I nodded. What else would I do? I wasn’t about to get up and run out, although I wanted to more than anything.
“I’ll look into your seeing your mother,” she promised before she left.
Later, while Dr. Milan redid my cast, Jackie tried to distract me by telling me about the time she had broken her ankle.
“My little brother left one of his toy cars right outside my bedroom door. I was about your age, too. I think I flew ten feet. I was rushing out to meet some friends. Of course, everyone signed my cast and wrote silly things on it.”
I didn’t think Dr. Milan was paying any attention to Jackie’s babbling, but he said, “She’ll be able to write a novel on this cast.”
Afterward, I was taken back to my private room and discovered that Mrs. March had sent flowers to dress it up. There were five different arrangements. Jackie raved about them. I knew she was trying her best to make everything seem better than it was. She made sure I ate most of my lunch. Soon after that, another doctor arrived, the neurologist. He was older and nicer than Dr. Milan. His name was Dr. Sander, and when he looked at me and talked to me, I felt he really saw me. Dr. Milan could have been working on a big doll.
“Well,” Dr. Sander said after looking at my eyes, “no concussion is pleasant or should be ignored, but you’ll be fine in a week or so. I’ll stop in to check on you again soon. For now, you just take it easy. Your nurse has what you need if you get nauseous again.” He turned to Jackie. “You know how to reach me if you need to,” he said. Unlike Dr. Milan, he said good-bye before he left.
Everything was catching up with me. I tried to stay awake, but not long after Dr. Sander left, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until it was time for dinner. Jackie was getting it all set up for me. I saw a pile of magazines and books and a few boxes beside them on the table to my right.
“What’s all that?” I asked.
“Oh, you’re up. Good. Mrs. March sent up some magazines and books she thinks you’ll like. There’s a DVD player in the box with a dozen movies for someone your age. She knows it’s no fun just lying around here waiting to get better. Let me fix your bed so you can have your dinner, and then you can look a
t everything, okay?”
She moved the tray over after she raised my bed for me.
“This looks good,” she said, lifting the cover over the plate. “But if you don’t like the food, Mrs. March left instructions for me to send out for something you do like. You have no dietary restrictions.”
“It’s all right,” I said, trying to sound casual.
Dietary restrictions? We had dietary restrictions, such as some days only two meals. When Mama and I were on the street, meals like this would be like Christmas dinners. She’d be really angry if I didn’t eat it.
Jackie had her dinner served, too, and pulled her chair up to my bed table. She smiled. “When I was your age, I’d hurry my meal just to get to the dessert. My mother always had something great. This chocolate cake looks delicious.”
“Did you know Mrs. March before she asked you to be here?” I asked.
“Yes. She had work done by the plastic surgeon I used to work for. She liked the care I gave her. We had a special place for the patients to recuperate, and I was her private nurse four times for surgeries.”
“Four times?”
She laughed. “I’m not supposed to talk out of school, but yes, she had a full face-lift, work on her rear end, breast implants, and a bit of a tummy tuck, not to mention her lips.”
“All at once?”
“No,” she said, laughing again. “But all of it over four years, I think. I don’t want to tell you how much it all cost.”
“You know why she’s doing all this for me?” I asked.
“I know she does a great deal of work for different charities. I think that’s very nice of her. There are lots of very rich people who don’t do anything for anyone else.” She smiled and started to eat again.
“I’m not a charity case,” I said.
“Oh?”
For a moment, I wondered if I should say anything. Maybe it would make Mrs. March angry and she would stop doing nice things for me, but then I thought about Mama lying in a morgue and lost any hesitation.
“Her daughter killed my mother and did this to me,” I said. “She said she was high on Ecstasy.”
She stopped eating. And for a few moments, she looked as if she should be the one in the hospital bed, not me.
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