Family Storms (3 page)

“Mama!” I cried. I waited, but either no one heard me or no one had time to answer. There was little I could do but lie there and wait. My arms, shoulders, legs, and neck were throbbing so much I felt I had turned into a drum. My ears were filled with the beat of my heart and the chugging of my blood through my veins.

When I saw a nurse hurrying up the corridor, I called to her as loudly as I could. She paused, but before I could tell her anything or ask her anything, she said, “Someone will be with you soon. Be patient.”

Don't you mean “be a patient”?
I was the one who felt drunk now, not Mama.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember exactly what had happened. It had all happened so quickly. Mama was rushing through the rain as if she had an appointment. I ran behind her and kept calling to her. I was only a few inches away when I heard the sound of tires squealing. Right now, I could visualize the front of an automobile but little more.

Where was Mama now? Why had I been left in a hallway? Who had put me here? Who was looking after me? When I tried to lift my head, the whole corridor spun, and I was nauseated immediately. I kept my eyes closed and waited until the dizziness subsided, and then I opened my eyes slowly and took a deep breath. There was nothing I could do but wait.

Finally, I felt myself moving and looked down toward
my feet to see a different nurse pushing the gurney. She looked younger than the first nurse and had a shock of brown hair drifting out from under her cap and down over her right eye. As she pushed my gurney, she blew the loose strands away from her eye.

“What's happening to me?” I asked.

“You're going to X-ray,” she said.

“Just relax.”

“Where's my mother?”

“You're going to X-ray.”

Didn't she understand my question?

“My mother,” I said.

“Relax,” she told me.

“We're having a bad night here. We're doing our best to get to everyone as quickly as we possibly can. I've got to get you processed before I see about anyone or anything else.”

Processed?
What did that mean? With all that ached on me, it was hard to keep talking, keep asking questions, and she didn't seem to want to talk much, either.

I felt myself being navigated through the corridor to an elevator. When I was in it, I hoped she would tell me more now that we were away from all the bedlam, but there was another nurse in the elevator, and they started to have a conversation over me as if I weren't even there. I heard them complaining about some doctor who hadn't shown up and another nurse who was always late.

“Like any of us want to be here on time?” my nurse said.

When the elevator door opened, the other nurse helped wheel me out and then went off in another direction. Outside radiology, there were two other gurneys lined up, one with a young man with a bloodstained face and a heavily
bandaged arm and the other with an elderly African American woman. A younger African American woman stood beside her, holding her hand.

“Just try to relax,” my nurse said again, and put a clipboard at my feet. “Someone will be out to get you soon.”

“What about my mother?” I asked.

She walked off without replying. I began to wonder if anyone could hear me. Maybe I thought I was talking but I wasn't. The younger African American woman looked at me and smiled. The X-ray room door opened, and another patient was wheeled out in a wheelchair. He was an elderly man in a shirt and tie, wearing a blue cap with white letters that spelled “U.S.S. Enterprise.” He looked perfectly healthy, even bored. A male nurse pulled the gurney with the young man into the radiology suite.

“Not much longer now,” the younger woman told the older one.

“You hope,” the older woman said. “You'll be on social security, too, by the time we get outta here.”

The younger woman laughed. Then she looked at me again. “What happened to you, honey?”

“We were hit by a car,” I said. “My mother and me, but I don't know where my mother is.”

“Downstairs waiting, for sure,” she said. “Took us five hours to get this far.”

I was relieved to see she heard me. “I don't know how long I've been here.”

“Long,” the older lady said. “You drip through this place like maple syrup.”

The younger woman turned to me and smiled as she
shook her head to tell me I shouldn't pay attention. “You'll be all right,” she added, and turned to look firmly at the closed door as if she could will it to open.

I closed my eyes again. When I opened them, I realized I must have fallen asleep, because the two women were gone and there were two other gurneys lined up behind me. Finally, the doors opened again, the African American lady was wheeled out, and I was wheeled in. The young man bringing me to the X-ray machine was the nicest and warmest of anyone I had met so far. He assured me that he would do everything to make this easy and comfortable.

“Do you know where my mother is?” I asked him. Since he was being so nice, I thought he would give me an answer.

“Sorry,” he said. “I'm just the X-ray technician. I'm sure someone will be getting your mother to visit you afterward.”

“She was hit by the car, too,” I said. “Was she here already?”

He paused, thought for a moment, and shook his head. “She's probably with the doctor somewhere else right now,” he replied. “Let's get you going.”

After my X-rays were taken, another nurse arrived to wheel me out and back into the elevator.

“Where am I going?” I asked.

“To wait for the doctor,” she replied. “He'll look at your X-rays first. We have an examination room open for you, and I want to get you into it before someone else gets in there.”

“What about my mother? She was in the accident, too.”

“I don't know anything about her,” she said. “I just came on duty.”

She got me into the elevator and then out and into an examination room. I don't know how long I was in there before the doctor arrived, but I know I was in and out of sleep, and I was very thirsty. I called for someone to please get me some water, but everyone seemed too busy to hear me.

