Storms 01 - Family Storms

around and have a conversation.
    Get out of what,
I wondered,
sorrow or pain?
I moaned, but because of my slight concussion, Dr. Decker said he didn’t want to give me anything too strong for pain. He said he would prescribe some Tylenol, and he was sure it would help a little.
    “Just hang in there,” he said, and flashed a smile as if it were on a spring in his face.
    After my leg was set, they moved me to a ward. It was nearly morning now. Through the window across from my bed, I could see the sunlight creeping up on the horizon as if it were afraid night would slap it back. Everyone else in the ward, six others who looked like mostly elderly women, seemed to be still asleep. To me, the one nurse in charge, Mrs. Stanton, appeared to be as old and as sickly as the other patients. Her face was so pale and her eyes so watery I thoughtone of them might have gotten up and put on a nurse’s uniform. She settled me in and told me to try to get some sleep.
    “Do you need anything?” she asked.
    What a question,
I thought.
Yes, I need something. I need my mother not to be dead. I need a home. I need to be in school and have food and clothes. I need to remember how to laugh.
I saw from the look on her face that if I had said anything like that, she might have been the one to laugh, so I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t said anything to anyone since that woman had told me my mother was dead and in the morgue. All I had done was moan and cry. Mrs. Stanton went off to check on another patient, and I closed my eyes.
    I slept on and off. The clatter of dishes and trays woke me when breakfast was served. I looked at it but turned away and didn’t eat or drink anything. The nurse who had replaced Mrs. Stanton shook me to tell me I should try to eat. “And you have to drink something. I don’t want you to get dehydrated,” she said, as if I worked for her. She stood there waiting to see me reach for the glass of juice and then handed it to me. I drank some, and she repeated that I should try to eat. “If you don’t nourish your body, it won’t heal,” she warned. She said it as if it wouldn’t be her fault or any doctor’s. Whatever had happened and would now happen was my fault. It sounded as if she meant it was my fault that I had been born.
    A different doctor stopped in to visit the patients in the ward. I heard the nurse complaining about me. He read the chart clipped to the bottom of the bed and then examined my bruises, checked my eyes, and listened to my heart and lungs through his stethoscope. His name tag read “Dr.Morton.” He looked older than Dr. Decker, but something told me he wasn’t. Later, I heard he was interning.
    “You’ve had quite a shock to your body,” he told me. He looked at my chart and added, “Sasha. You want to eat and drink so you get stronger, okay?”
    He was talking to me in a tone of voice he might use with someone only about five years old. I didn’t reply, and he turned to the nurse and said, “We might need the psychologist to stop by for this one.”
    “Is my mother really dead?” I asked when I saw that he was going to move off.
    He looked at the nurse.
    “Her mother was hit by the same car,” the nurse told him. “She expired at the scene.”
    “Oh. Well, what about…” He nodded at me.
    “There are no other relatives listed. I’m sure Social Ser-vices has been contacted. Homeless,” she whispered, but not low enough for me to miss.
    “Right. You hang in there, Sasha. We’re going to look after you.”
    He smiled at me, patted my hand, and moved on to the next patient. The nurse trailed along like an obedient puppy as he went from bed to bed.
    Look after me?
How were they going to do that? I wondered. How was anyone? Despite how terrible our lives had become, I wished Mama and I were back on the boardwalk selling her calligraphy and I was selling my lanyards. I wished we were back in the struggle. At least we were together then, and I had someone. Besides, she might have gotten better. Maybe she would have stopped drinking andfound a place to work again, and I would have been able to return to school, any school. I used to feel tears come into my eyes when I would see other girls my age in their school uniforms, laughing and talking as they walked to school. The furthest thing from their minds was wondering about where they would sleep and what they would eat. If only I could somehow turn back time and change everything.
    I closed my eyes and dreamed