The guy’s head whips up. His eyebrows draw together and form a dark V over his nose.
“A friend had an operation yesterday,” I say, “and I forgot which hospital it was.” Yesterday was Saturday. Do doctors even do operations on Saturdays? The excuse is so lame I know he doesn’t buy it. I try to think of something smart to add, words that would make my story sound halfway real, but my mind is nothing but an empty, black pit. All I can do is give the guy a weak smile and hope he helps us.
The clerk types in the words and studies the screen. I can see Meg out of the corner of my eye, but I don’t dare look at her, or I’ll lose my nerve. I use the time to dig a pen and a scrap of notebook paper out of my pack. The clerk reads off the numbers for two hospitals, and I write them down.
“Thanks.” I hold up the paper I’ve written on. “Thanks a lot.”
His eyes take on that quiet, sad look that people get when they know you’re not telling them the truth. “Anything else I can do?”
I shake my head. “No. But thanks again.”
My knees are so weak I can hardly make my legs work. What do I expect him to do? Call the cops? The guy probably will forget us the minute we’re gone. I keep right on walking out the door and don’t breathe until I’m standing on the sidewalk.
“You lied to that nice man, Mattie.”
Meg spits the words out so they aren’t just a statement of fact, but an accusation. I take a quick breath and bite my lower lip. “Yes, I did.”
Meg’s blue eyes shoot darts through me. “Mommy said we’re supposed to tell the truth every time. Every single time.”
An intense sense of grief and sadness washes over me, making it hard to breathe. Mom is gone, and I miss her so much every muscle and cell in my body hurts.
“Mom’s right, Meg. We’ve got to be honest. Especially to each other.” I plant a kiss on the top of her head. “But sometimes we have to do things that don’t seem right, even though we don’t want to.”
My words sound lame, like people can wash away guilt by tacking on that flimsy phrase. As if there is no real right or wrong in the world, just all this gray fuzz in the middle that never allows for a straight path.
I swallow the grief welling in my throat. “If I tell everyone the truth, Meg, we could get taken away from Mom and put into foster care.”
The anger on Meg’s face mixes with these new worries and builds up in her eyes. It’s too hard for me to keep looking at her, so I grab her hand and we walk up the block to the front of the library. I’m anxious to call the hospitals, but I take the time to settle Meg on the bench out front so I can concentrate on making the calls. Meg swings her legs back and forth while I pull a book out of her backpack. She looks at the book but doesn’t reach out and take it. I lay the book on the bench beside her and pull out my phone.
The clerk gave me two numbers. I start with the first. A receptionist answers, “McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center.”
“Could you tell me if a Rita Rollins was admitted last night?” The words fly out of my mouth in a rapid stream.
Meg’s face wrinkles and her eyes zero in on me. I try to smile at her while I wait for the answer, but forcing a cheery attitude is too hard. I turn away and study the cars passing by on the street.
Even if Mom couldn’t tell the doctors who she was, wouldn’t someone look through her backpack and find her wallet and phone? That scenario only works if Mom had her pack with her. Those scumbags from the parking lot could have taken it to cover up the crime.
The receptionist comes back on the line. “No. We don’t have anyone listed by that name.”
“Did a woman come in without a name?” I say. “She’s thin and not very tall and white with long, light blondish-brown hair, and she’s only thirty-three.” I take a breath to slow myself down. “Did anyone like that come in?”
The receptionist hesitates. “I’m sorry. There were no unidentified patients admitted either.”
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”
I end the call and punch in the number for RiverBend Hospital. A recorded message in three languages instructs me to press one or stay on the line if I speak English. The same voice says all the operators are busy, and my call will be answered in the order it was received. I wait, picturing the seconds adding up to minutes of call time clicking off my phone.
Meg grabs the sleeve of my sweatshirt and tugs it back and forth. “Is Mommy sick?”
I keep my phone pressed against my ear and slide my other arm around Meg’s shoulders. Why didn’t I tell her what I was doing? Did I think she couldn’t handle the thought of Mom being too sick or hurt to get to us? Meg spent the night in a recycling dumpster. She can handle the truth.
“Is that why you’re calling the hospitals, Mattie?”
“I thought Mom got in an accident and couldn’t call us,” I say.
Meg studies me with serious eyes that seem too old for a six-year-old. “But she didn’t?”
“She’s not at the first hospital,” I say. “We’ll see about the second one.”
The recording repeats, “Thank you for your patience. All of our operators are busy. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order it was received.”
More minutes tick off my phone. What if I run out of cell time and Mom isn’t able to call me? When we got short on minutes before, Mom would buy enough extra to get us to the end of the month, but I don’t know how she did it. Plus, it takes money I don’t have.
I’m startled when an operator says, “RiverBend. How may I help you?”
Precious seconds tick by before I think of what to say. I drop my arm from Meg’s shoulder and clutch my phone to my ear. “Do you have a Rita Rollins as a patient?
“Let me connect you with the front desk,” the woman says.
Meg scrambles to her knees so she can lean her head close to mine and hear what’s being said. “RiverBend. How may I help you?”
