The Winner's Game(103)

I hate hospitals.

I hate hospital food.

I hate seeing wheelchairs in the hallway that I’m not allowed to sit in.

But mostly, I hate seeing my sisters the way they are.

They say Ann is stable, but she looks a lot weaker than she did when she was at the beach. I think if she was really as good as she was before, they’d let her go home. But it sounds like they are going to keep her until they can “harvest” an organ from a donor.

A donor like Bree.

I really hate hospitals.

Ann looks bad enough, but compared to Ann, Bree looks awful. It’s nice that they’re in the same room and stuff, so we can all be together, but I kinda don’t like to look at Bree, because her face is all messed up. They’ve shaved several spots on her head where they had to drill into her skull to release the pressure.

Gross.

Every time I look at her injuries, I remember how sick I felt when I saw that speeding car. I can’t get the image out of my head—watching her shoes fly and seeing her body bounce.

“Can I go for a walk?” I ask my parents early in the evening of day four. “I need some fresh air.”

“You won’t get lost?” asks Mom.

I roll my eyes and drop my chin. “I could give tours of this place.”

“Just…be careful,” says Dad. “And don’t be gone too long.”

While I’m wandering the halls, I stop by a vending machine and drop three quarters in for a pack of gum. Then I continue my journey. I know where I want to go, but it’s on the other end of the hospital and down several floors. Along the way, I am reminded over and over again how life isn’t fair. Each room I pass has some other sorry soul who is right in the middle of lots of unfairness.

In one room there is an old man with tubes hanging out his nose who looks like he’s already dead. The most unfair part is that there’s nobody there with him.

In the next room there’s a baby in an incubator with thick scars down her chest like Ann’s, only newer. Two young parents are crying over her.

A couple rooms farther, a priest is saying a prayer beside a bed, with family members gathered around.

In a waiting room, I hear a crying husband asking for news about his wife. His two teenage daughters are clinging to him. All of their faces are wet from tears.

The elevator is superslow. On my way down, my thoughts return to Bree and Ann. Everyone wants Bree to live, and yet…if she dies, it’s good news for Ann. Everyone wants Ann to live too, which she will, for sure, if Bree dies.

Talk about unfair!

When the elevator opens, I’m in the lobby of the emergency room. I’ve been itching to get down here for a couple of days now, but my parents made me stay with them. I take a seat near a window, open up my pack of gum, and start to chew.

After a little while I build up the nerve to ask one of the nurses at the desk about something that’s been on my mind. “Excuse me. Um…can you tell me, like…how many people die here each day?”

She looks horrified. “What? That’s an awful thing to ask, young man. Go find your parents. You shouldn’t be up here at the desk.”

Is it such an awful thing to ask? I just want to know what the odds are of a new heart coming in for my sister. Someone’s heart other than Bree’s, I mean.

I take a seat again near the window. Maybe thirty minutes later, the nurse behind the desk stands up all excited and makes a call for assistance. A minute later several people in medical scrubs begin gathering by the ambulance entrance. A minute after that I see the lights of an ambulance zooming up the road. It pulls right past me and stops at the door. A teenage girl is pulled from the back of the ambulance and wheeled into the hospital, where she is quickly carted off, surrounded by the blue scrubs.

Five minutes later, another ambulance pulls up, only this one doesn’t have its lights on. Only one person from the hospital goes outside to help the medics. The gurney is covered up with a thick white sheet. Nobody is hurrying. Then the nurse asks, “Is that Mr. Donor?”

The medics look at each other, confused for a moment, and then they get what she’s asking. “Yeah, his license says he’s a full organ donor. He’s all yours.”

A donor?

This is what I came downstairs for, what I hoped to see, only now I don’t want to see it.

A dead body.

Staring at the sheet as it passes by, I suddenly wish I hadn’t come to the ER, or wanted to know how many people die here each day. It really doesn’t matter to me anymore. As far as I’m concerned, one is too many.

Especially if that one is my sister.

Or my other sister.





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