Authors: Patricia Wallace
Fourteen
“I
know it hurts, but I want you to take a deep breath and hold it . . .”
Cheryl Appleton drew a breath as instructed and felt hot stabbing pains all along the left side of her ribcage. “Oh!”
“Hold it, hold it. Don’t move.”
The x-ray machine made a whirring sound and somewhere in the background she heard a click. The pain radiated down her side where it joined a duller throbbing in her hip. Tears formed in her eyes and she blinked.
“Great, good job.”
She took that to mean she could release the air in her lungs. Exhaling hurt less than inhaling, but it was not without drawbacks: she could feel the bones scraping against each other.
The lead-aproned radiology technician came from around the divider. “Just relax for a few minutes, while I run this through the developer. We want to make sure we’ve got a clean shot.”
He disappeared before she could respond.
Relax, she thought. As if she could. The x-ray table was incredibly hard and cold, and she’d been laying here for what must have been hours.
Every muscle in her body ached, and the skinned areas on her left leg, hip, elbow, and shoulder where she’d landed on the pavement burned. A nurse had cleaned them with an orange-colored antiseptic which supposedly didn’t sting.
Cheryl had news for them. It stung.
In addition, her head felt as if it were full of cotton candy, some of which had thickened her tongue. Her mouth tasted of blood.
There was a clock on the wall that she could see if she turned her head, and when the technician did not return, she made the effort. The second hand swept around, and minutes passed.
Fifteen minutes.
Twenty.
“Hello?” she called when she couldn’t take anymore. “Is anyone there?”
No one answered.
Cheryl had to fight her panic. She was helpless; how would she ever get down from the table on her own? And even if she could, if she didn’t fall in the attempt, would she be able to stand?
What if her movements forced a sharp-edged bone—and she knew her ribs were broken—into an artery or into her heart? Might that happen? Anatomy hadn’t been one of her better subjects, but she thought there were a lot of vital organs at risk.
But then, wasn’t she already at risk, having been left unattended?
With that thought in mind, and despite her protesting ribs, she carefully drew in as much air as her lungs would allow, intending to yell.
It came out as more of a whimper: “Help me.”
“What is it, dear?”
The voice was male, sounded older, and had come from a part of the room she couldn’t see. It definitely didn’t belong to the technician who’d been there earlier. “Will you . . . help me?”
“What’s wrong?”
She could only manage two words at a time. “I’ve been here . . . a long . . . time. I hurt . . . bad. I’m having . . . a lot of . . . pain. Can you . . . help me?”
“I’m not sure,” the man said. “I’m only a volunteer.”
He came into her view and peered at her through thick black-rimmed glasses. He wore a pink smock and his name tag read M. Rafferty.
To her, he resembled an angel.
“Mister . . . Rafferty. Would you call a . . . nurse?”
“Sure will.”
She closed her eyes in relief. “Thank you.”
An eternity later, one of the emergency room nurses and an orderly came into the room and without saying anything to her, pushed a gurney next to the x-ray table.
The discomfort of laying on its hard surface combined with the effort she’d expended telling the volunteer of her plight had drained her. She didn’t have the energy to be brave anymore and screamed with pain when they shifted her from the table onto the gurney.
“Where are the x-rays?” the nurse asked the technician who had silently reappeared, apparently in response to her screams.
“I already sent them to ER.”
“And kept the patient?” She smoothed the sheet over Cheryl and pulled up a loose-weaved blanket. “I think it’s customary to return the patient
with
the films.”
“You know Dr. Costa. If he doesn’t like the quality of the films, he’ll send her right back for more.”
“Well then, did you at least
tell
someone the films were ready? I don’t think the doctor’s even looked at them.”
“I didn’t tell anyone, because I messengered them down. Ask the volunteer who brought them.”
“Half the old coots who work here are senile,” the nurse said and finally shoved the gurney in the direction of the door. “Next time tell someone who’s got something on the ball.”
“And where would I find someone like that?” the technician retorted. “I mean, in this place?”
The orderly laughed and was rewarded with a dirty look from the nurse. “Don’t encourage him.”
At last.
Cheryl never thought that lying on her back watching the ceiling pass by would be the high point of her day, but it was. Dr. Costa was waiting in the emergency room for her, and now that she’d been x-rayed, he would give her something for the pain.
He’d promised.
She had always been the kind of person who refused an offer of aspirin for a headache, proud of herself for dealing with her discomfort without resorting to drugs. Now she’d gladly get down on her knees and beg for medication, pride be damned.
As they passed through a maze of corridors she became aware of a prickly sensation in the heels of both feet. The circulation was returning to them after they’d been numbed by the unforgiving surface of the x-ray table.
It was not a pleasant feeling, but compared to the way the rest of her body felt, it was a walk in the park on a sunny day.
They turned another corner and at last entered the small four-bed emergency room.