I repeat my request, but there’s no Rita Rollins checked in. “What about somebody that doesn’t have an ID on them and isn’t awake enough to give their name? Like a Jane Doe person.”
“That would be an unidentified trauma patient,” says the receptionist. “I’ll check to see if we have anyone like that, but there is no way to know if the patient is Rita Rollins.”
The word trauma makes my mind spin through pictures of bloody gunshot wounds, grizzly car accidents, and horrific beatings. Just hearing the receptionist say the word scares me so much I can hardly reply to thank her.
The woman comes back and says, “We do have an unidentified person checked into the ER.”
My hand shakes. “A woman that’s not very tall and has light blondish-brown hair and blue eyes and some week-old bruises on her face?”
“I’m sorry,” says the receptionist. “I don’t have that information, but I can call down there and see if the patient is a man or a woman.”
The tremors in my hand move through my entire body making it hard to hold my phone. “Thanks.” I glance over at Meg. Her mouth puckers and twists back and forth like she wants to cry but won’t let the tears run.
The receptionist takes several minutes to get back to me. “The patient is a young woman,” she says.
I don’t know whether to be happy that the woman lying in the emergency room might be Mom or terrified because she’s hurt so bad she can’t tell the doctors who she is.
Somehow I manage to blurt out, “Thanks. How do we find out if this person is … ” I almost say our mom, but catch the words before they spill out of my mouth. “Rita Rollins?”
“You will have to come down to the hospital to identify her.”
“Thanks,” I say. “We will. We’ll come right now.”
I end the call and turn to Meg. We stare at each other, our eyes wide and only inches apart. “Is it Mommy?” Meg whispers so softly I barely hear her.<
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Hope and fear battle inside my head. I want this unidentified person to be Mom, need her to be Mom, so Meg and I can stop worrying. But thinking of Mom so badly hurt she can’t talk or think terrifies me. “It could be. We’ll just have to go and see.”
A dollar and twenty cents is all the money I have for bus fare. I turn away from Meg, dig my wallet out of my pack, and count out the money. “We’ve got bus money for me, but you’ll have to pretend you’re five.” I raise my eyebrows and twist my mouth to the side. “There is no other way to get there. Besides, the bus driver probably won’t ask your age.”
Meg sets her lips in a straight little line and nods her head. “Mommy will say it’s okay to be five for a while.”
“You’re right, Meg. Mom would understand.” I grab her hand. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Seventeen
The map at the bus station shows the fastest route is an EmX bus to the Springfield station and then to RiverBend. Meg and I walk to the right stop and stand in the warmth of morning sun, waiting until an extralong green bus pulls up and we can get on.
The EmX speeds along, pulling in and out of designated stops. My eyes take in the buildings, trees, traffic, and people around me, but the images flow into a blur of color and don’t register with my brain. Instead, I sit in my seat, rigid with both hope and anguish, while my thoughts whirl.
One minute, I imagine Meg and me running into the hospital, finding Mom, and throwing our arms around her. The three of us will laugh and squeal and disrupt the whole building. Even if Mom is too hurt to be awake, Meg and I will hurry to her side, hold her hand, and snuggle close. Life will be whole and good again.
Then fear wins the war in my brain, and I am overcome with dread. What if Mom dies before we get to the hospital? What if Meg and I have to identify her body instead of run into her arms? My stomach contracts and threatens to throw up its contents, even though there’s nothing there but acid. I pull tiny bits of air into my lungs until the pain eases enough for me to breathe again.
We stop at the Springfield station, but I am too fearful to focus on anything but losing Mom. To stay sane, I pull out my phone and force myself to concentrate. I scroll through the icons, clicking on the one for our service provider and seeing that the calls to the hospital cost me twenty-eight minutes. Bile rises into my throat. Can I add time without Mom’s credit card? There is no way to know unless I go through the process.
Every tap on the screen feels like bags of cement are taped to my arms. Will Mom be alive? Will she recognize us? I read the prompts, but it feels like centuries for the words to travel from my eyes along jumbled nerve endings and finally connect to my brain.
At no time does the program ask me to pull the last few cents out of my pocket or give them the number of Mom’s credit card to pay for the minutes. I click on twenty dollars of time to be added to our account and nearly cry. Mom has to work that much longer and harder to get us an apartment.
My phone lies in my hand while I stare at the number of minutes left on my cell, but the number doesn’t automatically change. How long does it take before my twenty dollars’ worth of time is added? Fifteen minutes? An hour? Three days? I force myself to look away.
The EmX bus pulls to a stop in front of RiverBend Hospital. The building is beautiful; made of red brick, it stands several stories tall and stretches out for what looks like a couple of city blocks. The hospital is set in front of a backdrop of dark-green trees and the landscaping out front is designed with shrubs and grasses that look good even in November.
Meg and I step off the bus and walk toward a large covered entrance. Mom has driven us by RiverBend several times, but we have never been inside. The reception area is so spacious and elegantly furnished we both stop to stare.
“Wow,” says Meg. “This place is really pretty.”
Wood railings and paneling, comfy chairs and tables, and lots of natural light give the entrance the look of a first-class hotel. Long hallways stretch out on both sides of the main doors, and a gift shop sits off to the side, though the glass doors are closed for business this early on a Sunday morning. In front of us stands a desk in warm wood tones with a sign saying “Information.” Meg and I hold hands and walk over to the receptionist.
