Stacey's Emergency

  — You have hardly any privacy. All day long, you are poked and prodded, sometimes by people you’ve never seen before. All night long, the nurses check on you. This happens about once an hour. Since the door to your room is left open, there is always light flooding in on you. On top of that, squeaky, rubbery nurses’ shoes constantly step into your room. Sometimes they approach your bed, and then you know that the night nurse is going to take your temperature or something.

  For these reasons and a lot more, I was glad that Dad stayed with me. Dad knew I was Stacey McGill, his daughter, a person — and not just “that patient in Room 322.” He could be my advocate. Oh, well. I’m off the subject again.

  As I started to say before, Mom showed up on Sunday around noon.

  “Mom!” I cried when I saw her. (I don’t know why I sounded so surprised. She had told Dad, and he had told me, that Mom was going to come to New York that day and stay until I was out of the hospital.)

  “Hi, sweetie,” Mom replied. Her eyes were bright with tears, but she didn’t cry. Instead, she leaned over, kissed me, and placed a big, fuzzy, pink pig next to me. “I tried to find Porky Pig,” she said apologetically, “but that’s hard to do on short notice.” (Porky Pig is a favorite of mine. I can even imitate his voice.)

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a stuffed pig before.”

  Mom’s eyes cleared and she smiled at me.

  I smiled back, looking from my mom to my dad and back to my mom again. When was the last time the three of us had been in the same room at the same time? I wasn’t sure, but it definitely felt nice. My family was together again.

  But not for long.

  As soon as Mom had taken off her coat and found a place to sit down, Dad jumped up from his chair. “I could use some coffee,” he said. (Or, I think that’s what he said. He left the room so fast I wasn’t sure.)

  Mom and I were alone. Before Mom could ask how I was feeling or what the doctors were doing, I said, “I hope my room isn’t too messy for you.”

  Mom looked puzzled. She glanced around her. “You just got here yesterday, Stacey,” she said. “You haven’t had time to make a mess.”

  I laughed. “No, I mean my room at Dad’s apartment. You probably couldn’t even find the bed. I left clothes everywhere. Your suitcase —”

  “Honey,” Mom interrupted me, “I’m not staying in your room. I’m staying at Laine’s apartment, in the guest bedroom.”

  “You’re staying at the Cummingses’?” I exclaimed. “Why?”

  “Because,” Mom said calmly, “your aunt and uncle are out of town.” (I have some relatives in New York, but I don’t see them very often.)

  “Why aren’t you staying at Dad’s, though?” I asked.

  “Stacey, your father and I are divorced.”

  “I know you’re divorced,” I said crankily. “Does that mean you can’t stay under the same roof together?”

  “In our case, yes,” Mom answered.

  I think she was going to say something more, but she changed her mind and stopped speaking. So I changed the subject.

  “Look at my arm,” I said. I held it out. In the crook of my right elbow were two Band-Aids. “They keep drawing blood to do tests on it. And every time I go to the bathroom, I have to go in a plastic cup. They keep testing my urine. It is so embarrassing…. Have you talked to any of the doctors yet?”

  “Not yet,” replied Mom. “Your father has, though. And no one knows much more than they did yesterday.”

  I guess that was why doctors and nurses were bustling in and out of my room more than usual. Not only did they continue to draw blood and to check my urine, but they tested my kidney function. They also raised my insulin. But that didn’t seem to make a difference.

  “It hasn’t made a difference yet,” Mom reminded me. “But it might.”

  I nodded. I was worried, though.

  When Dad returned an hour and a half later (that was some long coffee break), Mom rushed out just as quickly as my father had earlier, saying that now she needed coffee.

  “Dad,” I said when Mom had left, “you don’t have to stay with me.”

  “I know I don’t —” Dad started to say.

  “No, really. It’s okay,” I told him. “I think I need a nap. I’m pretty tired. Why don’t you go home for awhile?”

  “We-ell.” Dad was hedging.

  “I need my address book and some more toothpaste,” I told him.

  “All right,” said Dad.

