Only Child(8)

Last time we came to the hospital, when Andy fell off his bike, there was a valet, and that means you can get out of your car with it still on and you leave the keys in it, and the valet man parks it for you. And when you come back, you have to give him the ticket, and he goes and gets your car from where he parked it. This time there was no valet and like a thousand cars in front of us. Mommy started crying again and did drums with her fingers on the steering wheel, and she said, “What do we do now? What do we do now?”

Mommy’s phone started ringing, loud in the car. I knew it was Daddy because in Mommy’s new GMC Acadia in the front where the radio is you can see who is calling and press on the Accept button and hear the voice in the whole car and that’s cool. We didn’t have that in our old car.

“Are you there?” Daddy’s voice said into the car.

“I can’t even get close to the hospital,” Mommy said. “I don’t know what do to. There are cars everywhere. It’s going to take me forever to get to the garage, if there are even any spots left. Crap, Jim, I can’t take this, I need to get in there!”

“OK, babe, forget finding a spot in the garage. I’m sure it’s madness over there. Dammit, I should have come with you. I just thought…,” and then it was quiet in the car, and Mommy and Daddy didn’t say anything. “Dump the car somewhere, Melissa,” Daddy’s voice said in the car. “It doesn’t matter. Dump the car and walk.”

I think a lot of people were doing that, dumping their cars, because when I looked out the window, I saw cars parked everywhere, even on the bike paths and sidewalks. That’s against the law and your car will be towed with a tow truck.

Mommy drove up on the sidewalk and stopped the car. “Let’s go,” she said, and opened my door. I saw that the back of our car was kind of sticking out into the street and the cars behind us started honking, even though I thought they could definitely still get past. “Oh, shut up,” Mommy yelled. Bad-word list getting longer.

“Mommy, won’t a tow truck take our car?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter. Let’s please walk quickly.”

I was walking very fast because Mommy was pulling so hard on my hand. The walking made some pee come out. I couldn’t help it, it just came out. Only a little at first and then all of it. It felt good, and it made my legs feel warm. I thought it probably didn’t matter that the pee got in my pants if it didn’t matter that a tow truck was going to take our car. Today was a day with different rules or no rules. We were getting soaking wet from the rain again, so most of the pee was probably coming off anyway.

We walked on the actual road, in between the stopped cars. All the honking hurt my ears. Then we walked through the slidey glass doors that said ER on them. Now we could find Andy and see what happened to him and if he needed stitches again like last time or what.

Inside was like outside except with people instead of cars. People were everywhere inside the waiting room, in front of a desk that had a sign that said CHECK IN. Everyone was talking at the same time to the two women behind the desk. A policeman was talking to a group of people across the room, and Mommy moved closer to him to hear what he was saying: “We can’t let anyone back there yet. We are working on a list of patients. There are a lot of wounded people, and taking care of them has to be the top priority now.” Some people tried to say something to the policeman, and he lifted up his hands like he was blocking their words.

“As soon as things calm down a bit, we will start informing the relatives of the wounded we could identify. And we will go from there. I urge you to be patient. Look, I know it’s hard, but let’s try and let the doctors and staff do their jobs here.”

All around the waiting room, people started to sit down. When there were no more empty seats left, people sat down on the floor by the walls. We walked over to the wall that had a big TV. I saw Ricky’s mom sitting on the floor under the TV. Ricky is in fifth grade, like Andy, and they live close to our house, so Ricky is on the same bus as us. Andy and Ricky used to be friends and play outside a lot, but then they had a fight in the summer and didn’t use their words but their fists, and later Daddy took Andy to Ricky’s house to say sorry.

Ricky’s mom looked up and saw us and looked back down in her lap really fast. Maybe she was still mad about the fight. Mommy sat down next to Ricky’s mom and said, “Hi, Nancy.”

Ricky’s mom looked at Mommy and said, “Oh, hi, Melissa,” like she didn’t see us before Mommy sat down. I knew she did, though. Then she looked down in her lap again, and then no one said anything.

I sat down next to Mommy and tried to see the TV, but it was right over our heads, so I had to turn my head too far around, and I still only saw some of the picture. The sound from the TV was off, but I could see it had the news on, and the picture showed McKinley with all the fire trucks and police cars and ambulances in front. There were words running in a line underneath the news pictures, but I couldn’t read them from where I was sitting with my head turned too far and the words were running across the TV too fast. My neck started to hurt, so I stopped looking at the TV.

We sat there on the floor for a long time, so long that my clothes weren’t even wet anymore from the rain, they were starting to dry off. My stomach did a growl. Lunch was a long time ago and I didn’t even eat my sandwich, only the apple. Mommy gave me two dollars so I could get something from the vending machine over by the bathrooms. I could pick whatever I wanted, she said, so I put in the dollars and pressed the button for Cheetos. That’s junk food, and most of the time it’s a no to junk food, but today was a no-rules day, remember?