Only Child(10)

A nurse came, and I had to move over to the side so she could take care of Mommy. I sat back down by the wall under the TV. Daddy scooched over and sat next to me and leaned his back against the wall. He put his arm around me, and we watched the nurse take care of Mommy.

Another nurse came out from the NO ENTRY door and brought a bag of stuff. She put a needle in Mommy’s arm, and that probably hurt, but Mommy didn’t even move. The needle was on a plastic string attached to a bag with water in it that the one nurse was holding up over her head. Then a man brought a bed on wheels, and he put the bed all the way down to the floor. The two nurses put Mommy on the bed, made the bed go back up, and then they started pushing it to the NO ENTRY door. I got up to go with Mommy on the bed, but one of the nurses put up her hand and said, “You have to hang back for now, sweetie.”

The door closed and Mommy disappeared. Daddy put his hand on my shoulder and said, “They have to take Mommy back there to help her. Make her feel better. She’s very upset right now and needs help. OK?”

“Why did Mommy get so mad at you, Daddy?” I asked.

“Oh, bud, she’s not mad at me. I…I need to tell you something, Zach. Let’s go outside for a bit and get some fresh air. I have to tell you some news, and it’s really bad. OK? Come with me.”





[ 7 ]


    Sky Tears


ANDY WAS DEAD. That was the news Daddy told me when we stood in front of the hospital. It was raining still. So much rain all day long. The raindrops reminded me of all the tears, and it was like the sky was crying together with Mommy inside the hospital, and all the other people I saw crying today.

“Your brother was killed in the shooting, Zach,” Daddy said, and his voice sounded very scratchy. We were standing together under the crying sky, and in my head the same words went round and round in a circle: Andy is dead. Killed in the shooting. Andy is dead. Killed in the shooting.

Now I knew why Mommy acted crazy when Daddy came in—because she knew Andy was dead, only I didn’t know. Now I knew, too, but I didn’t start acting crazy, and I didn’t cry and scream like Mommy. I just stood and waited, with the same words doing circles in my head, and it was like my whole body didn’t feel normal, it felt really heavy.

Then Daddy said we should go back to check on Mommy. We went back inside slow, and my heavy legs made it hard to walk. The people in the waiting room stared at us, and their faces looked like they were feeling very sorry for us, so they knew Andy was dead, too.

We went to the CHECK IN desk. “I would like to get an update on Melissa Taylor,” Daddy told one of the women behind the desk.

“Let me check for you,” the woman said, and went in the NO ENTRY door. All of a sudden Ricky’s mom was standing next to us.

“Jim?” she said to Daddy. She put her hand on Daddy’s arm, and Daddy took a really quick step back like her hands were hot on his arm or something. Ricky’s mom dropped her hand and stared at Daddy. “Jim, please. What about Ricky? Did you ask about Ricky?”

I remembered Ricky doesn’t have a dad, or he had a dad, but he moved away when Ricky was a baby. So his dad couldn’t wait at the church, just in case, and now Ricky’s mom didn’t know if Ricky was alive or dead or what.

“I’m sorry. I…I don’t know,” Daddy said, and he walked a couple more steps back and kept looking at the NO ENTRY door. Then the door opened and the woman from behind the desk held the door open and waved to us to come in. Daddy said to Ricky’s mom, “I’ll try to check when I’m inside, OK?” and we walked in.

We walked behind the woman down a long hallway and came to the big room that I remembered from when we came here with Andy, it has little rooms all around the side with no walls, only curtains in between. One little room had the curtain open and I saw a girl I knew from McKinley—she’s in fourth grade, I don’t know her name. She was sitting on a bed with wheels and her arm had a big white wrapper around it.

The woman brought us to a little room where Mommy was. She was lying on a bed with a white blanket over her, and her face was also white like the blanket. The bag with the water was hanging on a metal stand, and the plastic string was stuck on Mommy’s arm with a big Band-Aid. Mommy’s eyes were closed, and her head was turned away from us. She looked like she was a fake doll, not a real person, and I got a scared feeling. Daddy went over to Mommy’s bed and touched her face. Mommy didn’t move at all. She didn’t move her head, and she didn’t open her eyes.

There were two chairs next to the bed, and we sat down on them. The woman said the doctor was going to be with us soon, and she pulled a curtain in front of the door when she left. We waited, and I watched the water drops dripping from the bag into the string and then down into Mommy’s arm. They looked like raindrops or teardrops dripping down, and it was like the bag was giving Mommy all the teardrops back she cried out earlier. Now only the bag was crying.

Daddy’s phone started to ring in his pocket, but he didn’t take it out to answer it. Usually Daddy always answers his phone because it could be work. He let it ring until it stopped, and after a little while the ringing started again. Daddy stared at his hands and they were the only things moving on him. First his left hand pulled all the fingers on his right hand, and then the right hand pulled all the fingers on his left hand, and they kept taking turns. I started copying Daddy and pulled my fingers at the same time as him. I had to pay attention to do it at the same time, and that made me stop thinking about Mommy lying in the bed like a fake doll. Daddy was making a pattern, so I knew what came next, and that helped. I wanted to sit here with Daddy and pull fingers for a long time.