Movieland

Chapter 7

"Stop rubbing it," Mom said.

"I'm not rubbing it. I'm feeling for the break." I sat on the thin paper sheet of a hospital bed. The air smelled like disinfectant and hand sanitizer.

Mom had the option of a chair in the corner but paced instead. She mumbled to herself and then asked, "How are you going to write?"

"School's over. I have nothing to write." I resumed the light tickle along my wrist, where most of the pain rested in a pulsing throb. My forearm hurt too, was maybe bruised, but not broken.

The room had a chart showing facial expressions for pain. Zero was green with a smile and no pain, five was orange with a slight frown and between distressing and intense, and ten was a dark red crying face marked unspeakable. Unspeakable sounded awful. My pain was at a solid two: discomfort.

"Please stop. It's making my toes curl. How that must feel, like nails on a chalkboard."

I'd been healthy my entire life. I suffered a nasty jammed thumb during little league baseball. I had chicken pox. I occasionally sneezed. Otherwise, I was the spitting image of perfect health. Mom took few things in life for granted. This was one of them.

I rubbed my elbow instead, over the mole that felt like a bug bite. I couldn't remember it itching any time before.

"How much gauze do you think they go through in a week?" she asked, clicking her fingernails against a large jar of cotton balls.

"I don't think you're supposed to touch stuff." I ran through the benefits of wearing a cast: signatures, attention, attention from Mandy, attention from Carolina, more attention from Carolina. A temporary reprieve from dish duty.

The door swung open and a man shuffled in. He was more mad scientist than medical professional. He had ashy Einsteinian hair, blue marbled eyes, and razor thin spectacles perched on the tip of a sliver of nose. He donned a faded lab coat in the shade of an old photograph.

"Max, Max, Maxine is it? It's Maxine? My cat is named Max so I'm going to call you Max. Is that okay?"

Mom squinted like a confused toddler. "Everyone calls me Max," I said.

"Mad Max! That's what I call him." The doctor jerked in herky motions as he worked at the computer. His hands remained steady. He swiveled around. "He whips around the house like a cartoon. I should've named him Tom." He sniggered and spun back around.

"Okay, let's see what we have," he said, putting on rubber gloves. He reached for my arm.

Mom flinched. "Mom," he and I both said.

We both laughed. She did not.

"Mom," he said, extending a gloved hand. "I'm Dr. Brown. Don't I know you? I know you. I've seen you before. I know that. I might not know you, per se, but having seen you before, that's a thing I'm certain of. Either way, Mom, your daughter, and her health, like all our patients, is our top priority. Top notch is a level of care we reserve for everyone. Normal elevators in this hospital only go to the 10th floor. However, I promise to take him on a glass elevator to a world of support beyond even our lofty expectations."

"Or to the 11th floor," I joked. Dr. Brown smirked.

Mom blinked like Morse code when she thought hard. Deciphering her message was easy: she was bamboozled. She shook his hand. "How much gauze does your hospital use on an annual basis?"

He disposed of the old glove and slowly put on a new one, his eyes jittering in their sockets. "On average, 365,000 packages of gauze. Fun fact: You would need roughly 30 billion stacked packages to get to the moon. Okay, then, Max. First broken bone?" His jaw jutted out and shifted from side to side like a typewriter.