the last half hour, and now I wanted to turn around and hold on to hers. But even though the nurse had made his plan for us to wait outside sound like a question, I knew it wasn’t a question. I bent down low and whispered a quick “zai jian” in Mrs. Song’s ear and let the nurse lead us out to the waiting room.
“Now I want you two to sit right here and don’t move,” he said, pointing down at two chairs. We sat. “You understand, right, Marsha?”
“Yes,” I said, not bothering to correct him.
We watched him walk over to a security guard by the automatic sliding doors that we’d come through with the stretcher. He pointed at Sunny and me and said something to the guard. Then the nurse looked back over at us, motioned at the chairs we were sitting in, and said, “Don’t move,” again from across the room.
I nodded my head.
“Nodding your head is moving,” Sunny said.
I jabbed her with my elbow.
“That’s moving too,” she said.
I turned and glared down at her.
“That too,” she squeaked up at me.
I growled.
“Technically, your vocal chords …”
“Sunny!” I yelled.
“Okay, Marsha,” she said.
Just Sit There
An ER waiting room is such a weird place. All the people are quiet, as if they’re in a library, but they aren’t working or reading, they’re just slumped in chairs. It’s like some kind of misery library. There were a bunch of TVs squished into each of the corners of the room, up by the ceiling like big black spiders. All four of the TVs were playing different shows. The loud chatter made my head hurt.
“Maybe we should call Mom,” I whispered.
“No,” Sunny said. “She’ll take me back to school.”
“Yes, because that’s where you should be. They’re probably looking all over for you right now.”
“No they’re not. I never even went into the classroom. I just walked down past the gym and out the back door. No one even saw me.”
“Sunny, you could get in big trouble.”
Her giggles made my head feel like it would pop right off my body. Even Sunny knew that she never got in trouble. It didn’t matter what she did. Last Christmas Sunny got a rocket set, and the first thing she did was send Eddie, my gerbil, into space. (And by the way, he didn’t make it … to space or otherwise.) And did she get in trouble? No! She committed gerbil murder and all she had to say was that she had designed a special helmet for him so she thought he would be safe and everyone was like “Oh, Sunny, how thoughtful,” and “We’ll get you another rocket.” No one even cared about poor Eddie. My mom just said, “I’m sure he didn’t feel a thing.” How does she know what a gerbil feels?
“Anyway, you don’t want to bother Mommy at work,” Sunny said. She knew that would get me. I didn’t want to bother my mother at work. Sunny and I both knew how important Mom’s job was to her. Plus, whenever she missed a day of work she always looked way more tired than if she had actually gone and worked all day.
“Well then, just sit there and be quiet,” I snapped at her.
She quickly sat back in her chair and stopped talking.
I picked the TV with the Disney Channel playing and started watching.
After about four minutes, Sunny popped up from her seat.
“Don’t,” I whispered.
“I’m just going to …”
“No, you’re not just going to do anything,” I said. “Let me tell you what is going to happen. We are going to stay right in these chairs until the nurse comes back for us. And then we are going to get Mrs. Song, and Dan and that other guy are going to drive us home. Okay? So just sit there until the nurse comes back for us.”
She frowned and slid back into her chair.
The humming of four different television shows lulled me half asleep. Even in this sleepy state, I saw the boy walk in. He wore a hospital gown and was barefoot, and he stood in the room like he knew he wasn’t supposed to be there. He looked like a teenager, but I could tell right away that his mind wasn’t that old. Peeking behind himself a couple of times, he looked like a little kid that was just about to steal cookies from the cupboard when he’d been told not to a hundred times. I looked over at security to see if he noticed him too. But the guard’s stool was empty.
The boy saw us and gave a little wave. Sunny waved back.
“Don’t wave,” I said.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because. We’re supposed to be just sitting here.”
Sunny twisted away from me in her chair and started to recite the alphabet backward. She always repeated the alphabet backward when she got bored. It was annoying.
After a minute or two, the boy in the hospital gown seemed to forget about not being allowed to be there. He checked out each of the TVs and then unstacked the magazines, but he lost int
erest in both things pretty quickly. He swung around and scanned the room for something else to do, and his eyes stopped on me.
