Zachary Pill, Of Monsters and Magic

his bones—and, if so, what? His questions about his family were growing by the minute, and Zachary intended to get answers from his father very soon.

  Nurse Nightshade ran her fingers down both sides of Zachary’s nose. He braced himself for the pain, but she was surprisingly gentle for such a big woman; he barely felt a thing. She then asked him to turn around so she could examine the lump on the back of his head, and finally she checked the buckle on his sling.

  “Why didn’t someone put a brace on this?” Nurse Nightshade asked. The look of contempt on her face was unmistakable.

  “The school nurse wanted to send Zach to a Boston hospital to do that,” Zachary’s father said, “but I thought it was wise to come here instead.”

  Nurse Nightshade gave him a withering look.

  “It’s not like he has green blood, Mr. Pill.” There was acid in her voice, but when she turned to look at Zachary, she smiled again. “How long ago did you break it, Sweetie?”

  Zachary glanced around the room for a clock, couldn’t find one and shook his head. “I was asleep for a while.”

  “It happened around eleven o’clock Boston time,” his father said. “That would be about three hours ago.”

  Zachary hadn’t been in the clinic long, and the drive to the cemetary had been frighteningly fast. That meant he had slept for almost two hours! And what did his father mean by Boston time? He remembered the Chicago signs he’d seen outside the clinic.

  “Where are we?” Zachary blurted out.

  “Now’s not the time,” his father said.

  Nurse Nightshade turned kind eyes to Zachary.

  “You’re in the City of Chicago. It sounds like your father hasn’t been very open with you about some things.” She gave his father that withering look again.

  Uncharictaristically, his father scowled back at her.

  Zachary knew Chicago was hundreds of miles from Boston, so why would his father have come all this way? And how did he manage to do it in just two hours? It seemed to Zachary even an airplane would have taken longer than that, and since when did airplanes pick passengers up in cemetaries?

  Nurse Nightshade’s eyes had narrowed. She snatched the clipboard from his father’s hands.

  “Three hours! Don’t you realize what could happen if his bones started to sprout?”

  Zachary’s father paled.

  “I didn’t have any choice.”

  “Obviously you did!” she snapped. “You should at least have called for advice before waiting all this time.”

  Zachary’s mind swam. What did she mean by “bones starting to sprout?” It’s not like he was a spinach plant. What was going on?

  “Well, what’s done is done,” Nurse Nightshade said. She picked the receiver up from a phone and pressed one of the many lighted buttons. “Doctor, we have a member of the Pill family up―” She fell silent for a moment, then said, “It’s Roger Pill and his son.”

  Another pause.

  “But I wanted to send them to x-ray first. The boy’s arm is broken, and because he’s half fay―”

  She seemed to get cut off again. For a moment she suddenly seemed bigger, taller and wider, but then she returned to her previous size. Weird.

  Zachary rubbed his eyes.

  “Of course, Doctor,” Nurse Nightshade said. “You’re the boss!” She slammed the phone on the cradle, which caused the entire office to shake.

  “Doctor Gefarg is waiting for you in his office.” She glanced at her computer screen and huffed. “But he can keep waiting.” She reached down and grabbed Zachary’s good hand. “You’re going to x-ray first.”

  “Is that wise?” Zachary’s father asked. “If Gefarg wants―”

  “Haven’t you caused enough problems for one day?” Nurse Nightshade said. “You may already have forced us to prune your son’s arm.”

  Both Pills fell silent as Nurse Nightshade marched them out into a long hallway and through a pair of shiny chrome doors. Zachary was beginning to think that something had happened to his brain, because whoever heard of pruning an arm? As they walked, he was again struck by how bright, clean and modern the clinic was, nothing like the ramshackle sign and gloomy entryway would have suggested. He was just starting to ponder why his father had asked how Nurse Nightshade had recognized their “Pill” name when his eyes acted up again.

  “X-rays in Use,” a sign on one of two polished chrome doors read at first glance, but then the words changed to, “No Orcs Allowed!”

  He blinked as they passed through the doors.

  Orcs! Weren’t they imaginary creatures like goblins and trolls? And how had the words changed on a painted sign. Surely he had imagined it.

  Then why did it seem so real?

