Paint Me True: Sample Chapters

Thirteen: Back at the Hospital

The emergency room throbbed with noise and activity. Sounds ricocheted off the cheap industrial tile floor and plain white walls. The paramedics wheeled the stretcher in through two sets of sliding glass doors, exchanged a quick series of rapidly fired words with a clipboard wielding woman in scrubs and then carried on into the fray. Doctors and nurses bustled back and forth, yanking on clean rubber gloves with their teeth. Somewhere in the background, an alarm pinged and voices began to shout. The place reeked of antiseptic cleaner.

The paramedics deposited my aunt on a cot, drew the curtain shut around it, and were gone. I paced in that little curtained space, wondering if I'd need to fill out insurance paperwork or answer health history questions or what. Aunt Nora looked ashen, as if all the blood had leeched out of her face, leaving only thin, papery skin behind. She looked much older than forty-five, and I was terrified. I had no idea what was wrong, only that it was something bad. I felt at a loss, even though I'd spent hundreds of hours in hospitals, looking after my terminally ill mother and sisters.

"Eliza," my aunt whispered, "please don't let them take x-rays."

I had no idea how to respond. I felt like I was drowning, like all the noise and bustle on the other side of the curtain were tangible, palpable, able to displace the air in the room until I blacked out.

Get a grip, I thought.

"Eliza?" My aunt's thready voice was plaintive.

"Just give me a sec," I told her. I stepped through the curtain and into the insanity beyond. I had to leap back to get out of the way of a nurse pushing a man in a wheelchair who moaned about chest pains. Another team of personnel in scrubs dashed past in the other direction, talking what sounded like a code of letters and numbers.

My cellphone was warm from my pocket. I pressed it to one ear and covered the other with my hand.

"Hello?" Colin's voice answered after the third ring.

"Hi. It's Eliza." I tried to keep my voice steady, but I knew I probably sounded hysterical.

"You sound like you're calling from a warzone."

"I'm in the emergency room."

"So you are calling from a warzone."

"Look, I am so sorry. You were probably asleep. I mean, I know you work nights, and it's totally inappropriate for me to call you for help while you're not at work, but I just... I just..."

"Breathe," he said. "Deep breath. It's all right. You can call me. What's happened?"

"My aunt's in such severe pain that she can't even stand up, but she doesn't want x-rays."

"What do they want to x-ray?"

"Well, nothing yet. I don't know. She's just afraid-"

"Okay, slow down. Back up. Where does she hurt?"

"Her stomach."

"Like her belly area?"

"Yeah."

"That's soft tissue. You don't use x-rays for that. She'll need an MRI-"

"Which she'll hate too."

"Riiiight, or they can do an ultrasound. Ultrasound might be quicker."

Ultrasound? "Really?" No one had ever used an ultrasound on my mother or sisters, that I'd seen. For no logical reason, this made it seem like a much more humane and civilized tool. I'd always associated it with pregnancy and new babies and all that happiness.

"Yeah, but it's up to the doctors there, you know. They'll need to do a full examination and you're probably in quite a long queue. Anyone given her a pain pill?"