“I love red!”
My heart jumped and my face got hot as he made his way across the room to us.
“Is red your favorite color?” he asked, pointing at the ribbons of Mrs. Song’s straw hat. He stood so close that his knees were almost touching mine. His hospital gown had tiny cowboys riding all over them.
“Her favorite color is orange,” Sunny said.
“No, it’s not,” I said.
“Yes, it is,” Sunny insisted. “You wrote in that book you keep under your bed that your favorite color is orange because Daddy’s favorite color is orange.”
“You read my journal?”
“I wanted to read every book in the house, and that was a book in the house.” She shrugged.
I hated when she did that—answered a question that I didn’t mean for her to answer.
“I also read your Chinese dictionary for the same reason. Mandarin is really hard to learn, by the way. Every word is a different symbol.”
“What? Stay out of my things!”
“But reading your journal gave me the idea to put the flowers in your hair,” she said. “You wrote a bunch of times that the girls in school don’t ever pay attention to you. I was going to make them look at you.”
“You smell like a peanut butter sandwich,” said the boy. “I love peanut butter sandwiches.”
“She loves this boy named Anton in a book she’s reading,” Sunny said, giggling. “That was in the journal too.”
“You little germ,” I said, jumping out of my chair. “That stuff is private!”
“My name’s Calvin,” said the boy. “What’s your name?”
“Her name is Marsha,” said Sunny, sliding to the floor laughing.
I leaped at her. She scooted around behind the boy. I chased her. Every time I got to the front of the boy, Sunny got around to the back, and every time I got around back, she darted in front of him. I stopped short and turned back the other way and grabbed her. I could hear the boy honking with laughter.
“Calvin, save me,” Sunny cried.
“Okay,” said the boy.
“Calvin,” cried a nurse from behind us, “don’t …”
Calvin grabbed Sunny and me together in a big bear hug, and we fell to the waiting room floor.
The nurse came running over. She had on rubber gloves and a mask over her face, as if she had just run out of surgery. And she wasn’t alone; there was a group of nurses behind her all dressed the same with masks and gloves. They surrounded Calvin, and, speaking gently to him, led him away. Then one of the masked nurses reached for Sunny and me.
“You’ll have to come with us too, girls,” she said, taking my arm.
“But Mrs. Song …” I tried to jerk away from her.
“You can sing us a song on the way up in the elevator,” she said.
There were a bunch of them now, and they were surrounding us.
“Sunny!”
I reached for my little sister, but she was already gone.
Contracting a Killer Virus
I was bustled down a bunch of halls and into an elevator. I had no idea what was going on or where Sunny or the boy in the hospital gown had gone. The soft, happy music playing in the elevator made me feel sure that something horrible was about to happen to me. I could hear the beeping of the passing floors but couldn’t see anything because I was surrounded by people in blue. They seemed to take turns telling me that everything was going to be fine.
When the doors opened, they shuffled me down a hall, into a room, and up onto a bed. I curled up in a ball and waited for the sound of a chain saw or the glint of a giant knife. Instead, one of the blue people turned and handed me an apple juice and a package of saltines. I love saltines.
Another blue person explained that it wasn’t exactly a killer virus, but it was a virus with a funny name, whooping cough. And Calvin had it. They said that Sunny and I probably had shots for it when we were little—which meant we couldn’t catch it. But because Sunny and I had rolled around on the floor with Calvin, they had to check just to be sure. They said that Sunny was next door and that they were taking great care of her. They told me that they would put us back together as soon as they got done with a few tests. I nodded like I cared, but really I was fine with getting a break from Sunny. I couldn’t believe she had read my journal and found my Chinese dictionary! That was my stuff. I didn’t go messing with her stupid ScienceWiz Physics kit, or touch her precious ultraviolet science goggles.
They made me change out of my pajamas and into a pink hospital shirt and pants that had tiny elephants all over them, but at least I wasn’t in a hospital gown like poor Calvin. Then they said they’d call my mother. I gave them our home phone and said that I would try to remember my mom’s work number. I actually really didn’t know it by heart because I always just hit number 2 on my cell phone, and my cell phone was back in the garbage where I left it by accident. But the truth was that I wasn’t trying to remember it. If we ended up having some sort of virus, okay, then we’d call her. Anyway, I knew that Sunny remembered Mom’s work number because Sunny remembered everything. I also knew that she would pretend that she didn’t because she wouldn’t want to go back to school.
