By Darren Kaminsky
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Darren Kaminsky's novel, Sugar Spun Sisters, appears in serialized form every Monday right here on Me Three. The story follows the lives of five twenty-somethings living in Washington D.C. As far as the editors are currently aware, none of these characters work in politics.
Click here for a Chapter Index.
Chapter Ten
June
16
p.m.
"You carried her in?" the too-young doctor, an Indian woman with a slight Virginia drawl and mussed hair repeated for the second time, almost to herself. She didn't even look at me while she said it.
"What do you mean,” the doctor continued, “'You carried her in?' She could have a spinal injury. I can’t believe you did that.”
Coughing
sounds came from the waiting room purgatory just around the corner. Behind
me, other protesters staggered in, coughing, limping, or holding their
arms or legs. A few were bleeding from the nose or had facial cuts. One
or two were retching. No one looked as hurt as Tiny.
"Why not call an ambulance?...Or the police even…," the
doctor said.
I only half-listened while I scanned the knot of protesters for anyone familiar, for Jean or Nell. "Oh, no, it was the police who did this," I said, not looking at her. "We couldn't call them and I thought...I thought that her head might be...I thought she might be dying: I panicked."
“OK,” the doctor said, “Lets do this right, tell me exactly what happened?”
So
I recounted the story word for word. The doctor wasn’t interested
in the police brutality or that we could be some sort of fugitives, just,
as it should be, in Tiny’s injuries.
After I finished, the doctor looked down and said " Tiny, we need
to know how old you are," as she started to examine Tiny. "We
need to know if you can consent to your treatment."
She was on a stretcher, gripping my hand with her good left hand. The doctor was on every side of her...checking her pulse, looking down her throat, examining the welt on her scalp.
Tiny was silent, her face expressionless. I looked down at her, "How old are you? Do you have any ID?" I asked.
She looked up at me and smiled. Her amber eyes glowed warmly. The pupils were two entirely different sizes; one was the circumference of a BB, the other of a dime. In the dime eye, her iris was just a tiny amber ring like the corona of the sun around the black disk of moon during an eclipse.
"Do you think I'm pretty?" Tiny asked.
Above me, the doctor told the nurse to "get her into x-ray STAT” and to "prepare for possible head trauma." The doctor examined Tiny’s tiny fingers and seemed relieved. The arm, with its unreal ghastly protrusion, remained untouched. The doctor signaled to a team of people who immediately surrounded Tiny, slid a board under her, and put a collar around her neck. .
The nurse reached into Tiny's baggy army surplus pants and pulled out a wallet. She thumbed through it and pulled out a card.
"This girl is 16," she said. "We can make sure she's stable, but we can't operate until we have permission from a parent."
16? Kerran was dead, the deadest man in deadonia. I was going to tell Brenna and she was going to do what she'd always threatened to do: castrate him. And I was going to hold him down while she did it. (I'd just turn my head so I wouldn't have to look). No, I told myself, Tiny followed him upstairs. She threw herself at him, right? That's not Kerran's fault. Maybe I would have done the same?
The nurse tapped me on the shoulder. I jumped, then turned right around while still holding Tiny's hand. The nurse handed me Tiny's bag and wallet. "We're taking her to be x-rayed. Find some way to get in touch with her parents. Get them here."
They started to wheel Tiny away, but she wouldn’t let go of my hand. "It's OK, Tiny," I said. "You can have my hand again later.”
I sat down right on the floor in the hall and started going through her wallet. She had a driver's license from North Carolina with an address. I walked down the hall and got in line for a pay phone.
"Yes, um, The Jannin family at 218 Alamance Street?"
The operator gave me a number. I didn't want to call. What would I tell them?. What if they didn't know she was here? What if they didn't approve? What if they were hostile? What if they didn't care? What if they refused consent or couldn't consent? Does the arm stay like that forever? The bone just poking through. My stomach knotted. I was too tired. I couldn't dial the numbers. But I absolutely had to dial the numbers. I dialed the numbers. I put the phone down again. I couldn't make the call. I had to make the call. I picked it up again and dialed the numbers.
It rang. It would be a relief to get voicemail. But, then? No, they had to answer. Thankfully, they answered
"Hello," a woman's voice.
"Maam, hi. My name is Nathan Late and I'm a friend of your daughter, Christina."
"Oh, I'm afraid that she's not here. She's camping in the mountains with some friends."
"Ma'am, she's not camping. She came to Washington D.C. for a protest and she was hurt and...."
"...Oh my God..."
"She's not in any danger. She has a badly broken arm and she was hit in the head, but don't worry, she's fully conscious,” I said realizing that the words, ‘fully conscious’ were fully relative. “They’re x-raying her now to see about her head, but they're going to need to operate on her arm and they can't without your permission."
"She told me she was camping. How could she?" the woman said. "I'll kill her. Is she OK? Oh my God." then she started yelling for someone named "Bernie." Tiny's father?
I'd done the hard part and now I felt calm. I gave them the hospital information and they agreed to fax the consent.
Tiny was alone in her own little cloth-walled cubicle in the ER. She was hooked to an IV and was now in a hospital gown. Her clothes were on the floor in a corner lying on her bag and I put them inside her bag. Her blood-spattered shirt and ironically-frilly-cause-I’m-a-punk-girl bra were in several pieces. They’d obviously cut it off her. I put the pieces in the bag and put my bag with the cameras and film on top of her stuff.
I took her good hand again. ”Your parents are coming,” I told her. She nodded. A nurse stopped by to say that Tiny's skull was intact and that her head was only mildly concussed. They'd already received the consent and were prepping to surger her bone back together.
I was empty and exhausted. My eyes stung from the tear gas. My stomach hurt.
Tiny looked up at me.
"You never answered me."
"About what?"
"Do you think I'm pretty?"
"Do I what?"
"I don't think I'm pretty."
"Of course, you're pretty. You shouldn't be talking. "
"No, guys don't think I'm pretty. "
"They probably do."
"Every time I hook up with one he doesn't call or he calls and we hook up again, then he doesn't call."
“There’s probably some guy, probably a couple of guys, who are completely in love with you and are too scared to talk to you.”
“They’re scared I’ll reject them?”
“They don’t even know why they’re scared.”
“Will they ever stop being scared?”
“Never. It’ll always be there, but it’ll get better.”
“Will they ask me out?”
“When you’re older.”
“Maybe I won’t be pretty then.”
“You will be. I can tell.”
A nurse walked in -- interrupting us -- and started to clean Tiny’s wounded arm. “Doctor Patel says that the police did this,” she said.
“Yes, They’re probably looking to arrest us.”
“No, they won’t. Why would they bother? It’s over.”
As if on cue, the police showed up to arrest us. Two hulking police officers, both male, one black, one white, stood at the opening to the cube. They didn’t say anything, just held up a blurry photo of me running with Tiny running behind.
“Is this the two of you?”
“Yes,” I said.
Both of you put your hands where I can see them.
I put my hands up and Tiny held her good arm up and then they saw the other arm and even the black one blanched.
I smiled at their dismay. “What are you going to do, cuff her?” I asked.
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Darren Kaminsky is a writer living in Brooklyn. He can be contacted at sugarspun @ bigbagoftricks dot com.
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2005 Me Three