I found a wheelchair by the entrance and waited until the receptionist was busy on the phone before wheeling myself into a corner of the waiting room. A TV was playing Dallas, and it looked like a slow night. A teenage boy was staring down at his right hand, which was wrapped in gauze, and a lady who looked like his mom sat next to him, reading Good Housekeeping. In the next row of chairs, an old man in a short-sleeved button-down shirt and a battered brown hat was breathing heavily. Occasionally he’d suck in his breath and clutch his belly, gasping, “God-DAMN, don’t that hurt!” His wife, bundled up in a cardigan and shivering in the air-conditioning, kept repeating, “Monty, I’m sure it’s just heartburn.” On the other side of the room, a young mother and father sat with a little girl. “Why did you think putting Barbie’s shoe in your nose was a good idea?” I heard the father ask.
I nibbled a Donette, hoping for some excitement. The night before, there’d been a car crash, and I’d seen gurneys speeding through the room, ambulance technicians running alongside them, shouting codes, calling for units of blood, just like I’d seen on TV, except one of the ambulance guys was old and fat and everything was over in ten seconds.
Finally, the doors hissed open, and a boy about my age came in, with a woman in a skirt and a blue blazer trailing behind him. The boy was tall, with skin a few shades darker than mine and thick, curly hair that hung down almost to his collar and looked like it needed a trim. His face was pinched with pain, and he had his right arm folded against his chest, with his left arm holding it there. He and the woman went to the desk, and I overheard her say “Eight years old” to the receptionist before she said “Good luck” to the boy and then walked out the door. The receptionist pointed to an empty row of chairs and said, “Take a seat.”
I looked at the boy. He had skinny legs and a dimple in his chin, full lips, and eyes that tilted up at the corners.
I wheeled my chair up beside him. “Hey,” I said.
For a minute, he didn’t answer. His eyes were wide and shocked, and he had bitten his lower lip so hard that I could see dots of blood. One of his legs was bouncing up and down, like he was nervous or he had to pee. Finally, he looked at me from the corner of his eyes.
“What?”
“What happened?”
“Hurt my arm,” he muttered, and glanced down like he was checking to make sure the arm was still there. He had the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen on a boy, thick and curled up at the tips.
“How?”
He paused, staring unhappily into his lap.
“I fell,” he finally said.
“Fell where?”
“Off a balcony.”
“You fell off a balcony?” I winced, imagining it. “How many floors?”
“Just one,” he said. He was talking so quietly that it was hard to hear him. “I was balancing on the railing.”
“Why?”
“Circus tricks.” He got to his feet, sucking in his breath as his arm jiggled, and crossed the room to talk to the receptionist. He asked her something. She shook her head. He backed away from the desk, looking around the room before choosing the seat farthest away from me and sitting there, slumped, with his head drooping down and his foot bouncing.
I gave a mental shrug and returned my attention to the Ewing family, hoping for something that would make a better story than a kid with a broken arm who didn’t even want to talk to me. A minute later, the receptionist called across the room. “Andrew?”
The boy raised his head.
“Can you think of any other place your mom might be? We haven’t been able to reach her at the hotel.”
Andrew shook his head, and went back to staring at the floor while I stared at him. It was hard for me to believe that a kid my age could be in a hospital all alone.
I wheeled across the room to where he was sitting. Andrew eyed me tiredly, but he didn’t tell me to leave. Instead, he said, “How come you’re here?”
“I have a congenital heart deformity, and I had a special tube put in so the blood goes where it’s supposed to.”
“Why are you in a wheelchair? Can’t you walk?” he asked.
“Well, I can,” I admitted, lowering my voice. “But I get bored, and if I use a wheelchair people just think I’m supposed to be here. Did you come here in an ambulance?” I hoped he had, and that he’d tell me about it. The only time I’d ridden in one I’d been six, and I couldn’t really remember my trip. But Andrew shook his head and didn’t say anything else. I tried to figure out what else to ask him, some question he wouldn’t be able to answer with a nod or a “no.”