Stacey's Emergency

  Mom dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. My father fumbled around for a handkerchief. I couldn’t believe it. I’d made him cry, too. For a moment, I felt the anger rise up all over again: I had the power to move two adults to tears, but not to make them act civilly toward one another.

  I pushed the anger away. “Can you,” I said to Mom and Dad in a steady voice, “come back on Monday, instead of tomorrow? I need some time to think.”

  “So do I,” said Dad.

  “So do I,” said Mom.

  “Okay. So I’ll see you on Monday?”

  My parents nodded. Then they left, Mom slightly ahead of Dad. I watched them to see if Dad might rest his hand on Mom’s back. Or if Mom might send a flicker of a smile to Dad. But they were isolated, living in separate worlds.

  Ordinarily, after a scene like that, I would have given into tears. I might even have enjoyed them, let them run down my cheeks in salty tracks, not bothered to wipe them away. Not that night, though. I was feeling too angry. And, I realized, too strong. My body was getting better, so I allowed my mind to get better, too.

  “Look out for number one,” I murmured. Where had I heard that? I wasn’t sure. But I did, suddenly, know what it meant. And that’s exactly what I was doing — looking out for number one, for me. I was putting me first, along with my thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

  How, I wondered, did I really want to spend Sunday? Out of the hospital, I answered myself. But that wasn’t possible. Okay. Next best thing? With my friends, forgetting about my parents. Well, that might be possible. I could find out in just a few minutes, with two or three phone calls.

  I dialed Claudia first, praying that she was home.

  She was. She answered on the first ring. “Hi, Dawn,” she said.

  I paused. “Claud, it’s me.”

  “Stacey?! I was expecting Dawn to call me back. She — Oh, never mind. It’s a long story. How are you? You sound okay. I mean, you sound good.”

  “I’m feeling pretty good,” I said truthfully. “And I was wondering something. I know this is a lot to ask, but would you and Dawn and everyone want to come back tomorrow? Would your parents let you?”

  “Come back? To New York? Well … sure. I mean, I guess so. I mean, yes, definitely, but I have to see if we have enough money and everything.”

  I laughed. “I know what you mean. If you guys could come, I would love to see you. But I know that’s asking a lot.”

  “Not so much,” replied Claud. “Let me talk to the others. I’ll get back to you.”

  “Okay,” I replied. “I’m going to call Laine in the meantime. You don’t mind, do you? I mean, if Laine comes over for awhile tomorrow? I thought it would be fun if we all got together.”

  “Fine with me,” said Claud.

  We hung up then, and I dialed Laine.

  “Hi,” I said. “It’s Stacey. Um, is my mom back yet?”

  “No,” Laine answered.

  “Oh. Well, she probably will be soon. And she might be upset.” I told Laine what had happened earlier.

  “Wow,” said Laine when I’d finished. “So do you want her to call you when she gets here?”

  “No,” I replied. “I really do need to wait awhile until I talk to my parents again. But I was wondering if you could visit tomorrow. Claudia and everyone might be here, too. If they get permission from their parents, and if they can get by the nurses.”

  “Great!” exclaimed Laine. “See you tomorrow.”

  On Sunday I woke up early. Everyone had permission to visit. (Well, not Mallory and Jessi, but the others. Plus Laine. I couldn’t wait.)

  I asked a nurse to help me wash my hair in the sink. Then I put on fresh clothes. I even put on some makeup that Laine had sneaked to me a few days earlier. I added jewelry and, when I checked myself in the mirror, thought I looked like the same old Stacey. The same old reasonably healthy Stacey.

  By one o’clock everyone had arrived. Laine and my Stoneybrook friends greeted each other happily. (They’d met before.) Then they all found seats (Kristy and Mary Anne refused to sit in the plastic chairs again, so they perched on the bed with Laine, while Claud and Dawn risked the chairs.)

  “Guess what,” I said. “I never opened my presents yesterday.” I pointed to a corner where one of the nurses had hastily stacked the boxes and packages while my friends were being ushered out of the room.

  “Good. Open them now,” said Claud.

  At that moment, a nurse entered my room.