At first, being quarantined was pretty cool. I put the Disney Channel back on and sat in bed eating crackers and drinking apple juice. But then the team of masked people showed back up, and the equipment they carried in with them made me kind of nervous. It looked like blood-taking stuff.
“Hi, sweetie,” said one of the nurses. “Everything is going to be fine. We’re just here to collect a quick sample so we can make sure you’re safe from whooping cough.”
Another nurse asked, “What’s your name, honey?”
Their voices sounded funny coming from behind the masks.
“Masha,” I said.
“Well, Marsha, why don’t you take off your hat?” said one nurse.
I shook my head no.
“We’re going to have to take that off,” came the masked reply.
One of them untied the hat and whisked it off. The hospital air on my head made me shiver.
“Okay,” said one of the muffled people, “should we ask?”
“My little sister did it,” I mumbled.
“Yikes,” said yet another muffled person tugging at one of the blooms, “these things are really glued in there.” Even though I couldn’t see their mouths, I could feel every single one of them smiling behind their masks.
I sighed through clenched teeth.
I guess some of the other muffled people didn’t believe the first muffled person. It was like everyone had to take a turn trying to yank a flower or two out of my hair to prove that they were really stuck in there. They were.
“Maybe we should have the hospital barber take a look at this,” one of them suggested.
“Is there such a thing as a hospital barber?” I asked.
But I stopped thinking about the barber because they started explaining things I didn’t want to hear, like taking blood for tests, and they began to wrap that rubber band around my arm and search for my vein. I really liked my blood right where it was—inside me. The needle hovered over my arm, and I could feel all my blood vessels screaming, “Not me, not me, not me!”
Ouch.
Contracting a Killer Virus … Not
They figured out within an hour that Sunny and I had gotten the shots against “Calvin’s disease.” This is what I decided to call the virus as I ate my third packet of crackers. Whooping cough just sounded way too silly when I practiced saying it, as if I were telling Mrs. Hull why I had missed her big test.
I asked where Sunny was, and one of the now unmuffled nurses said that she was fine and that she’d gone on rounds with Calvin’s orthopedist, the doctor that helps with people’s bones.
“Whooping cough hurts your bones?”
“No,” said the nur
se, smiling. “Calvin also has cerebral palsy, a disorder that can affect how you move. Your sister said she was interested in this condition.”
Of course she did.
The nurse told me to finish up my orange juice. (I got bored with apple. You always get bored with apple.) Then she said she’d send in the barber to take a look at the wreath of daisies on my head. She mentioned that they were still trying to get in touch with my mom. I had given them a couple of fake telephone numbers, and they’d taken off happy. I was pretty happy too. I mean, how often do you meet a medical barber? He was exactly what I needed.
I was sucking down the rest of my juice and thinking about how lucky I was that Calvin’s favorite color was red when my medical barber walked in. His initial reaction went something like, “Whoa! Lord have mercy,” and things didn’t seem as promising as they had two minutes before. The next five minutes of head shaking and silent laughter drained the last bit of hope I had in my medical barber.
“I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his eyes but still laughing—so really, how sorry could he be? “It’s just that you think you’ve seen everything, and then …” He couldn’t finish. He excused himself for a moment, and I heard what sounded like sneezing laughter going on outside the closed door.
It was a good thing Sunny was busy playing doctor right now because if she were here with me, I’d glue this hospital pillow right to her butt! Instead, I stuck the thin, scratchy pillow up to my face and shouted into it, “Sunny Sweet is going to be sooo sorry!” Silly, maybe, but it made me feel better so I did it again. “Sunny Sweet, you are going to be sooo sooorry!”
The medical barber walked back in, and this time he was ready for business. He put down his bag and turned on the light over my bed, focusing it on top of my head. It burned my scalp a little, but I didn’t say anything. I wanted him to be able to get a good, long look at what he was dealing with.
Sunny Sweet Is So Not Sorry Page 3