Clown Girl - Monica Drake [82]
With no novelty to my injuries, I wouldn’t make the medical textbooks. She unsnapped the mobile IV of the saline drip from the short piece of tube where it entered under my skin, but left the gear end of the setup in the back of my hand. “In case we have to hook you up again,” she said, and turned away.
“Should we get her behind a curtain?” a preteen candy striper asked. The candy striper stretched an Ace bandage like some kind of physical therapy for the flat-chested.
The nurse shook her head, waved a hand. “No hurry at all.”
The candy striper nodded, turned and skipped down the hall, her shoes a loud clack and rattle. The nurse brought a wheelchair over, but the wheelchair was routine. She said, “You’ll be fine, won’t you, honey? Just a little trouble you’re in.” She gave me a pat on one knee.
Placating clown treatment, all over again.
She unstrapped the belts. I sat up, and slid around on the Ass to swing my legs off the side of the gurney. I said, “Why do I keep coming back to this joint?”
“Some people like it here. They feel safer.” The flab on the back of her arm shook like a sad fish. “They like to know help is available, to fend off a late-night fear of death. An existential dread of being alone.”
Cheap psychology. “It was a rhetorical question.”
“Rhetorical, confessional, fundamental—ask away,” she said. “Long as you’ve got the coverage, I’m here.”
“Coverage? I’ve never felt so exposed. I lost my wig, and now my boobs are flopping out.” I gave one dangling boob a shake; smoke and ash drifted from it. Sand fell to the floor. I dropped into the wheelchair.
The nurse sighed, “Insurance coverage.”
“Ah.” Shit. I didn’t. There was nothing light about insurance coverage, no joke there.
The paramedic came back with a consent form on a clipboard. The nurse asked him, “She been like this the whole time?”
He nodded. “Some kind of shock.”
I wasn’t in shock. I started to say that, but when I opened my mouth I said, “You think this is shock, you ought to see me when I get the bill.”
Badaboom.
It was the oldest joke in the book! I was regressing. Why did I say it? Nerves. Maybe I was in shock—some kind of brain freeze. They left me parked in the wheelchair with the placebo IV, just the works in my hand, the IV equivalent of a fake cigarette filter, a baby’s pacifier.
Rex could breathe on my burns, and they’d turn to comedy.
I got out of the wheelchair. A nurse swung by and took me by the arm. I said, “Just take the IV out. I’m done with this place.”
“All in good time.” She smiled and led me behind a curtain, into a tiny room. “Let’s have a chat. What drugs do you take, if any, and how often did you take them?”
A standard question.
With nothing to hide, I reached low into my long pocket. My hand came back out through a burn hole. I waggled my fingers, little puppets, then tried a second time. My blistered skin was raw and sore, the pants tight over the Fabulous Hindquarters. On the way back up, I had to hold the pocket down with one hand to keep from turning it inside out. I barely got my hand back out again, full as it was on the way up with the amber bottle. I uncurled stiff fingers and handed the nurse the valerian tincture. I said, “I take a few sips of that, and…”
She glanced at the label, sat the bottle aside.
I reached in my pocket again and this time pulled out the small pot of Chinese pills. “I took ten of these. Or fifteen.” I pressed the jar into the nurse’s hand. “Maybe twenty.” I couldn’t remember.
The nurse looked at the jar, put it on a counter next to the valerian.
“I feel great now,” I said, and gave what I hoped was a winning smile, though actually I felt weak, ill and alone, small and inconsequential. Reflected in the chrome of a paper-towel dispenser, my face was a soot mask, my hair a fright wig. Except it wasn’t a wig. It was my hair. Nobody offered to swab off the mask. I said, “You know, all I need is a hairbrush, a damp cloth, a tray of face paint…” I leaned closer