Smiles to Go Read online

  He nodded, smiled, finally let go of my hand. “She’s in intensive care now. You’ll be able to see her.” He held out his arm. “But why don’t we go in here first.”

  He led us into another small room, this one empty. The seats had cushions. There was a stained-glass window in the back wall.

  “Sit. Please,” he said.

  We sat. He sat. When he sat he wasn’t much shorter than when he stood.

  “Tabby?” he said. “Short for”—his eyebrows went up—“Tabitha?”

  My mother’s breath caught on a snag. “Yes.”

  The doctor smiled. I wondered why he was smiling so much. A hearing aid was molded into one of his ears. It looked like someone had pressed bubblegum in there.

  “Well, she had quite a spill there,” he said.

  “Will she be OK?” my mother blurted.

  He looked at her, smiled. “We hope so. We believe so.”

  A pen top peeked out of his white coat pocket. It was a yellow smiley face.

  “She’s had some lacerations, here and there. We did some sutures, in her scalp, her knees. You’ll see some bruising. She may have had a concussion, so we’ll keep an eye on that. Mostly we’re concerned with her neck area.”

  My mother gasped. My father croaked, “What?”

  “Well, general trauma. There may have been some damage to the windpipe. Or”—big smile, friendly shrug—“there may not have been. We’ll be testing. Time will tell. Meanwhile, she was having a little trouble breathing—”

  A hiccuppy sound from my mother. “Breathing?”

  “A little?” said my father.

  “—so we’ve got her intubated now.”

  “What’s intubated?” I heard myself say.

  “We’ve inserted a tube into her trachea—that’s the windpipe—and a ventilator is breathing for her.”

  “Breathing for her?” my mother squeaked.

  The doctor reached over and touched the back of my mother’s hand with his fingertips. He looked around. He got up and came back with a thin black and gold book that said Prayers. The inside of the back cover was blank. He took out the smiley face pen and drew a picture. “This is the trachea…bronchial passages…lungs. The tube goes in here—”

  “Up her nose?” Me again.

  “Oh, sure,” he said, like no big deal.

  “Works best that way.”

  I was remembering one morning when I woke up with her sitting on my chest and saying, “I’m a walwus.” Carrot sticks stuck out of her nose. She tried to clamp her laugh, but it came out as a snort and the carrots speared me in the face.

  My father was asking a question: “…need a ventilator to breathe for her?”

  The doctor clipped the pen back in his pocket. He closed the book. “We do it all the time, Mr. Tuppence. In Tabby’s case, it’s to let things calm down in there. Give things a rest. Let the machine do the work.”

  He made it sound so natural, like the machine was Tabby II. I wanted to see this machine.

  My mother stood. “Can we see her now?”

  The rest of us stood. We looked down at the doctor. He smiled. “Of course. Just one more thing”—the room stopped breathing—“we’ve got her sedated. As I said, we want things to calm down. We don’t want her getting upset, trying to pull the tube out, you know? So we’ll keep her asleep for a while.”

  “How long is a while?” said my father.

  “That’ll be up to Tabby, how she comes along. Not a minute more than necessary.”

  My father’s hands flew out. Suddenly his voice was loud and clear. “A week? A year?” He trotted after my mother, who had already taken off. “Ten years?” He was almost shouting.

  When I got to the corridor I didn’t see my parents, but I did see the letters “ICU” on a glass door. Intensive care unit, I thought brilliantly. I pushed a button to open the door, and there I was. There were real walls here, but no fronts. Cubicles. In an arc fanning out from the nurses’ station. You could see every bed. No mob of white coats. No parents. They must have missed the sign.

  “Tabby Tuppence?” I said to the nurse behind the counter.

  She finished writing something, looked up. “You are?”

  “Will Tuppence.”

  She smiled. “Brother?”

  I nodded. This was getting so stupid it wasn’t worth wasting a word on.