“Here she is,” the nurse announced.
The doctor came at once to her side, reaching over the gurney’s railing and patting her hand. “We thought we’d lost you, Cheryl.”
The comfort of his touch brought her to tears again. “I hurt . . .”
“I know you do, but not for much longer. This’ll make it better.”
She felt the sting of a needle and invited the wave of nothingness that swept over her. The last thing she saw before she slipped away was the clock.
Noon, she thought drowsily, and I’m on lunch duty.
Fifteen
A nurse slid back the sliding glass window that separated the waiting room from the emergency admissions desk.
“Mrs. Baker?”
Georgia looked up. “Yes?”
“The doctor wants to talk to you before you take Jill home. If you’d come with me?”
She stood, and spent a futile minute searching for but not finding her purse before remembering that she hadn’t brought it. She crossed to the door which the nurse was patiently holding open for her.
Georgia followed her down a narrow hallway to a small office which was directly opposite the patient treatment area.
She hesitated. The curtains were pulled around all four beds and she didn’t recall which was Jill’s. They’d only let her see Jill for a few minutes and then had banished her to the waiting room so she wouldn’t be in the way.
“May I see my daughter first?”
The nurse shook her head, indicating the door to the office. “The doctor’s with her now. Why don’t you have a seat?”
She sat obediently, although she’d been doing nothing but sitting since arriving at the hospital three and a half hours ago.
“Would you like coffee?”
“No, thank you.”
The nurse smiled. “I’ll tell him you’re waiting,” she said and left, pulling the door closed.
With nothing else to do, Georgia looked around. There was a standard-sized desk covered with journals, a shelf filled with medical reference texts, and about half a dozen Styrofoam cups scattered here and there. A wire basket with the legend “Lab Tests” was nearly overflowing.
On the wall, a phone with its six lines lit up and blinking drew her attention.
She stared at it, noticing that the lights blinked in synchronization. That was why Dave hadn’t returned her call after she’d left a message for him at the restaurant; he couldn’t get through.
But he could have come, she thought. If he wasn’t able to reach her by phone, he
should
have come. Jill was his daughter, too.
Georgia struggled against her growing sense of resentment at having to go through this alone, but the voice in her head refused to be silenced.
What kind of a father was he?
Where were his priorities?
And if he wasn’t at the restaurant, where the hell was he? And with whom?
That was the question, the sixty-four thousand dollar question.
With whom?
Georgia got up from the chair, feeling peevish and slightly claustrophobic, but there wasn’t enough room to pace and she couldn’t exactly leave. She took a step closer to the desk and glanced at a yellow lab slip on top of the pile, thinking it might be Jill’s.
It wasn’t. Even if it had been, she wouldn’t have been able to interpret it. She didn’t know what an erythrocyte was.
She sat down again, feeling guilty for having looked. They were confidential records, after all. She’d invaded someone’s privacy.
Why did nurses leave people alone in doctors’ offices anyway?
Doctors’ offices intimidated her, and had ever since she’d gone to her first fertility specialist ten years ago when she’d been unable to conceive.
Even the thought of those days was enough to make her palms sweat.
The door swung open just then and the doctor came in carrying a clipboard. “Hello.”
She read the name off his hospital I.D. card. “Dr. Costa.”
Costa was big, well over six feet tall, but he moved with a smaller man’s grace. He sat on a corner of the desk, picked up the closest of the coffee cups, frowned into it and threw it in the trash. He seemed not to see the rest of the cups.
“Well, what can I tell you?”
“The nurse said I can take Jill home?”
He inclined his head in agreement. “As soon as she finishes her lunch.”
“Lunch?”
“I wanted her to eat before I discharge her. Her blood sugar was on the low side.”
“Is that why you’ve kept her so long?” When she’d first gotten to the ER, one of the nurses had told her that Jill was to be released within the hour. The hour had come and gone three times over.
“Yes and no,” Dr. Costa said. “Tell me, how has she been feeling lately?”
The question, although she should have expected it, caught her off-guard. A cold knot of dread formed in her stomach. “She hasn’t been sick.”
It wasn’t much of an answer, but Dr. Costa seemed to accept it. “How about her appetite?”
“It’s . . . she has a healthy appetite usually—”
“Usually?”
“Last night she hardly touched her dinner, but she didn’t say anything about feeling ill.”
“Hmm.” He pursed his lips and tapped a pencil against them. “What about breakfast this morning? What did she eat?”
“Oh!” Georgia said, remembering the scrambled egg. “Yesterday she didn’t eat breakfast either. I had to throw it out. And this morning she only had a bowl of cold cereal.”
“Huh. But other than yesterday, you feel that she’s been eating well?”
“Yes, overall. I mean, she’s picky, but not any more than other kids her age.”
“Picky. Well, maybe that’s it.”
“What?”