  I was alone. I didn’t really need the address book or the toothpaste, but I did need some time to think in private (despite what I’d said earlier about wanting people with me, and hospitals being impersonal and everything). I turned my pillow over, eased myself against it, and started to think about Mom and Dad.

  Before I had gotten too far, though, I found myself just gazing around my room. It was like every hospital room I’d ever been in, except that it was private. Sometimes I have stayed in double rooms, or even in rooms with three other kids. Private rooms are much smaller, of course, but then you do have a sense of privacy. (Duh. That’s why they’re called “private” rooms.) Well, you don’t really have privacy because of the constant stream of doctors, nurses, nurses’ aides, maintenance people, and anyone else who feels that he or she has a job to do in your room. But at least you don’t have to put up with other patients and their visitors.

  In my room was my bed. (Of course. That’s the most important feature of any hospital room.) It was one of those beds that can change position. During the day, I raised the part that’s under my top half so that I could sit up. On the bed were sheets and two thin white blankets. I think the same company must provide blankets to every hospital in the world. The sheets, by the way, were stamped with the name of the hospital. I can’t imagine why. Did anyone think that a patient would actually want to be reminded of her hospital stay by stashing a set of the sheets in a closet at home? Anyway, apart from my bed were two chairs for visitors, a bed table so that I could eat meals comfortably right in bed, a dresser, and a TV. The TV was bolted into a corner of the room, up near the ceiling. Now why was it bolted? It would be awfully hard to smuggle a television set out of the hospital. I mean, a TV isn’t exactly something you can slip into your pocket or hide under your coat. Oh, well. I was glad there was a TV at all, even if it was bolted to the wall at such an angle that I got a stiff neck if I watched it for long.

  I looked out the window. The view was of a gray building across the street. I couldn’t tell whether it was an office building or some kind of warehouse. Whatever it was, it was boring. But a room with a bad view was better than a room with no view at all. I watched two pigeons swoop by. And, for the first time, began to worry (and I mean heavy-duty worry) about why I was in the hospital. Was it all the candy and sugar I’d eaten recently? Maybe. But I hadn’t been feeling well before I’d gone off my diet. I guess the sugar didn’t help things, though. How sick was I? Why did I need a change in my insulin? Learning that I’m a brittle diabetic hadn’t concerned me too much. As long as the insulin was doing its job, I was okay. But now the insulin wasn’t working. What if the doctors raised the level and I got better for awhile, but then needed even more insulin? What if no one could find a way to give me enough insulin? What if … I died? I’d read a book once about a girl with diabetes who couldn’t get enough insulin and she did die. I also knew that was extremely rare. But what if it happened to me?

  Stop playing “what if,” I told myself.

  I couldn’t, though. I felt trapped in my room. Four stark white walls, the dreary building across the street, not even any pigeons now. What if the doctors couldn’t find —

  “Hey, Stace,” said a familiar voice.

  I turned my gaze from the window to the doorway. There stood Laine Cummings.

  “Hi!” I exlaimed. “Come on in. Have an uncomfortable seat.” (The two chairs for visitors were made of hard, molded plastic.)

  Laine grinned. She slumped
into one of the chairs. “Ah. Restful,” she said.

  I laughed. “So how did you get in here?”

  “Hey, I’m over twelve,” replied Laine. “Anyway, at the visitors’ desk downstairs I just pretended I was part of this crowd who was going to visit other people. Then I got off on your floor…. So how are you feeling?”

  “Relieved, I guess,” I told her. “Well, not completely relieved. I’m really worried about whatever is wrong with me. But I have to admit that now that I’m in the hospital, awful as it is, I’m glad to know there are all these doctors around. I feel taken care of.”

  “That’s good,” said Laine slowly. She frowned slightly. Then her face brightened. “Wait till you see what I brought you!” she cried.

  “What?” I asked suspiciously. Laine’s taste can sometimes be strange. Once, she had given me a key chain that looked like a cicada (a really ugly, big, green, winged bug). That was bad enough. But when you pressed a button on the underside of the bug, its green eyes flashed on and off, and it made this weird high-pitched humming sound. (I scared people with it until the battery wore out.)