When my doctor finally arrived, I was surprised at how young he looked. He had curly light brown hair and a round face with thin lips and a small nose, so small it looked as if half of it had still not emerged. In fact, it looked as if his facial features were sinking into his skull. His hazel eyes were that deeply set. His skin was as soft and clear as a little boy's skin. Maybe he hadn't begun to shave yet, I thought, which I knew was silly.

“Okay, now,” he said, as if we had been having a conversation that had been interrupted. “I'm Dr. Decker, one of the ER doctors here. I've called for Dr. Milan to look at you. He's an orthopedic specialist. The reason,” he said, “is that you have a serious fracture of the femur.”

“I don't know what that is,” I said.

“It means your thigh bone.”

He held up the X-ray for me to see and pointed to my right leg bone.

“This is your thigh bone. There are four distinct parts to it, and your injury is at the head. See?” he asked as if he were teaching a class. “Look where the edge of my finger is.”

I nodded, even though I had no idea what he was pointing to.

“The reason it's serious for someone your age is that it can and most likely will affect the growth plate, the soft area of the bone located at the epiphysis near the head of the femur. As a result of all this, your right leg might end up a bit shorter than your left. So we want a specialist to handle the cast, okay? It might be a while.”

“My head hurts, too, and so does my arm and my neck and shoulders.”

“You've been banged up quite a bit. Luckily, nothing else is broken, but you do have a slight concussion. That's why you're nauseous and dizzy. In fact, I'm amazed you don't have a broken arm.”

He lifted my right arm, and I saw the black-and-blue marks. They were ugly and frightening. I couldn't help but start to cry.

“Easy,” he said. “I'll have the nurse give you something for the nausea. I don't want to give you anything else until Dr. Milan can get here. Okay?”

“What about my mother?”

“Your mother? What about her?”

“She was hit by the car first.”

He nodded. “I'll check on it,” he said. He patted my hand and left.

I expected the nurse to come in soon, but a long time went by before anyone came, and she wasn't a nurse. She wasn't wearing a uniform. She was an older lady with short gray hair that looked plastered around her head. She wore a pair of glasses with lenses so thick they looked more like the protective glasses mechanics wear. She approached me and lifted her clipboard.

“I'm Mrs. Muller. I work in admittance. You told the paramedic your name is Sasha Porter, is that correct?”

I couldn't remember telling anyone anything about myself. Maybe I had been talking in my sleep.

“My name is Sasha Fawne Porter, yes. Fawne is spelled with an
e
at the end. That was the way my grandmother spelled her Chinese name.”

“You said you were thirteen years old?”

“I'll be fourteen in two months.”

She lowered her head and looked at me over her glasses as if I had said something outrageous. “What is your present address? Where do you live?” she followed quickly, as though I needed a translation.

Maybe I shouldn't have let her know my grandmother was Chinese. She remained poised with her pen and didn't look at me until she realized I wasn't answering her question.

“Don't you know where you live? What's your address?”

“We don't have an address.”

“What do you mean, you don't have an address? I asked you where you were living.” She had a thought. “Was it on a boat?”

“No. We live on the street, sleep on the beach,” I said.

She stared at me and pressed her thicker lower lip over her upper one. It made the brown spot at the bottom of her chin look more like a teardrop. “How long has this been going on?” she asked, as if it was my fault.

“I don't know the exact number of days. A year, I guess.”

“Where do you go to school?”

“I don't right now,” I said.

She smirked and shook her head. “Where's your father?”

“I don't know. We don't know exactly. We think he went to Hawaii.”

“Hawaii? So your mother and father are divorced?”

“No. He just left.”

“Just left?” She nodded, as if she knew him, and tapped the clipboard with her pen. “Okay. What about other relatives here?”

“We don't have any here. My mother has an aunt and cousins in Portland, Oregon. My father's relatives are in Ohio, but we don't talk to any. I don't even know their names. His parents died a long time ago. He has a sister, but she stopped talking to him a long time ago, or he stopped talking to her.” I nodded. Maybe these details were important. “Yes, Mama said he stopped talking to her.”

“So you have no one to take responsibility for you?”

“Just my mother,” I said.

“A lot of good that's going to do us,” she muttered. She checked something on her clipboard and turned to leave.

“Where is my mother?” I called.

She paused and turned back to me. “Didn't anyone tell you?”

“No.”

“Your mother is dead. She died instantly and was taken directly to the morgue.”

2
Alone

T
he nurse who finally came to give me the medicine Dr. Decker had promised started to check my pulse and take my blood pressure and then gave me a tablespoon of some syrup for my nausea, which she said was all she could do for me right then. She saw that I had been crying. I started to cry again, and she told me I should try to be a big girl.

“That lady said my mother died,” I said through my tears.

“Yes. Very sad, but you have to be a big girl now. It will make everything go that much easier for you.”