Agorafabulous! (5 page)

“I certainly do,” Mr. Brixton said with a sigh. “My own niece thinks that Kate Moss is just the most beautiful thing in the world. Hardly eats a thing, and smokes like a chimney.”

“Kate Moss looks like a bag of bones,” Mr. D’Angelo said, shaking his head. “I don’t get these magazines. Why would I wanna be with a girl who looks like she’s dead?”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Mr. Brixton said. Before they could continue their discussion of unhealthy body image in women’s fashion, the driver came down to help them get me on the bus.

My recollection of what follows is a bit hazy. I do remember being deposited in a seat near the front. I have a vivid memory of the driver picking a lemon off a nearby tree, halving it, and placing each half on my wrists. I think it was supposed to help with nausea.

I also remember Mr. D’Angelo announcing, “All right, kids. Another change of plans. We gotta skip the beach.”

An enormous hue and cry arose on the bus.

“What the fuck?” Amber shouted. “Why can’t we just drop her off at the hotel and then go?”

“We’re not going to the hotel,” Mr. D’Angelo replied. “We’re going to the hospital.” He paused. “Now sit down and shut up.” There was a steely note in his voice that did not invite argument, even from entitled, angry, aggressively pretty New Jersey homecoming princesses used to getting their way.

We sped off to the hospital, whizzing around hairpin turns at a pace that would have terrified me if I hadn’t been off floating in some la-la land beyond fear. It was very quiet now inside my head. My mind had detached from my body, and any sensation I felt—the tingling, sweating, shaking—seemed to be happening to someone else. My thoughts moved through mud.

If I’d been able to string two coherent ideas together, I might have wondered just what sort of hospital I was about to visit. Sicily is not generally known as the epicenter of First World medical care. I sincerely doubt that any Italian, upon learning of his or her diagnosis of cancer, has ever said, “Well, to Sicily we go! They can fix anything down there.” I’m also fairly sure no one else of any other nationality has ever uttered these words.

Had I been capable of such imaginative thought, I might have envisioned an open-roofed shack with walls woven of leaves and vines. A toothless, wrinkled old brown
strega
would sit out front with a shotgun, a bread knife, and a jar of fermented blood oranges. The patients who showed promise would have the sickness cut out with the knife, with some booze to dull the pain (and another swig to keep the witch’s spirits up). The direst cases would simply get a swift prayer and a shotgun blast to the temple.

What I got instead was a modern facility with a roof, doors, and electricity—the whole works. Uniformed nurses brought a wheelchair to the door as soon as the bus rumbled to a stop. Mr. Brixton, Mr. D’Angelo, and the driver helped a nurse load me into the chair. The driver returned to the bus, and Mr. D’Angelo shouted over his shoulder, “Everybody stays on the bus until we get back! Anybody gets outta line, I’m sending youse home tonight!”

“Can he put the A/C on, at least?” one of the boys asked. The air was deadly still and oppressively hot.

Mr. Brixton exchanged a few quick words in Italian with the driver and then called back, “I’m afraid not, children. He cannot run the air-conditioning while the bus is parked and off. Perhaps now would be an ideal time for a nap.” He added quickly, “And he has advised me that the windows do not open.”

An exasperated collective whine arose, and the bus door clanked shut behind us.

I remember swiftly gliding into the hospital, which was smaller than the giant places I knew from back home. We had an ever-growing county medical center, as well as the renowned Robert Wood Johnson Hospital, where I went to get some sort of mild, non-scary cancer hacked out of my skin once. It was no big deal, just a local anesthetic and a few snips. I may as well have been at my regular doctor’s office, except for the super high-tech cameras and wide-eyed medical students taking notes. Also, my doctor’s name was Babar, which was kind of awesome.

Other than that, I’d only gone to hospitals to visit new cousins in the baby wing and dying old relatives in the cancer wing. Something about being in that wheelchair just seemed wrong, like I was taking up a real sick person’s space. Even in my hazy daze, I felt like a fraud. I was going to die, sure, but they shouldn’t waste the wheels on me. They could just lay me out someplace. Maybe they could hook me up with a blanket and a stuffed animal and just let me expire quietly.

