Do Not Become Alarmed(20)

Then he said, in English, “I call the doctor for your brother.”

“Can we call our parents?” Penny asked.

“After the doctor. It is important.”

“My parents will be worried.”

“Of course. So we take care of your brother.”

“We’re Americans,” Penny said.

The man smiled his handsome smile. “Yes, I know this.”

The woman was slicing papaya with her knife: nick, nick, nick, against the wooden cutting board.

“When will the doctor come?” Penny asked.

“Soon,” the man said.

The woman set out a platter on the table: sliced papaya, mango, and banana, with white rectangles of cheese, like a fruit plate in a hotel.

“Please, eat,” the man said.

“We have to wash our hands,” Penny said.

He gestured to the sink.

Penny helped Sebastian wash his. Then she watched as he took fruit and cheese. Cheese was okay. Fruit was good if his blood sugar was low. But he’d already had the Coke. They needed to get back to his pump. The mango was soft and ripe and sweet. June came upstairs, her swimsuit straps twisted. Penny asked if she’d washed her hands.

“Of course,” June said, indignant, reaching for a piece of papaya, and sitting beside Marcus in the same kitchen chair. He moved over for her.

Only Isabel refused to eat, hugging herself in her swimsuit.

An older man came into the room. He was tall, with white hair and bushy eyebrows, in a button-down shirt.

“Hola, Papi,” the man with the white horse said. Penny could tell he was trying to act casual.

The old man watched in silence as they ate, then shook his head and went upstairs to the third floor.

By the time the doctor came, Sebastian was like a rag doll, slumped on one of the low red couches in the big living room with all the windows. The doctor was a woman, and she seemed nervous. She had a bony face and her hair in a bun at the back of her neck. Penny answered her questions about the lost insulin pump.

“This thing, I don’t have,” the doctor said.

But she had a finger-stick monitor, and she helped Sebastian do a test. Then she read some instructions off her phone and asked Penny how much her brother weighed.

“Forty-five pounds?” Penny said.

“Forty-seven,” Sebastian mumbled, without moving, still collapsed on the couch.

The doctor entered some numbers on the calculator on her phone. Then she peered at the finger-stick monitor.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Penny asked.

“I am not endocrinólogo,” the doctor said. She filled a needle from a glass vial and tapped it, then gave Sebastian an injection. Penny kept her arm around her brother, but he didn’t flinch with the pain.

The doctor took out Sebastian’s port so it wouldn’t get infected.

“But aren’t we going back to our parents?” Penny asked. “They have the pump.”

“This is more safe,” the doctor said. She told Penny she was a good sister, very brave, and she produced a green lollipop from her bag.

Penny wondered if this counted as taking candy from a stranger. Was it okay if the stranger was a doctor? If you were trusting her to put needles in your brother’s arm? She pulled off the clear wrapper and stuck the lollipop in her mouth. It tasted sugary and artificial, just like it was supposed to. “Can I call my parents from your phone?” she asked.

The doctor shook her head. “I am sorry.”

“We’re supposed to ask a woman for help, and you’re a woman. And a doctor.”

“I—can’t.”

The doctor’s phone was still on the couch and Penny put her hand on it. The doctor caught her wrist and took the phone away, but seemed embarrassed. She looked anxious as she put the phone in her bag. Then she looked toward the kitchen.

A TV was on, the volume low with a steady stream of Spanish. A hush had fallen on the house as the adults gathered around. The Jeep woman watched with her arms crossed, and the white-haired man stood beside her. Penny moved toward the TV.

There was a shot of the ship tied up at the pier, huge and white. A reporter with big hair and heavy makeup spoke to the camera in Spanish. Then Penny was startled to see her frantic mother, her short blond hair damp and matted, her eyes red, begging anyone who had seen the children to call the police. Penny almost couldn’t follow what she was saying, it was so disorienting to see her mother on the screen. A Spanish voice came in to translate after the first few words, and she could barely hear her mother’s voice beneath the translation. Then Nora was talking on the screen, but she looked like she’d been hypnotized, like she was in a trance.

“That’s my mom!” Junie said.

There were photos, all taken this week: Penny and Sebastian grinning with ice cream cones from the buffet. June and Marcus together in a deck chair. Isabel and Hector with their arms around each other on the tennis court. There was a video of the clearing in the woods where they had stumbled on the Jeep, except now the clearing was surrounded by police tape. A male reporter was talking over the image.

“What did he say?” Penny whispered to Isabel.

Isabel shook her head.

“Did it say they were coming to get us?” Penny asked.

Isabel shook her head again.

The white-haired man snapped off the TV. Penny could see that his breathing had changed beneath his soft shirt: He was angry and his eyebrows were terrifying. He glared at his son, and at the woman from the Jeep.