The woman behind the desk looks up and says, “Hi, how may I help you?” She is an older person, with silver hair dropping to her shoulders and a spray of tiny lines fanning out from the corners of her eyes.
“I called earlier and was told there was an unidentified woman as a patient in the emergency room?” I push back the fear piling in my throat. “We came to identify her.”
The receptionist points down the hallway to our right. “Head down to ER. They’ll tell you what to do.” The woman’s forehead scrunches up, making the lines around her eyes deeper. “But isn’t there an adult with you? Someone else who can identify the woman?”
I blurt out my story as rapidly as I can. “Our dad’s parking the car. He’ll be here in a minute.” I don’t give her a chance to ask us any more questions. “Thanks.”
When we get far enough away from the information desk so the receptionist can’t hear, I lean over and whisper, “I’m sorry, Meg. I hate all these stories as much as you do, but I don’t know what else to do.”
Meg looks at me, her face tight with worry. “I know, Mattie. You said we’ve got to make up stuff.”
At the emergency room, three people stand in line at the check-in desk. A man dressed in dirty jeans and an even dirtier t-shirt clutches a bloody rag over a gash on his hand, and a young woman cradles a crying infant in her arms. The third person is an old man pushing a woman in a wheelchair. The woman sags in the seat, her stringy white hair draping over her face. The ER isn’t crowded, and the two women behind the desk are quick and efficient, but it still seems like an eternity before it’s our turn.
“We’re here to identify the woman that came in earlier and didn’t have a name.” I point down the hallway toward the main entrance. “The receptionist down there said you had a patient that hadn’t been identified and we could come and see if she is Rita Rollins.”
The young woman looks around. “You have an adult with you? A parent?”
“Dad is at work and will lose his job if he leaves. We’re here to see if your patient is our mom.”
I pull Meg a little closer and point out what is so obvious to me. “We’re sisters, and Dad will come as soon as he can.”
The woman studies us, then picks up a phone. “I don’t know the exact status of that patient, but give me your name, and I’ll send a nurse out to talk to you.”
“Mattie and Meg Rollins.”
The woman points to the chairs in the waiting room. “Have a seat. The nurse will call you.”
Meg and I drift over to a pair of chairs sitting close to the front desk. Meg scoots into the seat and shifts her backpack onto her lap. I do the same. Our bodies are stiff with worry. Is Mom lying in a hospital bed just beyond those closed doors? Are we close enough to yell and she would hear us? Or is she hurt so bad that she won’t even know we found her?
Names are called for other patients, but we wait. More people enter the ER through the wide glass doors and are checked in by the women at the desk. Finally, a male nurse in blue scrubs steps out and calls, “Mattie and Meg Rollins?” We jump to our feet and hurry across the room.
The nurse is Darren’s size with short brown hair and serious brown eyes. His body holds a tension that doesn’t ease when we step up to him.
“The patient you asked about has already been identified and is on the way to surgery.” His words come at us in such a rapid stream they don’t sink into my head before he turns to leave.
I grab at his bare arm. “Wait. Wait a minute. What do you mean the woman was identified?”
The nurse looks annoyed and pulls his arm away. “The woman’s parents came in an hour ago, gave us her name
, and signed all the papers for surgery.” He turns and walks back through the doors to the ER before we can waste any more of his time.
Meg and I stand rooted to the floor, our hopes crushed. My grand plans for a happy reunion—the visions of finding Mom and taking care of her—vanish and leave my mind dark and empty. Meg squeezes my hand and whispers, “If Mommy isn’t here, then where is she?”
“I don’t know, Meg.” My words taste sour. “I don’t know.”
We walk back to the main lobby, but I have no more sense of direction than if I were walking in a dense fog or a blinding snowstorm. My actions are automatic, my muscles having walked this way only a short time before. Meg turns us toward the front entrance, but something holds me back.
“Wait, Meg,” I say. “Let me think a minute.” I pull her over to a couch and sink into it.
Meg stands in front of me. “We need to get on that big green bus and go back to the library because that’s where Mommy will look for us, and we need to go right now.”
“We’ll go, Meg,” I say. “Let me have a couple of minutes, okay?”
Meg sighs, raising her shoulders up and down in a dramatic gesture. She drops onto the couch beside me and perches on the front edge. I stare at the lobby with blank eyes and try to think.
Mom isn’t lying here in a coma, so where is she? If she wasn’t admitted to the hospital for treatment from a car accident or for any other horrid reason, does that mean she was dead at the scene? Thinking about where police take bodies revs my heart rate so high my brain locks up, refusing to function.
Meg squirms beside me, sighs again, and finally says, “Please, Mattie? Can’t we go? Please?”
I pat her on the back, but the rest of my body stays still and rigid. Should I call the police and ask them if there was a bad accident last night? Or can I call directly to the city morgue? Could the receptionist at the information desk make the calls for me? She would know who to call and probably get more answers than if I tried to call on my own. Plus, using her phone would save precious airtime on mine.
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