They did lay me out soon enough on an examining table in a room with spotless steel cabinets and bright overhead lights. A circle of faces peered down at me—Mr. D’Angelo, Mr. Brixton, and no fewer than three suspiciously attractive nurses, each of whom wore bigger hair and more makeup than I’d ever seen on a nurse back home in New Jersey (no small feat, incidentally). Someone took my pulse. Someone else shined a small flashlight in my eyes. A third someone looked at my tongue. I should have told one of them that I was on prescription medication, but my remaining shred of vanity stilled my voice. Besides, I was about to die. That secret could die with me.

“I suppose we ought to give her some space,” Mr. Brixton whispered to Mr. D’Angelo.

“You’re gonna be fine, kiddo,” Mr. D’Angelo said. He patted my hand. “Don’t worry.” The sudden fatherly gesture of caring made a lump swiftly rise in my throat. I felt tears prick the back of my eyes, and had the vague realization that the body to which I was loosely attached was going to begin crying.

I stared up at the lights, blinking. The faces moved away, and the nurses spoke to one another in lovely-sounding syllables that I could not decipher. Soon, I could barely hear them anymore. My ears were shutting down. I was relieved to realize that my body was giving up.

Maybe I could just fall asleep here and not wake up ever.

Then came a sudden whoosh of cold air and a great crashing sound as the examining room door burst open. The energy around me changed suddenly, became electrified. I saw, without seeing, that Mr. Brixton and Mr. D’Angelo stood up straighter. Slowly, I turned my head to the side and gazed for the first time upon Dr. Sophia Loren.

That wasn’t her actual name, of course. I don’t think I ever got her real name. What I got was the same eyeful Mr. Brixton and Mr. D’Angelo were getting: a stunning, deeply tanned olive-skinned woman with huge, luscious clouds of shining brown hair, giant, heavily made-up eyes, pouty lips, and va-va-va-voom cleavage that owed its perkiness to nature, a well-constructed push-up bra, or a talented surgeon. She wore a tight purple V-neck shirt and a black miniskirt beneath an open white lab coat. I dimly noted her large gold hoop earrings and three-inch-high black stilettos.

Then she whipped out a pair of black-rimmed glasses that looked more like a prop than a necessity, and it dawned on me that I had unwittingly wandered onto the set of a porno movie. There was nothing about the scenario that didn’t scream
adult film,
down to the bevy of hot chicks in nurse costumes. Out of deep-seated Catholic guilt and terror, I had long resisted my occasional feelings of sexual attraction toward women. But in my weakened state, I found myself vaguely turned on.

Then Mr. D’Angelo opened his mouth and promptly took the wind out of my Sapphic sails.

“HELLO. ARE YOU THE DOCTOR?” he asked in the loud, slow voice that Americans reserve for non–English speakers (as if screaming in a foreigner’s face is going to increase his or her comprehension of our mongrel tongue).

Dr. Sophia cast the most dismissive glance at him that I have ever seen a woman give a man, and I’m including women who roll their eyes at cat-callers on the street. She didn’t roll her eyes, but she did look straight through him, like a lioness who had heard the sound of a small, non-delicious animal but couldn’t quite place its origin.

A hush again fell over the room. Mr. D’Angelo shut his mouth. Mr. Brixton uttered not a peep. Even the three lovely nurses were completely quiet. Had this been a BDSM porno, it would have been clear who was the dom and who were the subs.

Dr. Sophia’s eyes came to rest on me, and she raised an eyebrow slightly. Regally, she held out her hand. A nurse quickly skittered up and gave her a clipboard and a chart. Dr. Sophia looked down at it, frowned slightly, and approached the table slowly, with her head cocked slightly to one side. She was wearing a significant amount of perfume, and her scent reached me before she did. She smelled like the most annoying part of a department store, but on her it was somehow sexy. With a body and a face like that, she probably could’ve carried off Eau de Raw Sewage.

