Room_ A Novel - Emma Donoghue [59]
“On again,” I say. “It’s us, I want to see us.”
“I’m terribly, terribly sorry—,” says Pilar.
“Jack, would you like to join your mom now?” Dr. Clay holds out his hand, he’s got funny white plastic on it. I don’t touch. “Mask on, remember?” I put it over my nose. I walk behind not too near.
Ma’s sitting on a little high bed in a dress made out of paper and it’s split at the back. Persons wear funny things in Outside. “They had to take away my real clothes.” It’s her voice though I can’t see where it comes out of the mask.
I climb up to her lap all crinkly. “I saw us in TV.”
“So I heard. How did we look?”
“Small.”
I’m pulling at her dress but there’s no way in. “Not right this minute.” She kisses me instead on the side of the eye but it’s not a kiss I want. “You were saying . . .”
I wasn’t saying anything.
“About your wrist, yes,” says Dr. Kendrick, “it’ll probably need to be broken again at some point.”
“No!”
“Shh, it’s OK,” Ma tells me.
“She’ll be asleep when it happens,” says Dr. Kendrick, looking at me. “The surgeon will put a metal pin in to help the joint work better.”
“Like a cyborg?”
“What’s that?”
“Yeah, a bit like a cyborg,” says Ma, grinning at me.
“But in the short term I’d say dentistry is the top priority,” says Dr. Kendrick, “so I’m going to put you on a course of antibiotics right away, as well as extra-strength analgesics . . .” I do a huge yawn.
“I know,” says Ma, “it’s hours past bedtime.”
Dr. Kendrick says, “If I could just give Jack a quick checkup?”
“I said no already.”
What does she want to give me? “Is it a toy?” I whisper to Ma.
“It’s unnecessary,” she says to Dr. Kendrick. “Take my word for it.”
“We’re just following the protocol for cases like this,” says Dr. Clay.
“Oh, you see lots of cases like this here, do you?” Ma’s mad, I can hear it.
He shakes his head. “Other trauma situations, yes, but I’ll be honest with you, nothing like yours. Which is why we need to get it right and give you both the best possible treatment from the start.”
“Jack doesn’t need treatment, he needs some sleep.” Ma’s talking through her teeth. “He’s never been out of my sight and nothing happened to him, nothing like what you’re insinuating.”
The doctors look at each other. Dr. Kendrick says, “I didn’t mean—”
“All these years, I kept him safe.”
“Sounds like you did,” says Dr. Clay.
“Yes, I did.” There’s tears all down Ma’s face, now, there’s one all dark on the edge of her mask. Why are they making her cry? “And tonight, what he’s had to—he’s asleep on his feet—”
I’m not asleep.
“I understand completely,” says Dr. Clay. “Height and weight and she’ll deal with his cuts, how about that?”
After a second Ma nods.
I don’t want Dr. Kendrick to touch me, but I don’t mind standing on the machine that shows my heavy, when I lean on the wall by accident Ma straightens me up. Then I stand against the numbers, just like we did beside Door but there’s more of them and the lines are straighter. “You’re doing great,” says Dr. Clay.
Dr. Kendrick writes things down a lot. She points machines in my eyes and my ears and my mouth, she says, “Everything seems to be sparkling.”
“We brush all the times we eat.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Slow down and speak up,” Ma tells me.
“We brush after we eat.”
Dr. Kendrick says, “I wish all my patients took such care of themselves.”
Ma helps me pull my T-shirt over my head. It makes the mask fall off and I put it back on. Dr. Kendrick gets me to move all my pieces. She says my hips are excellent but I could do with a bone density scan at some point, that’s a kind of X-ray. There’s scratchy marks on my inside hands and my legs that’s from when I jumped out of the truck. The right knee has all dried blood. I jump when Dr. Kendrick touches it.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I’m against Ma’s tummy, the paper’s in creases. “Germs are going to jump in the hole and I’ll be dead.”
“Don’t worry,” says Dr. Kendrick, “I’ve got a special wipe that takes them all away.”
It stings. She does my bitten finger