  “Aughhh!” exclaimed Mary Anne in a muffled shriek. “Another blood test?”

  “No,” said the nurse, smiling. “A guest check. I see you have …”

  Her voice trailed off as she looked at me. My face was practically pleading with her. “Please, please, please let everyone stay,” it was saying.

  “I see that you have,” the nurse began again, “exactly two visitors.”

  “Oh, thank you,” I said, letting out the breath I’d been holding.

  “You’re welcome. Just don’t make too much noise, okay?”

  “No problem,” I replied.

  The nurse disappeared. “We’re safe,” I announced in a loud whisper.

  “Good. Open the presents,” said Claud. She piled them on my bed. They tumbled around Laine and Kristy and Mary Anne.

  I reached for one. But Claud moved it away. “How about this one?” she asked, handing me another.

  “Okay,” I said. I looked at the tag. “Why, it’s from you!”

  Everybody giggled.

  Claudia’s present was a beaded bracelet that she’d made herself.

  “Thanks!” I exclaimed as I slipped it on.

  That was the beginning of an afternoon of (quiet) fun.

  I even managed to forget about Mom and Dad.

  “Mary Anne?” said Charlotte plaintively.

  “Yeah?” replied Mary Anne.

  “I don’t feel good.”

  It was about eight o’clock on Thursday evening. Mary Anne had been at the Johanssens’ for half an hour. When she had arrived, Charlotte was already in her nightgown, sitting on her bed, looking slightly pale.

  Mary Anne did not panic when Charlotte said she wasn’t feeling well. She knew what was going on with Char. So she said calmly, “How don’t you feel good?”

  “I’m sort of achey. And I’m really tired. I think my neck is getting stiff. I probably have Lyme disease. We’ll know for sure if a rash appears where I’ve been bitten by the tick. Of course, a rash doesn’t always show up. Then you have to get a blood test or something.”

  “Char, when was the last time you played in the woods?”

  Charlotte paused. “I don’t remember,” she said after a moment. “But that doesn’t matter, you know. Carrot spends lots of time outdoors.” (Carrot is the Johanssens’ schnauzer.) “He could bring deer ticks into the house. I could have been bitten right here in my bedroom.”

  Mary Anne didn’t know what to say to that.

  I could sympathize. When my parents had come back to the hospital (separately) on Monday, I hadn’t been sure what to say to them. The night before, I had thought of some things I wanted to say, like, “Don’t put me in the middle,” or, “Let the doctors talk about my disease. They’re the experts, not you.”

  But did I say those things? No. I was too chicken. All I could do was apologize over and over again. “I’m sorry,” I kept saying. “I don’t know how I could have told you to shut up and to get out.”

  “Well, you were upset,” said Dad.

  “You weren’t feeling well,” said Mom.

  “That’s true….” But those weren’t the most important reasons behind what I’d said. The important reasons were much more complicated. By Thursday, when Mary Anne was sitting for Charlotte, my parents and I had gotten over Saturday. We were no longer angry. Mom and Dad had accepted my apologies. But I wasn’t much closer to telling them what was really wrong than I had been before our fight. However, I was thinking all the time. I knew that when I was ready, I would
have plenty to say and that I would say it without getting angry or upset.

  At any rate, it didn’t matter that Mary Anne had no calming words for Charlotte. That’s because Char was convinced she had Lyme disease. There was no talking her out of it. Besides, while Mary Anne was still coming up with something to say, Charlotte shrieked suddenly and pointed to the rug.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Mary Anne, alarmed.

  “I see a deer tick! Right here in my room. Now do you believe me?”

  “Where’s the tick?” Mary Anne was slightly annoyed.

  “Right there,” Char answered, still pointing to the rug.

  Mary Anne peered at the floor. “That little thing?” Her eyes had finally rested on a tiny black dot working its way from one side of the room to the other.

  “Deer ticks are small,” Charlotte informed Mary Anne. “No bigger than the period at the end of a sentence.”

  Mary Anne is not crazy about bugs, but she examined the moving speck from short range. At last she said, “Char, that is not a tick. It’s a very small spider.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “It’s too big to be a deer tick. Besides, it just looks like a spider.”