  “Number three.” She nodded, toward number three, I assumed, but as I walked across the floor I couldn’t see a number three, or any other number, anywhere. I stopped. I thought, Jeez, can’t anybody put up number signs in this place? I took my best guess on which cubicle was number three. Sure enough, there was a little kid in the bed, and there was a tube up her nose. Or his nose. I couldn’t tell. The face was all swollen and blue and his/her head was covered with a bowl of bandages. Whatever, it wasn’t Tabby, which was a relief. But this was getting ridiculous. I didn’t have all day. I went back to the nurse.

  “I’m looking for Tabby Tuppence,” I said.

  “She’s supposed to be in number three.”

  The nurse looked confused, like I was talking rocket science or something. “I believe”—she looked at the clipboard she was carrying—“she is.”

  I pointed to the cubicle. “Is that number three?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Well, she’s not there.”

  More wide-eyed confusion. I had always thought hospitals were pretty competent places. “She’s not?”

  “No. That’s not her. I know my sister.” I said it slow: “Ta-bi-tha Tup-pence.”

  At that point the nurse headed for the cubicle and my parents finally showed up. “Mom,” I said, “they’re all messed up.” I threw my hands out. “They can’t even get numbers right around here.”

  The nurse’s voice came from the cubicle. “Sir…this is Tabitha Tuppence.”

  I’d had enough. I pointed at the nurse, shouted, “No, it’s not!”

  And suddenly my mother had me in her arms, squeezing me, and over her shoulder I saw my father standing at the bed, looking down, and I knew.

  It was dark when we walked out of the hospital, my father and me. My mother stayed behind. They said she could use a nearby room, but she said she would stay in number three.

  On the way home I wondered if Orca had gone on to win the tournament after I forfeited to him. The carnival was still, dark, deserted. Empty Ferris wheel seats dangled against the night.

  As we pulled into the driveway, the headlights caught Aunt Nancy’s bike sprawled in the grass and Mi-Su and BT sitting on the front step. Mi-Su came running, her face lopsided from crying. She hugged my father. “How is she?”

  “Sleeping,” he said.

  She peered into the car. “Where’s Mrs. Tuppence?”

  “Staying.”

  Mi-Su gave a shudder, and then she was hugging me. She squeezed as hard as my mother. Then BT hugging me. I can’t remember us ever hugging before. I’m not a huggy kind of guy. My father asked them to come in, but they said no thanks and left.

  Aunt Nancy was sitting on the sofa. Black Viper lay on its back in her lap. She looked up at my father. Her face was blotchy. She dabbed at her eyes with a Kleenex. “How is she?”

  My father was taking a long time to answer, so I said, “She’s fine.”

  I took Black Viper from her lap. I spun a wheel—smooth as ever. Shock pad tight. On top a little chipped paint, that was all. Almost good as new.

  Aunt Nancy gave me a piece of paper. “Found it under the door.” I unfolded it. It was in green crayon, all jumbo letters until he nearly ran out of space for his name:

  DEER TABBY

  GET WELL SOON I

  LOVE YOO

  KORBET

  My father tied Aunt Nancy’s bike into the trunk and drove her home. I went to bed. I didn’t even bother to take my shoes off. Did I sleep? Did I dream? I don’t know. I only know in the middle of the night as I lay there I was aware of a presence in the dormer, of something happening there. I got u
p. I stood at the foot of the stairs. I saw—I imagined—who knows?—fluttering lights beneath the dormer door. And I knew what it was. Time itself had gone into hyperdrive. All was accelerating. Protons were swarming in the dormer, swarming and flashing out of existence by the billions, lighting up the wedding gifts. And somehow I knew that if I walked up those stairs and opened the door and went in, I’d never come back down again.

  I went downstairs, got the skateboard, went outside. I dropped the skateboard to the ground, stepped on, pushed off, stopped. “No!” I said to the night. I shoved it with my foot. It wobbled across the lawn to the sidewalk. I picked it up, whirled it like a discus thrower, let go. It sailed into the house, just missing the front picture window, dropped into a bush. I could hear the wheels spinning.

  I walked the streets. My atomic watch glowed green in the dark. It told me the time. It told me the month, day and year. It didn’t tell me what was going to happen to my sister. I walked, walked. I could no longer see the whole board, only my own dark square.

