Becoming Chloe (2 page)

“You promise I won’t even know?” Her eyes look glassy, like a wild animal about to be spooked into flight.

“I’ll stay right with you. It hardly hurts.”

When they call her number, a big black man in medical whites leads us into a small room and sits her down on an examining table.

“You can wait outside,” he says.

“No, I can’t,” I say. “I promised her I’d come in. She’s terrified of needles.”

“Great,” he says. “Let’s just get this over with.”

He ties off her arm with a rubber tube, rubs and pats at a vein until he likes what he sees. Then he turns around and breaks the cap off a sterile needle and she screams and rolls off the table.

Lands in a ball between the table and the wall, yelling.

The big guy looks exasperated. “The point of this is not to draw blood against her will,” he says. “There has to be some voluntary cooperation involved.”

“Look, she got raped last night and she’s scared of needles.

Can you cut her some slack?”

“Can you get her back on the table?”

I have to literally lift her and put her back on the table. She’s still curled up in a ball, and her arm is still tied off.

“I’m going to hold you,” I tell her. “I’m not holding you like forcing you. I’m just holding real tight so you don’t get scared, okay?”

I pin her body down with the weight of my own. I also put one hand over her eyes because I promised her she wouldn’t have to see. The guy manages to get the tied-off arm out from underneath her, and he quickly and expertly slides the needle home. Blood jumps into the tube. Then her head moves sideways, away from my hand, and she opens her eyes and screams.

She tries to jump off the table but I hold her down hard because I’m scared she’ll break off the needle in her arm or something.

“Could you hurry?” I say to the guy, because I know I can’t hold her for long. She’s in this adrenaline-fueled state that’s very hard to overpower.

Before I can even finish the sentence she sinks her teeth into my arm. The fleshy part of my left arm just below the elbow. She locks on like a pit bull and just keeps sinking in. I yell out loud, and I let go, but she doesn’t.

The guy pulls the needle free, and I’m screaming, and she’s really in deep now. I have a sick, horrible sense that she’s about to hit bone. She has this jaw that just won’t quit and the pain is incredible and I don’t know how to make her let go. I think maybe I’ll have to slap her, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.

The clinic guy holds up the needle so she can see that he’s done and way over on the other side of the room with it. He holds up both hands, like a surrender, and she opens her jaws and lets me go. A stream of blood runs down my arm and I sit down hard on the floor and wonder why she didn’t have all that fight last night in the alley. Why I had to be the one to bring that out in her.

She rolls off the table again and balls up by the wall, shivering.

The clinic guy looks closely at my arm and whistles. “You’ll have to get that looked at. I wish I could help you here, but we’re only equipped for these certain types of medicine.”

“Right.” I’m surprised I say anything at all. I think I might be in a little bit of shock.

“You should have that head wound looked at, too. How old are those stitches?”

“Nine days, I think. Or ten.” I’m not sure how long I was in the hospital. That time is mostly a blur.

“It’s not healing very well. It looks infected. It looks like you didn’t keep it clean enough. I wouldn’t take chances with a head wound like that one.”

“Right,” I say. And think how badly I want to go home. I wish I had one.

“You’re not getting out of here without a tetanus shot,”

he says.

So I sit up on the table and he gives me a tetanus shot. I look down at the little pit bull and she’s sitting up now, pretty calm, watching me.

“You’re much better at that than I am,” she says.

I’ll be damned if I’m spending my pitiful lunch money on getting us home. Especially her. I’m going to need to eat something. So I set off walking, even though it’s three or four miles.

I keep looking over my shoulder and she keeps being back there. Following me.

“I’m really sorry I bit you,” she says.

“Me, too.”

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Jordan.”

“I’m really sorry I bit you, Jordan.”

“Leave me alone,” I say. “Stop following me.”

I’m crossing against traffic, walking right out in front of cabs and making them stop for me. Because I’m pissed. My arm is throbbing, with this intense shot of pain on every throb like somebody’s hammering a sharp wedge of metal into it with a big sledgehammer. I’m trying to think if my head even hurt this much.

“But we live in the same place,” she says.

“I’ll find a new place.”

