Storms 01 - Family Storms

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.”
    A big girl? How does a big girl react to the news of her mother’s death?
I wanted to ask.
Doesn’t she cry?
    The nurse looked up when Dr. Decker came in quickly. “What’s happening?” she asked him, sounding a little annoyed.
    “Milan isn’t coming. Once he heard she’s uninsured, he suddenly had another emergency.”
    “And?”
    “I’ll set the leg,” he told her. “We’ve got to move her along. There’s quite a backup out there.”
    “Tell me about it,” the nurse said. “We should have a traffic cop.”
    “Okay, let’s get to her.” He finally looked at me. “We’re going to get you on the way to getting better,” he said.
    He tried to explain everything he was doing every step of the way, but I had long since lost interest in myself and was only vaguely aware of the activity around and on me.
    “This kid’s practically in shock,” the nurse said. “Besides the injuries, she just found out her mother died.”
    “The faster I get this done, the faster she’ll get out of it,” he said, obviously not wanting to stand