  PD226

  The phone rang. I staggered from bed.

  “’Lo?”

  “You’re sleeping. I’m sorry.”

  Mi-Su.

  “’Time is it?”

  “Almost eleven. I didn’t really expect anyone to be home. Just thought I’d try.”

  I spied a note under my door. “Wait.”

  I picked up the note. It said:

  I wanted to let you sleep. I’ll be at the hospital.

  Dad

  I returned to the phone. “I went to bed late,” I told her. “I was out.”

  “Out?”

  “Walking.” Silence. “Hello?”

  “I’ll let you sleep.”

  “No. Wait.”

  More silence. Then: “What am I waiting for?”

  I tried to think. “I don’t know.”

  She gave a half-giggle. “Well, I was just calling to see if there was any news, that’s all. I’ll check later.”

  “I’m up now. I’m not going back to bed.”

  “You want me to come over? I have two muffins here.”

  “OK.”

  The muffins were cranberry. I don’t like cranberries, but it didn’t matter because I couldn’t taste the muffin anyway. She had made us herbal tea she found in the cupboard. This I could taste. It was like flowers.

  “So where did you walk last night?” she said.

  “Nowhere special. Just around.”

  “She’ll be OK.”

  “I know.”

  We picked at our muffins, a crumb at a time.

  “I hate cranberries,” I said.

  “Pick them out. Give them to me.”

  I picked out the cranberries, dropped them on her plate.

  “I hate this tea.”

  “It’s good for you.”

  We chewed. Sipped. Sat.

  She started to say something. “What time—”

  “It’s all BT’s fault,” I said.

  Her eyes came up, brows arching.

  “Really?”

  “He got her started on the skateboard. They’re always in the driveway.”

  “His fault.”

  “Not just that. His craziness, too. Doing crazy stuff. Stunts. She sees it. She wants to be like him.”

  “You think so?” She was grinning, I didn’t know why.

  “She thinks he’s great.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I think he’s going to end up pumping gas.”

  The grin grew. “I think you love him.”

  “That’s a weird thing to say.”

  “What are you doing?”

  The grin was gone. She was staring at the table. I looked. My hand was a fist. It was mashing the cranberry muffin into the plate.

  “Will—”

  “It’s my fault.”

  “No.” I was surprised how fast the “No” came, as if she had been waiting for me to say that.

  I nodded. “Oh, yeah. It is.”

  She lifted my fist from the mashed muffin, swept away the sticking crumbs with her napkin. “No. It is not your fault.”

  “She was making noise when I was playing chess with my dad. Bothering me”—I looked at her—“you know?”

  She nodded. Her eyes were shining.

  “So I told my dad I wasn’t going to the tournament if she went. Take your choice—her or me—I told him. So she…she didn’t go. They told her yesterday morning, ‘You’re not going.’ She went ballistic. Not because of the chess.”

  Mi-Su rasped, “Ice cream.”

  “Yeah. Exactly. Ice cream. She couldn’t care less about my chess. And the thing is…the thing is…”

  Her hand came over, rested on mine. “What’s the thing?”

  “…thing is…how she looked at me…she knew…”

  “Knew what?”

  “Taking Black Viper. Going down Dead Man’s Hill, like BT. She knew exactly what to do to get back at me.”

  Mi-Su wagged her head wearily. She pushed herself up from her chair and walked slowly upstairs. I followed. She stopped at the doorway to Tabby’s room. “I just wanted to see…,” she said. Her voice caught. “Oh…poor Ozzie. All alone.” Ozzie the octopus was flopped forlornly over Tabby’s pillow.

  When Mi-Su turned to me, her face was glary. “You’re so…It’s not about chess or ice cream or skateboards or BT or anything else. It’s about you. You and her. She loves you. That’s all it’s about. She loves you, you stupid…idiot…brother.”

  She went downstairs. I heard the front door open, then her calling: “And you love her!” The door closed.

  I went into her room. Sat on the bed, looking at Ozzie. If I could draw sadness, I’d draw that plush gray toy octopus. I petted its soccer ball–size head and left the room.