I’ll get a job. And maybe some painkillers, or antibiotics, or both. I’ll be able to afford food every day. This is just a bad week in my life. I’m not going to have to live like this much longer.

I stop at a phone booth and call information to find a free clinic. It’s not that far from the cellar where I’ve been sleeping.

She stands and waits while I’m on the phone, then follows me again as I walk away.

“Go away, Wanda,” I yell over my shoulder.

“My name is Chloe,” she says.

“Go away, Chloe.”

But she follows me all the way to the free clinic. Where the woman at the counter tells me that to see an actual doctor I would have to come back at six-thirty p.m. Six-thirty to midnight.

“What kind of clinic is open from six-thirty to midnight?”

I ask.

“The kind that treats overdoses and stab wounds,” she says.

Meanwhile this Chloe/Wanda person is still following me.

Still standing behind me.

“I’ll go in with you,” she says. “You won’t even feel anything.”

I’m lying on the mattress and Chloe is sitting by my side, stroking my hair.

“Want me to go see what time it is?” she asks for the fiftieth time. Every hour or so she’s been jogging down to the corner drugstore to check the clock.

“Not yet,” I say.

“I used to have a bird that bit me all the time. But I still loved him.”

“It was a dumb animal,” I say. “It didn’t know any better.”

“I still loved him,” she says. “Didn’t you ever have a pet that bit you?”

“I never even had a pet.”

“Why not?”

“My mother doesn’t like animals.”

“That’s really sad. Want me to go see what time it is again?”

“Yeah. Good idea.” Anything to get rid of her. “What happened to your bird?” I ask before she climbs out the window.

“I don’t know. I had to go to the state home. He didn’t get to go.”

“What was his name?”

“Malcolm.”

“Malcolm? Why did you name your bird Malcolm?”

“I don’t know,” she says. And disappears.

Only she doesn’t come back in a minute or two with the time. She doesn’t come back, period. Which I’m thinking is just as well.

My arm hurts like hell and my head hurts a lot more than it did yesterday and I feel like I might have a fever. I try to sleep but I keep dreaming I’m in pain and it wakes me up. The last time I wake up it’s dark already. So it’s way past six-thirty.

I walk down to the free clinic but there’s a line down the block. I stand in it for a minute or two, too dizzy to stand much longer. I’m thinking of sitting right down on the cold pavement.

But then a guy in his forties comes down the line and says the doctor is really swamped and if you’re not bleeding to death could you please come back tomorrow.

So I sigh, and I walk home. Stop at the all-night restaurant like I always do, to use the restroom. Wash up as best I can. My arm is swollen now, with black and purple around the bite marks. It helps not to try to move it at all.

When I get in, I hear a slight rustling noise. It’s coming from behind the mattress alcove.

“Chloe?” I say.

“No,” she says, shyly, like she knows she isn’t wanted. “Did you get your doctor?”

“No.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” She comes out and sits on my mattress with me. She has something in the front pouch pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. “I have a present for you,” she says.

She sounds so serious and intense—scared that I won’t like it—that I get scared, too.

“What is it?” My voice comes out gentle. I wonder why I don’t get to be mad anymore.

She slips it out from her big front pocket and sets it on the mattress with me. It’s a pigeon. A live pigeon. It just sits there, blinking. “How did you catch it?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “He just let me.”

“I think it might have a broken wing.” I can see one of its wings hanging down too far.

“Maybe. I got him for you because you never had a pet. Do you like him?”

I reach out to the bird and he lets me stroke his back. I don’t know if he’s tame, or just in shock, or too sick or wounded to react, but he lets me touch him. “Yeah,” I say. “I like him.”

“Would you like him if he bit you?”

“I don’t know. Does he bite hard?”

“He doesn’t bite at all,” she says. “I just wondered.”

I sleep for what feels like a long time, but when I wake up it’s still dark. And I feel sick. I feel like I have a bad fever. I need to pee.

I touch my forehead and it hurts more than it should. It’s puffy.

The stitches feel like they’re about to pull right out, they’re so tight.

