Room_ A Novel - Emma Donoghue [58]
We’re walking in a big lighted building, I think it’s the Precinct again but then it’s not. There’s a somebody called the Admission Coordinator tapping on a—I know, it’s a computer, just like in TV. They all look like the persons on the medical planet, I have to keep remembering they’re real.
I see the most coolest thing, it’s a huge glass with corners but instead of cans and chocolate there’s fish alive, swimming and hiding with rocks. I pull Ma’s hand but she won’t come, she’s still talking to the Admission Coordinator that has a name on her label too, it’s Pilar.
“Listen, Jack,” Dr. Clay says, he bends down his legs so he’s like a giant frog, why is he doing that? His head is nearly beside mine, his hair is just fuzz like a quarter of an inch long. He doesn’t have his mask anymore, it’s only me and Ma. “We need to take a look at your mom in that room across the hall, OK?”
It’s me he’s saying. But didn’t he look at her already?
Ma’s shaking her head. “Jack stays with me.”
“Dr. Kendrick—she’s our general medical resident on duty—she’s going to have to administer the evidence collection kit right away, I’m afraid. Blood, urine, hair, fingernail scrapings, oral swabs, vaginal, anal—”
Ma stares at him. She lets out her breath. “I’ll be just in there,” she tells me, pointing at a door, “and I’ll be able to hear you if you call, OK?”
“Not OK.”
“Please. You’ve been such a brave JackerJack, just a bit longer, OK?”
I grab onto her.
“Hmm, maybe he could come in and we could put up a screen?” says Dr. Kendrick. Her hair is all creamy colored and twisted up on her head.
“A TV?” I whisper to Ma. “There’s one over there.” It’s way bigger than the one in Room, there’s dancing and the colors are much dazzlier.
“Actually, yeah,” says Ma, “could he maybe sit there at Reception? That would distract him better.”
The Pilar woman is behind the table talking on the phone, she smiles at me but I pretend I don’t see. There’s lots of chairs, Ma chooses one for me. I watch her going with the doctors. I have to grip onto the chair not to run after her.
The planet’s changed to a game of football with persons with huge shoulders and helmets. I wonder if it’s really happening for real or just pictures. I look at the fish glass but it’s too far, I can’t see the fish but they must be still there, they can’t walk. The door where Ma went is a bit apart, I think I hear her voice. Why are they taking her blood and pee and fingernails? She’s still there even though I don’t see her, like she was in Room all the time I was doing our Great Escape. Old Nick zoomed off in his truck, now he’s not in Room and he’s not in Outside, I don’t see him in TV. My head’s worn out from wondering.
I hate the mask pressing, I put it up on my head, it’s got a stiff bit with a wire inside I think. It keeps my hair out of my eyes. Now there’s tanks in a city that’s all smashed into bits, an old person crying. Ma’s a long long time in the other room, are they hurting her? The Pilar woman is still talking on the phone. Another planet with men in a ginormous room talking, all in jackets, I think they’re kind of fighting. They talk for hours and hours.
Then it changes again and there’s Ma and she’s carrying somebody and it’s me.
I jump up and go right to the screen. There’s a me like in Mirror only I’m tiny. Words sliding underneath LOCAL NEWS AS IT HAPPENS. A she person is talking but I can’t see: “. . . bachelor loner converted the garden shed into an impregnable twenty-first-century dungeon. The despot’s victims have an eerie pallor and appear to be in a borderline catatonic state after the long nightmare of their incarceration.” There’s when Officer Oh tried to put the blanket on my head and I don’t let her. The invisible voice says, “The malnourished boy, unable to walk, is seen here lashing out convulsively at one of his rescuers.”
“Ma,” I shout.
She doesn’t come. I hear her calling, “Just a couple more minutes.”
“It’s us. It’s us in TV!”
But it’s gone blank. Pilar is standing up pointing at