Emergency Room by Caroline B. Cooney

Author:Caroline B. Cooney [Cooney, Caroline B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 978-1-4532-6418-8
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-07-13T01:05:00+00:00

The Waiting Room 7:30 p.m.

THE ADMITTING NURSE LOOKED at Roo without any expression whatsoever. “Possible fever?” Barbie repeated. She was not sarcastic. She was not anything. She was just a nurse who then took the twins’ temperatures. They had no temperatures. “It’ll be a long wait tonight,” she said to the mother. “Do you have a private doctor you can call?”

Roo shook her head.

Barbie shrugged. She filled out separate sheets for Cal and for Val. The top sheet would go to the Pediatric ER so the doctors there could decide when to see the babies. The bottom sheet would go to Insurance. Barbie had made her own decision about the importance of these illnesses: Of the three boxes (Immediate, Urgent, Nonurgent), both Cal and Val were checked Nonurgent.

Roo read the handwriting upside down. “Mother claims fever.”

So the nurse knew perfectly well that there was no fever. Roo turned quickly away, unable to meet the nurse’s eyes. Luckily a pale and sweating woman with a sliced-open palm was right there, dropping into the patient’s chair with a thud of need. The nurse now had better things to do than consider Roo.

Nonurgent patients, Roo knew from experience, might truly wait hours. Your runny nose did not ever come ahead of your gunshot wound. Since she hadn’t come in order to be seen anyhow, Roo was willing to wait hours. Strangers found the twins adorable and the Waiting Room held at least four middle-aged women who could be coaxed to hold a twin.

Just to be out of that terrible apartment gave Roo hope that she could endure. That somehow she would get through the summer and the twins would get easier and life would not be so very terrible.

Of course it was only May. Summer had yet to begin.

When Roo was pregnant and refused to say who the father was, her own parents had said, “Do you understand that if you have this baby, it will be for eighteen years? Do you understand that? You aren’t even eighteen yet yourself!”

Well, she had had two of them, and no, she had not dreamed how hard it would be for eighteen days, never mind eighteen years.

Well, forget that.

Roo set to work on two black women whose mama had had a heart attack and who were waiting to talk to the doctor. They were happy to chat. They watched as much TV as Roo did and the three women traded opinions of talk-show hosts.

Val got whiny. She was always the first to get whiny. Roo said to her new friends, “I’m so tired of holding her. I mean, there are two of them. I just get so tired.”

“Would you let me hold her?” asked one, right on cue. “I love babies.”

Yes! thought Roo, handing Val over.

Immediately Cal began screaming. Jealousy definitely began with birth.

The second woman looked knowingly at Roo, and Roo knew that they knew what was going on. Perhaps they had been there themselves, or seen it before. But they knew, and willingly they bailed her out for a while, cuddling the twins.

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