  “Oh. Well, can you get rid of it?”

  “I won’t kill it, if that’s what you mean,” Mary Anne replied. “But I’ll put it outside. I’ll set it free.”

  “Okay,” agreed Charlotte. And by the time Mary Anne had set the spider outdoors, Charlotte had another complaint. “You know, I really think I might have arthritis,” she said when Mary Anne returned. “My back hurts. People can get arthritis in their backs, you know…. Or, wait! I bet I have a kidney disease. People sometimes get backaches when they have a kidney infection.”

  “They also run fevers.” Mary Anne touched Char’s forehead. “And you don’t have one.”

  Charlotte was silent for awhile. Finally she said, “Let’s read, Mary Anne. Let’s read about …” Charlotte scanned her bookshelf. Then she asked Mary Anne if there were any new books in her Kid-Kit.

  “Just one,” answered Mary Anne. She fished around in the box until she found a copy of The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, which is a story about the Pepper family, not a bunch of vegetables.

  “Ooh, that looks good,” said Char.

  “It is. I think you’ll like it. Do you want me to start reading?”

  Charlotte nodded. She snuggled against Mary Anne. But Mary Anne hadn’t read more than four pages when Charlotte interrupted her.

  “Mary Anne? My throat is really sore.”

  “Maybe you should gargle,” suggested Mary Anne.

  “Maybe,” said Charlotte. “But I don’t know if gargling will help a strep throat.”

  Mary Anne closed her eyes briefly. Just as she was opening them, ready for yet another talk with Charlotte, the phone rang. Mary Anne ran downstairs to answer it. (She could have answered the upstairs phone, but Mary Anne feels funny about entering Dr. and Mr. Johanssen’s bedroom. Or any other grown-up’s bedroom, for that matter.)

  “Hello, Johanssens’ residence,” said Mary Anne.

  “Hi, it’s Claud,” said Claudia, “and I have some news about Stacey.”

  “News? What’s happened?” Mary Anne asked quickly. Was this good news or bad news? Had I had another relapse? she wondered. Were my new shots working the way they should be?

  “Okay, get this,” said Claud. “Stacey will be home on Saturday.”

  “All right!” cried Mary Anne. “Just two more days. Wait till I tell Charlotte. She will be so happy! You can’t imagine.”

  “Oh, yes, I can!” exclaimed Claudia. “And tell Char that when Stacey returns she’ll have to rest for a week, then she can go back to school, and a week after that she can start baby-sitting again.”

  “Terrific!” said Mary Anne.

  “I’m calling all the BSC members,” added Claud, “so I better go now.”

  Mary Anne hung up the phone then and raced to Charlotte’s room. “Guess what! Guess what!” she cried. “No, you won’t guess, so I’ll tell you.”

  “Yeah?” said Charlotte.

  “Stacey will be home in two days.”

  “Aughhh!” shrieked Charlotte. (Mary Anne decided that Char’s throat wasn’t bothering her too much.) “On Saturday? Stacey will be back on Saturday?”

  “Yup,” said Mary Anne. She told Charlotte what Claud had said about resting, school, and baby-sitting.

  “So Stacey can’t baby-sit me for over two weeks?”

  “That’s right. But isn’t it nice to know she’s coming back here?”

  “Definitely,” said Char. “You know what? We should do something for Stacey. We should give her a surprise party.”

  “I don’t know about a surprise party, since Stacey is supposed to be resting, but we should do something for her. She’d like that.”

  “Then let’s give her a regular party. We won’t surprise her.”

  “A small, quiet regular party, maybe,” said Mary Anne.

  “We could make a sign,” suggested Charlotte. “I mean, a banner. Remember the banner we hung up when Stacey and her mom moved back to Stoneybrook?”

  “Yup. We hung it in front of her house. We could do that again.”

  “And then we’ll be waiting for her in the front yard when her mother drives her home. Only we won’t jump out or anything. And we won’t invite as many people as we did the last time.”

  “That sounds good. And maybe we’ll just drag over the Pikes’ picnic table and serve juice or lemonade.”

  “Lemonade without sugar in it,” added Charlotte.

