Crazy by Han Nolan

Author:Han Nolan [Nolan, Han]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Chapter Twenty-One

I SIT IN MY DAD'S BEDROOM and wait for Dr. Gomez to arrive. Dad's asleep, but his breathing doesn't sound good. I decide not to wake him until it's time to leave. I stare out the window and watch the shimmer and shadows of the river, and listen to the wind and the clicking of bare branches hitting against one another.

I hear sirens in the distance and I wonder what other disaster is happening in the city right now.

I keep listening. The sirens get closer, and closer.

CRAZY GLUE: They're for you, goob.

I jump to my feet and stare out the window. A few seconds later an ambulance and police car, both with lights flashing, pull up outside the house. I don't know what to do. We have no health insurance. We can't pay for this. We can't pay for a hospital stay. "Jeez!"

I hurry downstairs.

AUNT BEE: Just explain to everybody—false alarm.

CRAZY GLUE: Yeah, right. The city will love that.

Why had Dr. Gomez called them?

I open the door and see two men holding a stretcher between them aiming straight for the house. The front man asks me where to go. I try to tell them that we can't pay, but I can't get anything to come out of my mouth.

FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: You know your father needs a hospital.

I point toward the staircase.

The two men tromp up to my dad's bedroom. I wait in the hallway. I'm shivering even with a blanket wrapped around me. I don't know what I should do. The doorbell rings; I open the door again and it's Dr. Gomez. She grabs me right away and holds me tight. I want to collapse. She feels so good. It's been so long since I've been hugged. I didn't know how hungry I was for it, but I push away. I need to make her understand.

"We have no insurance. We can't pay. We can't pay." I say this over and over.

Dr. Gomez hugs me again. "It's going to be all right. You're all right, now."

It would be so nice to believe her, but now that she's here and my dad's coming down on a stretcher on his way to the hospital and out of my life, I don't see how anything will be all right, ever again. Is he going to die? I can't lose him; I just can't. And if he gets better, then what? Where will the doctors put him to heal his mind? Will it ever heal? And where will I go? Now that I've called Dr. Gomez, I have no control over anything anymore; yet all I keep saying is that we have no money. We can't pay.

The two men carrying my dad reach the bottom steps and Dr. Gomez lets go of me and opens the door for them. She tells them to take him to the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, and then she looks at me. "You'd better go, too. You feel quite feverish and you look exhausted."

I shake my head.

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