Chloe is sitting in a corner, in the one little bit of light from the avenue street lamp. She’s breaking pieces off a hot-dog bun and feeding them to the pigeon. “You slept a long time,” she says. “It’s later tonight than it was yesterday night when you went to sleep.”

“Are you sure I slept a whole day?”

“Positive. I tried to wake you up before the line at the clinic got real long again. But I couldn’t wake you up. And it’s long.”

“Where did you get a hot dog?”

“I don’t have a hot dog,” she says. She holds it out for me to see. Just an empty bun, with a smear of mustard. “The hot dog was already gone when I found it. Here, I brought you this cup,” she says. She moves over to hand me an empty Styrofoam coffee cup with a lid. The bird skitters out of her way into the darkness. “You can pee in this, and then I’ll take it outside and throw it away.”

“That was smart.” That seems too smart for her. “That was smart to figure out that I’d need a way to pee.”

“No, it wasn’t,” she says.

❃ ❃ ❃

When I wake up again it’s light. Chloe is leaning over me. She has the bird tightly up against her belly, and when she sees my eyes come open, she puts him down on my chest, and I hold him and stroke his back. I notice that she has a nasty bruise inside her elbow where the blood was drawn, because we never got pressure on it like you’re supposed to.

“You popped a couple of stitches,” she says. “It looks disgusting.

Here. I brought you some soup.” She hands me an open paper cup. It’s chicken noodle. It’s still warm.

“Where did you get soup?”

“I told the guy down at the deli that my friend Jordy was really really sick and you needed something to eat. So you really like him, huh?” She points with her chin to the bird.

“Yeah,” I say. “I really do. Thanks for the soup.”

While I’m drinking it, I think how I have to get to the clinic tonight. Even if I have to crawl.

“I would like you even if you hurt me,” she says.

“But that’s just it. I would never hurt you.”

She starts to cry. And then I feel like shit because I made her cry. She has these eyes that are blue and green and gray all at the same time, and they’re huge. When she cries they get even bigger, like those corny-sad paintings of kids or clowns.

“Well, I wish you would. Because then I could forgive you, and then you’d see.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m really sorry I made you cry.”

“That’s okay,” she says, brightening some. “I like you anyway.”

I wake up and it’s dark again, and the fever is making me feel like I don’t exist. Somewhere in the back of my brain I’m thinking, Oh, shit, I’m still not getting to the clinic. But it’s a weird thought. Weird and far away. Chloe is gone, but I can see the bird walking around in the spill of light from the avenue street lamp. And I think I might die here. Because I can’t get anywhere now, like this, and I’m not going to get any better. I’m so sick that I almost don’t mind the thought of dying, but I really mind doing it here.

What seems like an hour later—but it could be a minute or a day—Chloe drops back in through the window. She has a Styrofoam cup in her hand and her pockets are stuffed.

“Here,” she says. She holds out a capsule on the palm of her hand. “Take this.”

“What is it?”

“Antibiotic.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Will you just take it? Here, here’s some water.”

“That’s not the cup I’ve been peeing in, is it?”

“Of course not. It’s fresh. Here. Take two aspirin, too. To help get the fever down.”

“How did you get them to give you all this?”

“Just shut up and take them.”

I swallow all three pills at once.

Then Chloe takes a tube of ointment out of her sweatshirt pocket and squeezes some onto my forehead and some onto both sides of my arm. I jump when she touches each of those places.

Last of all, she unwraps a butterfly bandage and uses it to reseal the split on my forehead. I shout out loud because it hurts.

“How did you get them to give you all that, Chloe?”

“I just told them what was wrong with you. I told them I’d never get you down there unless we could do something about the fever. Oh. Here.” She goes back into her pocket and takes out a scrap of paper. “This is the number of the doctor. Where he lives,” she says, with great awe. “If you call him when you’re okay enough to go down there, he’ll meet you on his lunch hour. He wants to make sure you’re okay.”

I stare at the number for a minute, then drink the rest of the water. I’m so thirsty I could die right now, just from that. “That took a lot of brains, Chloe. To get all this done.”

“No, it didn’t,” she says.

The bird flies unsteadily into one of the windows and then flaps down to the floor again.