  “Okay,” said Laine. “First” (she reached into a plastic bag that she’d set on the floor beside her chair), “these beautiful flowers. Anyone who goes to the hospital should receive flowers. So here you are.” Laine handed me a bouquet of electric-blue plastic tulips. They were packaged beautifully in Handi-Wrap.

  “Charming,” I said. I stuck them in an empty water pitcher.

  “And they’re low-maintenance,” Laine went on. “No watering, and they don’t need any light. Just dust them once in awhile.”

  I giggled. “Okay.”

  “Next,” said Laine, reaching into the bag again, “is this.” She handed me a small box. “It came from the Last Wound-Up.”

  “Oh, goody!” I cried. (The Last Wound-Up is this store near Laine’s apartment that sells all sorts of funny wind-up toys.) I lifted the lid. Inside the box lay a huge brown plastic spider — wearing a pair of red glasses. Laine wound him up and let him wiggle across my bed table.

  “Gross!” I exclaimed. But I couldn’t help laughing.

  “Can you believe it?” Laine said. “I got the red glasses somewhere else. They just happend to fit the spider.”

  “He looks very scholarly,” I told Laine.

  Laine and I watched the spider crawl across the table and fall to the floor.

  “Two more things,” Laine continued. She handed me a big, gaudy get-well card.

  “Thanks!” I said.

  “And last,” began Laine, “I talked with the members of the BSC. I called Claudia this morning, and it turned out that your friends were holding an emergency club meeting. I have messages from everybody. Mal says she’s thinking about you. Mary Anne and Dawn say they miss you. Kristy says to get back on your feet because Dawn isn’t all that good at handling the money in the treasury. Jessi promises to write to you so you’ll be sure to get mail in the hospital. And Claud says she’s getting your homework assignments — and that she misses you an awful lot.”

  By the time Laine left, I felt very cheered up.

  Wednesday morning.

  I was beginning my fourth full day of hospital life. My blood sugar level had been lowered, but the doctors still weren’t satisfied. They were giving me an awful lot of insulin just to keep the blood sugar down — but not where it should be. However, I was feeling better. I was much less tired. Mom encouraged me to make my days as normal as possible.

  That meant getting dressed, doing homework assignments (plus still trying to catch up in most of my subjects), and waking up fairly early. No sleeping late. (Darn it.) Of course, it would have been difficult to sleep late anyway, considering the bustle of hospital life. What was a typical day like for me? Well, I’ll tell you.

  Wednesday began at seven o’clock when my alarm clock (yes, my alarm clock) went off. I got up, changed out of my nightgown and into regular old street clothes (jeans and stuff), and washed up as well as I could in my bathroom. (The bathroom had a sink and a toilet, but no shower or tub.)

  At seven-thirty I flopped onto my bed and began doing schoolwork. My mom had said that getting dressed and leading a “normal” life would make my hospital stay more manageable. And it did, I guess. Even so, the hospital was still a foreign place, with lots of intrusions on my “normalcy.”

  For instance, by eight o’clock, I was deeply engrossed in writing an overdue essay for social studies, when I heard carts and machinery being rolled down the hall. “Yuck,” I said to myself. “It’s —”

  “Time for vital signs,” said a nurse cheerfully as he wheeled a blood pressure instrument into my room. (I happen to know that the blood pressure instrument is called a sphygmomanometer. This is the kind of information you pick up when you spend a lot of time in hospitals and doctors’ offices.)

  “Okay,” I replied. I put my books aside. Then I sat in one of the visitor’s chairs and, without being told, opened my mouth and extended my arm.

  The nurse grinned. “I guess you’re an old pro now,” he said.

  “Unfortunately,” I agreed.

  The nurse put a thermometer in my mouth and wrapped the black cuff of the sphygmomanometer around my upper arm. He listened to the pulse in the crook of my elbow with a stethoscope for a few moments, made a note on a chart, and then said, “Stand, please.” I stood. I don’t know why they take your blood pressure when you’re both sitting and standing, but they do.

  I sat down again. The nurse removed the cuff from my arm. Then he took my pulse. Just as he was finishing, the thermometer beeped. I should add here that the thermometer wasn’t a regular glass one. It was plastic and wired to a box. A tone sounded when the thermometer was done taking your temperature, and then your temperature flashed up digitally on the box, like the time on a clock radio. Another miracle of modern medicine.

