In the House with Mouse! by Deborah Gregory

Author:Deborah Gregory [Gregory, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497677258
Publisher: Premier Digital Publishing
Published: 2011-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter

6

It seems like we’ve been waiting for a thousand years in the emergency room at St. Luke’s Hospital for someone to come and tell us what’s wrong with Daddy. The ambulance workers put him on a stretcher, and he seemed delirious the whole way over, sweating and mumbling.

We’d never ridden in the back of an ambulance before—and if we never do again, it will be too soon. I couldn’t help crying, and neither could Angie. We weren’t worried about scaring Daddy, because he didn’t even seem to know we were there with him. He just kept mumbling strange things, and calling out to that strange woman—“Mattie, is that you? I won’t leave you.”

“We’d better call Ma later,” Angie says, as if she’s thinking out loud.

“Suit yourself,” I mumble back. “I wonder if she knows who Mattie is… .”

“Probably,” Angie says, shrugging her shoulders.

By now, I have a pretty good idea’ of who Mattie must be—some woman Daddy knows from his past. Angie is clutching my hand as we wait in the emergency room, which is scary in itself. As a matter of fact, we feel like we’re in a bad version of Fright of the Living Dead.

I mean, you have to see these people in the emergency room to believe it! The man in the chair next to us, for example, is wearing a bloody ace bandage around his head, like it’s an accessory or something. He keeps jumping up out of his chair and prancing back and forth, as if he’s giving a fashion show.

The lady sitting across from us has eyebrows so thick, they look like a unibrow across her forehead. But that’s not the worst part—she keeps belching so loud that no one will sit next to her—not even her husband! Yes, ma’am, he is sitting a few seats away with a newspaper covering his face—I guess because he’s embarrassed, or else he’s very interested in the articles he’s reading.

He can’t be more embarrassed than we are, because Angie and I won’t even look up—just in case we accidentally meet the glances of the Unibrow Belcher or Mr. Bloody Ace Bandage.

See, it’s hard to be inconspicuous when you’re twins—everyone thinks they can just talk to you out of the blue. People always ask the same question, too—as if their eyes are on vacation. “Are you two identical twins?” Usually we don’t mind, but right now, I guess I’m not too happy about being a twin—or sitting here in this awful emergency room.

As if hearing me thinking to myself, the Unibrow lady lets out a loud belch. I act like I don’t hear a thing. Just another day sitting in a crazy emergency room. Yes, ma’am. I just keep staring at my sneakers, like I’m gonna discover gold any second now.

“Some people should stop makin’ so much noise,” says an older woman in a blue house-dress with a purple sweater over it, with a big ol’ cast on her left arm.

“I think we should call Galleria and Chanel, and tell them what’s going on,” Angie suggests calmly

“You call them,” I respond.

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