  He really wanted to turn back and check the sign, but Nurse Nightshade had a vise-like grip on his good arm, and he got the distinct impression she wouldn’t have let him loose for any reason. Shaking his head, he walked obediently beside her to another large, bright and clean waiting room. There were only a few people in this one. She motioned toward a bank of cream and chrome chairs against the wall. Zachary settled down and winced as his broken left arm bounced against his leg. His father sat beside him.

  Nurse Nightshade spoke rapidly to another nurse at a window similar to where they’d met her then came back and said, “If anyone, especially Doctor Gefarg, asks you to leave before the x-rays are done, you have that nice woman call my station immediately.” She ruffled Zachary’s hair again and smiled. “Don’t worry. We’ll have that wand arm fixed up in no time.”

  Then she left.

  “What’s a wand arm?” he asked his father.

  “Ruined arm,” his father said. “She meant ruined arm.”

  Just then, a gaunt, prune-faced old nurse showed up.

  “Let’s go!” she snapped. “And you can stay right where you are,” she said to his father who was getting to his feet.

  “I’ll be joining my son,” he said forcefully. As recently as yesterday, his father would never have spoken up like that.

  “Listen,” the cranky nurse said, “if you want an x-ray, then shut-up and stay put. Only the troublemaker needs to come with me.”

  “My son’s not a troublemaker!”

  “I suppose the bruises and broken bones came from picking his nose then?”

  “Where he goes, I go!” his father announced.

  “Fine,” the nurse responded. “You can take it up with Doctor Gefarg. Clinic policy says only nurses and patients are allowed in the x-ray room. We’ll let the doctor decide if he wants to make an exception.”

  Zachary’s head ached and his arm felt worse. He just wanted to get it over with.

  “I’ll be alright,” he told his father.

  “You’re sure?” he said.

  Zachary nodded, and his father reluctantly returned to his seat though never stopped glaring on the old crone. Zachary followed the nurse through another set of swinging chrome doors. As he walked behind her sickly thin frame, he couldn’t help thinking that standing up to Billy had easily been the worst decision he’d ever made. His father had been right all along: cowardice was the better course of action. Zachary’s feeble attempt at courage had gotten him beaten to a pulp, kicked out of school and had likely messed up any chance he had of getting Stephanie Travis to go to the dance with him.

  Fearing that Doctor Gefarg’s clinic would further prove what a disaster he had created, Zachary followed the grim nurse through a doorway to the right. The heavy wooden door sounded like a casket lid as it thumped shut behind him.

  6) X-rays and Second Thoughts

  Zachary couldn’t help thinking the old nurse was like a set of bones you might see standing against the wall in science class. If it weren’t for the pulsing blue veins beneath her pale skin and the graying strands of hair that were stuffed like dead grass beneath her white nurse’s cap, she could easily have been a cemetery resident. Her skeletal hand gestured for him to sit up on a long padded table in the center of the small x-ray room. A la
rge machine with a single robotic arm stood beside the table. The end of the arm looked like a huge camera with a moving platform below it.

  “Go on, get up!”

  Zachary slid onto the padded table where she promptly yanked his sling loose. Agony ripped through his mangled arm as it twisted and fell into his lap. Zachary tried to stifle the scream, but a tiny yelp still escaped his throat.

  “’More of a weed than a tree,” the nurse said.

  Zachary supposed it was an insult, but his arm throbbed so badly he could barely think. Suddenly, the nurse reached out and yanked his wrecked limb onto the platform below the x-ray camera. Every nerve in his arm screamed in agony.

  “You’re trying to kill me!” Zachary exclaimed.

  “Quit your whining or I’ll tug it again!”

  She belongs in a horror movie!

  Why hadn’t Nurse Nightshade let him go to Doctor Gefarg’s office first? It couldn’t have been any worse than spending time with Nurse Pain! Even as he thought it, her bony fingers bit into his skin and pushed his arm to the side. He swallowed and tried to calm his pain-wracked nerves enough to speak.

  “Just tell me…where you want my arm. I’ll do it myself.” His body still quaked from pain.

  “Wouldn’t be so much fun,” she said with no hint of a smile on her pinched face. “Now stop moving, or I’ll have to adjust it again.”

  Becoming statue-like, Zachary was determined not to give her any excuse to put him through that again. She laid a heavy pad on his lap then retreated behind a glass window to one side of the room. A whirring sound came from the x-ray camera above his arm. When the nurse