  “All systems go,” said the nurse.

  “Good,” I replied. Then I added, “Thank you.”

  The nurse’s name was Rufus. (That’s what was printed across the front of his uniform.) But I didn’t bother to remember it. A different nurse had taken my vital signs every morning.

  I returned to my social studies essay, only to be interrupted by a nurse’s aide bringing breakfast. So I set aside my books and tried to force down the disgusting food. Before I had finished, Mom appeared in the doorway.

  “Hi, lovey,” she said, settling into a chair.

  “Hi!” I answered.

  “How are you feeling today?”

  “Not bad,” I replied. “But I know the doctors are going to fiddle around with the insulin again.”

  “Well, that’s what you’re here for.”

  “I guess.”

  “Have you been working already?”

  I held up the paper with my half-finished essay on it. “I’m trying,” I told Mom, “but I keep getting interrupted. Vital signs and breakfast.”

  “And me.”

  “No, not you,” I said, but I saw that Mom was smiling. She wasn’t serious. “Is Dad coming today?” I asked her. (Monday and Tuesday had been somewhat unnerving with Mom and Dad trying to see me but at the same time trying to avoid each other.)

  “I don’t think so,” Mom answered. “I mean, not until later. He has a full day of meetings. I’ll stay with you, though.”

  “Only if you want to,” I told her. “Don’t feel you have to sit in that chair all day. I have homework, and anyway, I’m much better.”

  “Okay.” Mom actually did leave for awhile. She said she was going to have a cup of coffee somewhere and then take a cab to midtown (where most of my favorite stores are located). She said she was on a secret mission. I hoped it involved clothes shopping — for me.

  Mom left as the nurse’s aide came to retrieve my tray. I picked up my essay again, and again I was interrupted, this time by a whole group of people in long white coats. I recognized only one of them. He was a doctor who’d examined me several times. He began talking, and the rest of t
he people took notes on clipboards they were carrying. I guessed that they were medical students or new doctors or something, and that my doctor was their teacher.

  The doctor greeted me, then turned back to his class. “This patient,” he said, “is a thirteen-year-old girl” (he didn’t even use my name!) “with juvenile onset of diabetes. She was hospitalized last Saturday, at which time she was found to have an abnormally high blood sugar level, despite the fact that she’s been taking insulin and has been on a strict diet since she was first diagnosed….”

  The doctor went on and on, and the students scribbled away on their clipboards and sometimes glanced at me. I felt like a fish in a glass bowl or an animal in a cage at the zoo. The doctor talked about me as if I weren’t sitting just three feet away from him.

  Anyway, the group left my room after five minutes or so. Once again, I settled down to work. And this time I was able to accomplish a few things even though a nurse came to check my blood, and even though I knew Jeopardy! was on TV, followed by a rerun of The Beverly Hillbillies. After a bland, tasteless lunch, I worked some more. Then Mom reappeared with a Benetton bag. (Yay!) In it was a beautiful emerald-green sweater and a matching beret.

  “Oh, thank you!” I cried. I tried on the new things immediately. Mom stayed with me until about four-thirty. Then she said she had to leave. I think she was afraid she’d run into my father, since she wasn’t sure when he was going to show up that day.

  By 4:45, I was alone.

  At 5:00, the telephone rang. I reached over to pick it up.

  “Hello?” I said. “This is the funny farm. To whom are you speaking?”

  There was a pause. Then a giggly voice said, “I’m speaking to you!”

  It was Claud. Even so, I said, “Oh. Well, who’s this?”

  “It’s me! Claudia!”

  “I know that,” I replied. We were both laughing by then.

  “How are you doing?” Claud wanted to know.

  “Okay,” I answered. “I feel a lot better, but I might have to stay here awhile.”

  I knew Claud wanted to ask, “Why?” I also knew that she could tell I didn’t feel like talking about whatever was wrong with me. So after a brief, uncomfortable pause, Claudia said, “The rest of the club is here. Everyone wants to say hi.”