The Name She Gave Me by Betty Culley

Author:Betty Culley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

Spell

The heavy hospital door

clicks open

and wakes me up.

Someone turned off the lights

in the room,

but the green numbers

next to the red heart

on the monitor

read 68 72 64 67.

Mrs. Tibbetts is sitting in the chair

next to me,

wide awake,

her feet up on my bed.

She watches the monitor, too.

Laila RN pulls the curtain,

and Dad is there

in his garden jeans

holding a garlic bag.

When Dad’s in a hospital,

he looks like a person

who time traveled there

from the past.

Maybe because when he was

growing up,

he never went to a hospital.

Instead, when he was sick

the doctor came to the apartment

and gave him a shot

with a long needle.

Dad had diseases

people get vaccines for now—

measles, mumps, and chicken pox,

and even an old-fashioned one

called scarlet fever.

He told me stories

about what it was like.

They kept me in a dark room

until my fever broke.

They tied mittens on my hands

so I couldn’t scratch.

Laila takes the blood pressure cuff

off my arm,

and disconnects the monitor.

They said your little spell

is over, and your heart is fine,

Dad says to me.

Nothing to worry about.

I don’t answer

because I’m thinking

about what Dad just said.

If it’s true,

who put the spell

on me?

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