(click here to go back to Part Six)

Strange voices to her left and right. Blinding light everywhere. A sensation of pressure on her chest.

“I need that CT scan now!” boomed a woman’s voice above all others. “And where the hell is neuro?”

That’s what they say when they’re looking at the brain. Is there something wrong with my brain?

“Meyerson, what’s next?” asked another woman, or a man with a high voice. She couldn’t tell.

Spine. Brain. Signs of damage. Those were the only things she plucked from the flood of technical jargon. Most of the words didn’t stick long enough to replay them in her head. Combined with her fear, the unfamiliarity tested the limits of her conscious recall.

Still vivid in her mind, however, was her first visit to the ER.

Just a few months after she had started her period, Trena was doubled over with abdominal cramps. Her mom rushed her to the hospital, where they waited in chairs for two hours. By the time they got her to a bed, the worst of the pain had subsided. With a brief exam, only the second one she’d had “down there,” doctors determined that an ovarian cyst had ruptured.

“You will have to visit the gynecologist more often than most girls, at least until these cysts stop,” a male doctor said. That part was embarrassing. She had told her mom she never wanted a man doctor for her female issues.

And he wasn’t handsome like the doctors on TV.

“What if they don’t?” her mother asked.

“Well, ma’am, sometimes we use the pill to help control cysts.”

“The pill? She’s only 13.”

“Gynecologically, she’s a woman, and it is a known effective treatment.”

Trena just sat there, her head down, letting her mom do all the talking. My God. The pill? Dad’s going to freak.

This time, her mom wasn’t in the room, and the answer wouldn’t be as simple as popping a pill. She wanted to ask where her parents were, but she couldn’t talk. Something down her throat guaranteed that wouldn’t happen. With no way to find out about her condition, she directed her attention at the people above her.

Her eyes finally adjusted enough to make out more than just silhouettes. One of the men had a big nose, and the two women were pretty. She couldn’t quite make out their hair color.

A voice she recognized broke her concentration.

“How is she?”

It was the man from the back of the ambulance.

——-

“Why ah you heeyo?” asked a little boy sitting next to Ronnie.

“My, uh, friend, got hurt,” Ronnie said.

“Is she hut weeyo bad?”

“She’s pretty messed up.”

“Messed up?”

“She’s hurt real bad.”

“Oh. I sahwee. My cousin got somethin’ in his eye.”

Hoping for someone to rescue him, Ronnie looked at the lady sitting next to the boy. Her head was buried in a book called He Only Rides at Night.

“What is your fwend’s name?”

“Trena.”

“Do you yike Twena?”

Ronnie took a deep breath and then parted his lips just enough to sigh it out, puffing his cheeks.

“Yeah, I like her. That’s why I’m here.”

“My mommy is heeyo.” He pointed to the woman reading the book. “Is your mommy heeyo?”

Susan walked up and sat next to Ronnie. “They still don’t know anything,” she said.

“Shit.”

“Shit?” the little boy said.

The woman looked up from her book. “Justin! Don’t say that!”

Thanks for all your help, lady.

Although he’d been there once before as a young boy, Ronnie was surprised at how calm the ER was. He expected to see doctors straddling unconscious gurney-ridden victims of some unspeakable accident or crime, administering rib-shattering chest compressions. Anybody wearing a white doctor’s coat would bark orders at anybody wearing nurses’ scrubs.

Instead, nobody was kicking, screaming, or bleeding, and they didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He wondered what Trena’s case was like. He hoped they were rushing around at least a little bit.

“Trena must have been the most exciting thing to happen to this place all night,” Susan said.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Ronnie said. “I need to get up and walk around some.”

He always had been restless. Any time his brother visited, Susan loaded them up with movie rentals. Ronnie usually made it through only half of the first movie before he got bored and wandered off to download some mp3’s or catch up on his friends’ MySpace blogs.

He walked over to the vending machine, where a boy wearing a gauze patch over his left eye contemplated his selection. “Go with the Zagnut,” Ronnie said.

“What’s a Zagnut?”

“My uncle Garvin gave me one when I was your age. Damn good candy bar. Oh, sorry.”

“That’s okay. My dad damns things all the time.”

“So, how’d you get something in your eye?”

“How did you know?” The boy put three coins in the machine.

“Little birdie told me. I used to get stuff in mine a lot when I was a kid. Came to the hospital for it once.”

The boy punched in “E3″ for the Zagnut. “What are they gonna do?” he asked.

“Let me get that for you.” Ronnie leaned over and reached into the slot to grab the candy bar. “Well, for me, they laid me down on a flat metal table and then put this long paper sheet over me, with a hole where my eye was. Then they squirted a bunch of stuff in my eye so it wouldn’t hurt. Here.”

Before thinking, he tossed the Zagnut to the boy with one good eye.

He deftly caught it and ripped open the package. “Did it? Hurt, I mean?”

“Not while they were working on it. The doctor dug around in there until he found whatever it was, kind of over on the side of my eyeball. It was sore after that.”

“I’m scared.”

“Don’t be. You’ll be fine.”

“Do you get stuff in your eyes now?”

“Not much.”

Susan walked up. “The doctors are talking to Trena’s parents.”

“Can we listen?”

“Better let them finish first.”

“How do they look?”

“Her mom’s crying.”

(Continue to Part Eight)