  “Right,” said Mary Anne. “Or with artificial sweeteners. Okay, this sounds good. The party will be quiet and small. I think Stacey will really like it. What should the banner say?”

  Charlotte frowned. “Mmm … how about, ‘We’re glad you’re home, Stacey’?”

  “Perfect!”

  “Really?” Charlotte looked very pleased.

  “Positively. Do you want to help make the banner?”

  “Positively!” replied Charlotte, grinning.

  “I should call Claudia and everyone and see what they think about this.”

  “Call them right now,” said Charlotte.

  “Okay.” Mary Anne headed back downstairs.

  Charlotte ran after her. “Hey, guess what! My strep throat is gone! And I’m pretty sure I don’t have Lyme disease or arthritis, or anything, either.”

  Mary Anne turned around. She hugged Charlotte. “You don’t know how glad I am to hear that,” she said.

  “Who should we call first?” asked Charlotte, wriggling out of Mary Anne’s grasp.

  “Claudia, I think,” answered Mary Anne. “She’s got paint. We’ll probably make the banner at her house tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I’ll dial!” exclaimed Char.

  So she did. Then she handed the receiver to Mary Anne. Mary Anne spoke to Claud, who loved the idea of welcoming me home. Within fifteen minutes, Dawn, Mal, Jessi, and Kristy knew about the party, too. Mary Anne assigned jobs to everyone. My friends could not wait for Saturday — and neither could I!

  The highway stretched in front of us. I imagined it was the Yellow Brick Road, and that it led straight to my house.

  Saturday had arrived at last. I had been sprung from the hospital. And now that I was out of that bland room with its view of dingy gray, I really did feel like Dorothy in Oz. “Hey, Mom, there are colors out here!” I had exclaimed as a nurse helped me into our car.

  Mom laughed.

  The nurse smiled. “It was nice knowing you, Stacey,” she said, “but I don’t ever want to see your face here again!” (She didn’t?) “Don’t worry,” the nurse went on, “I say that to all my patients. Stay well, okay?”

  It was my turn to smile. “Okay.” I paused. Then I added, “I hope I never see your face again, either!”

  Grinning, the nurse turned the empty wheelchair around and started toward the door of the hospital.

  “W
hy do they always make me leave the hospital in a wheelchair?” I complained. “I can walk. I was walking in the hospital.”

  Mom shrugged. “Just hospital policy, sweetie.” She turned the key in the ignition and at last I began to leave the hospital behind me.

  The morning had been a little hectic. Mom arrived early to pack my suitcase, and to put all of my cards and gifts into shopping bags. Then she began to empty a vase of its flowers.

  “Mom!” I exclaimed. “Can’t we keep my flowers? Can’t we take them home?”

  “All of them?” replied Mom. The room was overflowing.

  “Well, some of them,” I said. “Maybe we could give the rest to the nurses or to the other kids here.”

  “Good idea,” Mom had answered.

  So we’d left two bouquets of flowers at the nurses’ station. We had delivered four more bouquets to the kids I’d gotten to know the best (which wasn’t very well), and we took three home with us.

  While Mom was running around packing my suitcase and handing out flowers, Dad arrived to say good-bye to me. He knew that Mom would be there, and Mom knew that Dad was coming, so when they found themselves together in my room, they didn’t talk, but they didn’t argue, either.

  “From now on,” said Dad, “be sure to tell your mother or me when you’re feeling so awful. You know the signs to look for.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I guess I wasn’t very responsible.”

  Dad shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said.

  “Then whose was it?”

  Dad shrugged. “What difference does it make?”

  “None, I guess.”

  A little while later, Dad and I were hugging good-bye.

  “I promise that my next visit will be more fun,” I said.

  “I should hope so,” Dad answered, smiling. “This’ll be hard to top in terms of rotten vacations.”

  “There’s always the sewage treatment plant,” I said. “Maybe we could tour it the next time I come for a weekend.”

  “Okay,” said my father. “Then we’ll finish off the day with a ride on a garbage barge. We’ll try to pick a hot, sunny afternoon so the garbage will be particularly disgusting and smelly.”