“Your daughter’s blood tests show that she’s borderline anemic. And since anemia is symptomatic of an underlying disorder, it’s important to determine what physiologic mechanism is at work.”
Georgia nodded to indicate she was following what he was saying.
“There are a number of etiologies, but I think hers is simple iron-deficiency anemia, which isn’t uncommon in children. They’re growing rapidly and many children won’t eat the foods that’d give them what they need. Odd as it seems, some children would rather eat dirt than red meat.”
“The anemia made her faint?”
“Possibly, although I think it’s more likely that she fainted from the low blood sugar and quite possibly shock. She did see her teacher get hit by a bus—”
“Her
teacher? Miss Appleton?”
“That’s right.”
Georgia hadn’t been told, and she felt bad for not having asked. “Was she hurt seriously?”
“She’s stable.”
Georgia knew equivocation when she heard it, and she realized she was prying. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s none of my business.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“Yes I do. I looked at one of those—” she pointed to the basket of lab slips “—while I was waiting for you to come in.”
Dr. Costa’s smile warmed the room. “That’s all right. Everybody does it. I do the same thing when I go to see my own doctor.”
“Still—”
“Anyway, she’s going to be fine.”
Georgia wasn’t sure who he was talking about, but she nodded and tried to smile.
He took a prescription pad out of the pocket of his lab coat, and in the process dislodged a stethoscope which he managed to catch before it hit the floor.
“I’m going to give you a prescription for an iron supplement for Jill,” he said, not missing a beat, “and I want you to make sure she takes it. She’ll need to be examined by your family doctor in about two weeks, to make sure we’re on the right track here, that we’re not missing anything.”
“You mean, it could be something else? Other than her diet?”
“It could be.”
She watched him as he wrote out the prescription. She kept silent until he’d finished and was tearing the sheet off the pad. “Dr. Costa, what else could it be?”
He gave her a stern look. “I don’t want you imagining the worst.”
“I won’t—”
“Mrs. Baker, I think both of you will do better if you’re not worrying. Believe me.”
What choice did she have?
Sixteen
“Are you finished?”
Jill nodded, putting the cover over the plate and pushing the bed table away. She’d been sitting cross-legged while she ate, and now stretched her legs out. “Can I go home?”
“As soon as you get dressed.” The nurse pulled the panels of the yellow curtain together. “Do you need any help?”
“I’ve been dressing myself for a long time,” Jill said archly.
“Of course.” The nurse went to the counter where Jill’s clothes were neatly folded and brought them to her. “Call me if you need anything.”
Jill waited until the nurse had gone before reaching behind her neck to untie the hospital gown. She let it slip down her arms and shivered at the feel of cool air on her bare skin. Gooseflesh rose and she rubbed her arms, careful not to dislodge the small circular bandage in the crook of her right elbow.
They’d taken her blood.
She hadn’t much liked that.
She touched the bandage gently and thought she could feel where the lab lady had stuck her with the needle. She bent her arm cautiously, imagining the blood spurting from the wound.
It had taken three tries to get the blood—”You have such tiny veins,” the lady had said—and her arm was tender. Afterwards, the lady had volunteered to draw a happy face on the bandage and to “kiss and make it better,” but she’d refused both offers.
Now she cradled her right elbow in her left hand and lifted her arm so that
she
could kiss the sore place. Her skin still smelled of the alcohol swab.
Jill wrinkled her nose.
Blood smelled better, she thought.
She pulled her blue sweater over her head and put her arms through the sleeves. She’d never noticed before how the sleeves bunched around her elbows, and she winced at the feel of the knit material pressing on her wound. She straightened her arm and readjusted the sleeve, but every time she bent her elbow, the sleeve accordioned.
After a moment’s reflection, Jill pushed the offending sleeve up her arm, past the elbow.
“That’s better.”
She wriggled into her jeans and was reaching for her shoes when the curtain was drawn back again.
The doctor seemed to fill the cubicle.
“What’s this?” He came to the bedside and ruffled her hair, not noticing when she smoothed it. “Need a hand, missy?”
“No.” She tied the laces of her tennis shoe.
“At these prices, the least I can do is tie one of those for you.” He took her stockinged foot and slipped it into the shoe. “Cinderella, I presume?”
Jill watched him draw the laces tight, make a lop-sided bow and tie it off.
“Your mother’s signing you out.” He winked at her. “It’s a pretty ransom you’ve fetched, but then, you’re a very pretty little girl.”
As the doctor walked with her past the other beds, she saw Miss Appleton. Her teacher appeared to be asleep although the same lady who’d taken Jill’s blood was now taking hers.
Jill slowed, watching with fascination as dark red blood welled into a large glass vial.
The doctor, his big hand on her back, ushered her along.
Jill glanced back over her shoulder, wanting to see, but one of the nurses approached and pulled the curtain back around the bed.