Poppy calmed down. She couldn't remember what a
gallbladder did but she was pretty sure she didn't need it.
Anything involving an organ with such a silly name couldn't be serious. Dr. Franklin was going on, talking about the pancreas and pancreatitis and palpable livers, and Poppy's mother was nodding as if she understood. Poppy didn't understand, but the panic was gone. It was as if a cover had been whisked neatly over the black pit, leaving no sign that it had ever been there.
"You can get the sonogram done at Children's Hospital across the street," Dr. Franklin was saying. "Come back here after it's finished."
Poppy's mother was nodding, calm, serious, and efficient. Like Phil. Or Cliff. Okay, we'll get this taken care of.
Poppy felt just slightly important. Nobody she knew had been to a hospital for tests.
Her mother ruffled her hair as they walked out of Dr.
Franklin's office. "Well, Poppet. What have you done to yourself now?"
Poppy smiled impishly. She was fully recovered from her earlier worry. "Maybe I'll have to have an operation and I'll have an interesting scar," she said, to amuse her mother.
"Let's hope not," her mother said, unamused.
The Suzanne G. Monteforte Chil dren's H ospital was a handsome gray building with sinuous curves and giant picture windows. Poppy looked thoughtfully into the gift shop as they passed. It was clearly a kid's gift shop, full of rainbow Slinkys and stuffed animals that a visiting adult could buy as a last-minute present.
A girl came out of the shop. She was a little older than Poppy, maybe seventeen or eighteen. She was pretty, with an expertly made-up face-and a cute bandanna which didn't quite conceal the fact that she ha d no ha ir. She looked happy, round-cheeked, with earrings dangling jauntily beneath the bandanna-but Poppy felt a stab of sympathy.
Sympathy ... and fear. That girl was really sick. Which was what hospitals were for, of course-for really sick people.
Suddenly Poppy wanted to get her own tests over with and get out of here.
The sonogram wasn't painful, but it was vaguely disturbing. A technician smeared some kind of jelly over Poppy's middle, then ran a cold scanner over it, shooting sound waves into her, taking pictures of her insides. Poppy found her mind returning to the pretty girl with no hair.
To distract herself, she thought about James. And f or som e reason what came to mind was the first time she'd seen James, the day he came to kindergarten. He'd been a pale, slight boy with big gray eyes and something subtly weird about him that made the bigger boys start picking on him immediately. On the playground they ganged up on him like hounds around a fox-until Poppy saw what was happening.
Even at five she'd had a great right hook. She'd burst into the group, slapping faces and kicking shins until the big boys went running. Then she'd turned to James.
"Wanna be friends?"
After a brief hesitation he'd nodded shyly. There had been something oddly sweet in his smile.
But Poppy had soon found that her new friend was strange in small ways. When the class lizard died, he'd picked up the corpse without revulsion and asked Poppy if she wanted to hold it. The teacher had been horrified.
He knew where to find dead animals, too-he'd shown her a vacant lot where several rabbit carcasses lay in the tall brown grass. He was matter-of-fact about it.
When he got older, the big kids stopped picking on him. He grew up to be as tall as any of them, and surprisingly strong and quick-and he developed a reputation for being tough and dangerous. When he got angry, something almost frightening shone in his gray eyes.
He never got angry with Poppy, though. They'd remained best friends all these years. When they'd reached junior high, he'd started having girlfriends all the girls at school wanted him but he never kept any of them long. And he never confided in them; to them he was a mysterious, secretive bad boy. Only Poppy saw the other side of him, the vulnerable, caring side.
"Okay," the technician said, bringing Poppy back to the present with a jerk. "You're done; let's wipe this jelly off you."
"So what did it show?" Poppy asked, glancing up at the monitor.
"Oh, your own doctor will tell you that. The radiologist will read the results and call them over to your doctor's office." The technician's voice was absolutely neutral-so neutral that Poppy looked at her sharply.
Back in Dr. Franklin's office, Poppy fidgeted while her mother paged through out-of-date magazines. When the nurse said
"Mrs. Hilgard," they both stood up.
"Uh-no," the n urse sa id, looking flustered. "Mrs. Hilgard, the doctor just wants to see you for a minut e-alone."
Poppy and her mot her l ooked at each other. Then, slowly, Poppy's mother put down her People magazine and followed the nurse.
Poppy stared after her.
Now, what on earth . . . Dr. Franklin had never done that before.
Poppy realized that her heart was beating hard. Not fast, just hard. Bang ... bang ... bang, in the middle of her chest, shaking her insides. Making her feel unreal and giddy.
Don't think about it. It's probably nothing. Read a magazine.
But her finge rs d idn't seem to work properly. When she finally got the magazine open, her eyes ran over the words without delivering them to her brain.
What are they talking about in there? What's going on? It's been so long....
It kept getting longer. As Poppy waited, she found herself vacillating between two modes of thought. 1) Nothing serious was wrong with her and her mother was going to come out and laugh at her for even imagining there was, and 2) Something awful was wrong with her and she was going to have to go through some dreadful treatment to get well. The covered pit and the open pit. When the pit was covered, it seemed laughable, and she felt embarrassed for having such melodramatic thoughts. But when it was open, she felt as if all her life before this had been a dream, and now she was hitting hard reality at last.