Counting by 7s(26)

She doesn’t say that she’s going to drag me to her car by my hair if that’s what it takes.

But I get the picture.

And so in the end I have no choice but to go along.

I’m surprised that I have as much trouble as I do saying good-bye to Pattie Nguyen.

She puts her arms around me tight and I wish that she would stay that way.

But of course she can’t.

I don’t say anything, but I guess the tears running down my cheeks do the talking, because Pattie abruptly turns away and goes to the back of the salon. It is the hardest good-bye I’ve ever had.



Yesterday at this time, I didn’t even know her.





Chapter 23





Jamison Children’s Center is the county facility that provides emergency foster care.

Lenore Cole gives me a pamphlet.

I read it, but get the distinct feeling that the place is probably for kids who have parents who hit them or don’t feed them real food because they are too busy taking drugs or stealing something.

As we drive up to the building, I put my index and middle fingers on my carotid artery just behind my ear to take my pulse.

I know for a fact that my heart rate is in some kind of danger zone.



We go inside.

They are processing my paperwork.

When I enter, I see that the doors have locks on both sides. They click shut.

There are surveillance cameras in every room.

People are watching.

It is a big mistake for me to be here.

All of a sudden, I have trouble breathing. I can’t get air in. And I can’t get air out.

I take a seat on a lime-and-purple upholstered couch and struggle to get a grip on my lungs.

Someone’s left a copy of the morning edition of the Bakersfield News Gazette on the elephant-shaped metal coffee table.

A photograph takes up most of the space above the fold.

The headline reads:

FIERY CAR CRASH CLAIMS TWO LIVES

Third Person in a Coma

Below the caption I see my dad’s demolished pickup, in pieces and burned black, conjoined with a mangled medical truck.

And then everything in my field of vision disappears.



I hit my head on the elephant-shaped coffee table when I experienced syncope, or a transient loss of consciousness, more commonly known as passing out.

Yes, I fainted.

And when I did, the sharp edge of the pachyderm’s trunk sliced right into my glabella.

Blood suddenly is everywhere because blows to the head bleed profusely.

I’m in and out of consciousness, and the confusion feels good.

Suddenly there are all kinds of announcements being shouted on the P.A. system.

And then I can hear someone say I need stitches since it’s a deep cut and it is right between my eyebrows and it will likely scar.

I murmur:

“My glabella . . .”

But the staff doesn’t know that the glabella is the name of the space between your eyebrows.

I hear someone whisper:

“She’s asking for Bella!”

I shut my eyes again.

So many things in life are distressing.

The brow of the head is formed specifically to guard against these kinds of injuries.

It is bone, and like the bumper of a car, it’s designed to take a blow.

So this is a freak accident to faint and then collapse in such a way as to get sliced between the eyes by the surprisingly dangerous trunk of the elephant coffee table.

But I did.

And now there is blood.

My blood.

Hemoglobin is iron-containing protein that makes up 97 percent of every red blood cell’s content, when dry.

But when mixed with water, which is how it courses through the human body, it is only about thirty-five percent.

Hemoglobin is what binds the oxygen.

Now that Jimmy and Roberta Chance are gone, what binds me to this world?



They take me to Mercy Hospital because I am a twelve-year-old girl and they don’t want me to have facial disfigurement.

At least that’s what I hear someone whisper in the hallway.

The nurse at Jamison puts a bandage over the laceration and asks me to hold an icy compress on my wound, which I do.

And then Lenore Cole and I get back in her car and drive together to Mercy Hospital.

Twice she asks if I’m still bleeding, and I’m wondering if she’s worried about her upholstery.

It would look pretty messed up to be a social worker and have dried kid blood as a permanent stain in your vehicle.

They didn’t request an ambulance because it wasn’t that kind of injury, but I wouldn’t have minded riding in one.



At Mercy, I sit in the waiting room of the E.R. and it doesn’t take much to realize that this place doesn’t have double locks on the doors or surveillance cameras everywhere like at Jamison.

I get nine stitches.

The old me would have asked for 7, because that was my number.

But the doctor puts in nine.

I don’t say anything when he tells me.

It now looks like I have a caterpillar between my eyes.

Yet this is not the most important thing that happens after I collapse onto the now-established-as-dangerous elephant coffee table.

Because after I have a drink of water and, for the fourth time, view my medical chart, I ask to use the bathroom.