  As I left the house a little later, I nearly tripped over BT. He was sitting on the front step.

  “Why didn’t you come in?” I said. “The door was open.”

  He shrugged. He didn’t get up.

  “Mi-Su was here.”

  He nodded. “I saw her.”

  Out of habit, I glanced around for Black Viper, then remembered last night. Only the black tip was showing above the bush, as if it was drowning. “I’m going back to the hospital.”

  He nodded.

  I headed for the sidewalk.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I stopped, turned. “What about?”

  His face was down, his elbows on his knees. “I never should’ve gone down the Hill. It gave her the idea.” He was crying.

  I came back to him. “That’s bull.” I said. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I taught her to skateboard. She copied everything I did. I should have known she would try that.”

  It didn’t feel right, standing above my lifelong friend, looking down on the top of his head. “No, no. She copied you at a lot of good stuff. She thinks, like, you’re it, man. Don’t you know that? She thinks you can do no wrong.”

  He gave a sneering sob. “Yeah, that’s the problem.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. Before I could take it away his hand was squeezing mine.

  “BT, listen,” I said, “there’s nothing for you to feel bad about. You’ve been like another”—the word wanted to stay put but I shoved it out—“brother to her.”

  And thought: The brother I haven’t been.

  I extracted my hand. If I didn’t get out of there right then, I was going to lose it. I gave him a little arm punch. “She loves you. Gotta go.” I trotted off.

  Back in intensive care, seeing her, I couldn’t stop a cockeyed thought: mummy. With the bandage bowl over her head and all the tape across her face holding the tube tight to her nose. And what little I could see of her face was purple. Crazy as it sounds, about twenty-five percent of me still didn’t believe it was really her. It wouldn’t have surprised me one bit if the doctor had come in and said, “Sorry, folks, there’s been a mistake. This isn’t Tabitha.”

  Mor
e tape held needles in her arms. More tubes ran from the needles up to plastic bags hanging above her. The bags held liquid. One was clear as water. The other looked like flat ginger ale. Tubes up her nose, in her mouth.

  She looked so tiny in the bed, like they couldn’t find one to fit her. The ventilator was a high-tech–looking contraption with little lights and all. If somebody had told me it was the latest thing in home entertainment, I’d probably have believed it—until I heard the sound it makes. Kind of like breathing. Wheezing. But not human breathing. Not little five-year-old girl breathing. Machine breathing. Alien breathing.

  “What’s that?” I asked my mother and father. I was pointing to a sky-blue plastic clip on the end of her index finger. Reminded me of a clothespin. A light in the clip made her fingertip glow red, like ET.

  “It measures oxygen in the blood,” said my mother.

  “Pulse oximeter,” said Dad.

  My mother looked terrible, like she just got out of bed. “Doctor say anything?” I asked her.

  She took a deep breath. “About the same. Her vital signs are good.”

  “What’s that?” I said.

  Dad said, “Blood pressure. Pulse rate. Respiration”—he looked at the wheezing ventilator—“well—” We all looked at the ventilator. Respiration means breathing. The ventilator was breathing. My sister was not breathing. So the ventilator’s vital signs were good. Hurrah for the ventilator.

  The tiny doctor came in. Smiled. Shook my hand. Said, “Good morning, Will.” It’s afternoon, you moron, I thought but didn’t say. He put his stethoscope on Tabby’s chest. Why don’t you put it on the ventilator? He glanced at the blinking lights, the little green numbers. Felt the tubes. Said some medical jibby jabby to my parents. Said, “MRI good…X-ray good…blood work good…” If everything’s so good, what the hell’s she doing here?

  When the doctor left, my mother said, “Did you eat?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Mi-Su came over.”

  “I could use something.” She got up. “Why don’t you come with me?”

  We walked through a maze to a crowded cafeteria. My mother got an apple juice and a plain bagel. “Here,” she said, leading me outside. We wound up in a courtyard, a little square secret surrounded by the building. There were orange and yellow daffodils and a tree gushing dark pink blossoms. Pink petals covered the ground. There was a wooden bench with iron curlicue armrests. We sat.