Then she was right beside me, staring at me with an emotionless, analytical curiosity. I felt like a crossword puzzle. She bent down low, then even lower, until her face was mere inches from my own and the scent of her perfume threatened to overwhelm my nostrils. We locked eyes for a long moment.

I blinked first.

“Homesick!” she exclaimed in lightly accented English, straightening bolt-upright. Behind me, I sensed Mr. D’Angelo and Mr. Brixton jump in tandem.

“Sedative!” she ordered, scribbling something on the clipboard and handing it back to a nurse. Within a minute, a nurse handed me a cup of a yellow liquid and a cup of water.

I drank the yellow stuff, which tasted bitter and astringent, and then the water. Dr. Sophia smiled broadly and touched me for the first time. It was probably too early for the yellow stuff to have begun to work, but I felt a narcotic sense of calm wash over me.

“Better now,” she said, smoothing some hair back from my forehead. “You go rest, take deep breaths, walk by the ocean. No stress!”

“No stress,” I repeated, awed.

She turned to Mr. D’Angelo and Mr. Brixton.

“No stress!” she said firmly, glaring at them.

“No stress!” Mr. Brixton replied promptly. Mr. D’Angelo nodded mutely.

And then the queen swept out of the room, followed swiftly by her three ladies-in-waiting. It was as if none of them had even been there at all.

The room was silent for a few moments. Then Mr. D’Angelo said, “And this is all free?”

“Completely,” said Mr. Brixton. “Of course, they pay very high taxes to fund it.”

“See, that I wouldn’t like,” Mr. D’Angelo said.

I sat upright and grinned at both of them.

“Are you feeling better then, Sara?” Mr. Brixton asked.

“Yesssss,” I said. I stretched out the
s
because I realized I’d never taken note before of how fun it was to make that sound.

“Yesssss I ammmmmmm,” I added, delighting in the
m
sound.

“Excellent!” Mr. Brixton said, clapping his hands together.

“You look much better,” Mr. D’Angelo said. “More color in your face. Let’s go back to the hotel and call your mom and dad. And you just take it easy for the rest of the day, okay? No stress.”

“No stressssss!” I chirped, smiling at the cabinets.

We left the hospital, with me leading the way. Anxiety felt like a distant memory. I couldn’t believe I’d felt so yucky earlier in the day. What had I been so worried about? Everything was fine. The hospital was fine, the sky was fine, the sun was fine. I was fine, Dr. Sophia was fine, everybody was fine. My pills were fine, and I could tell they were really starting to work for me. I was finally okay! It was so nice to be awake! Look at those clouds! Look at those trees! I was in Sicily! How exciting! I felt so blessed. Back home, Kevin was dead, and that was sad, but I was here and alive and that was just wonderful. I should really go to a church and say thank you to God for this blessing of being alive and in Sicily. Oh my God, was that a bird,
singing
? That bird in the tree was
singing.

We got to the bus, and I insisted that Mr. D’Angelo and Mr. Brixton board first. Then, smiling, I hopped up the steps, said hello to the driver, and turned to face the students.

All told, we’d been gone for about thirty minutes. Ordinarily, that’s not a long time to wait. But inside a tin box on wheels baking in eighty-degree heat, with the engine and air-conditioning off and windows that were not designed to open, surrounded by dozens of sweaty, irritable teenagers, I think the time passed rather more slowly than it did inside the cool, airy hospital. Thirty-nine pairs of eyes stared at me with expressions that ranged from irritated boredom to white-hot hatred (you can guess where the latter gaze came from). In the midst of my sublime new happiness, I recognized that my peers—who were all going to be my dear friends after this trip—needed some inspiration. And I was the only one truly capable of giving it to them. With that in mind, I decided to make a speech.

“You guyssss,” I began, beaming as I stood in the aisle. “I know it was sssssso hot on this busssss, and I’m sssso sssssorry you’re all hot and sssssweaty and sssstuff. Thank you for waiting for mmme. The great news isssss that I feel sssssso mmmmuch better! I really think the resssst of thissss trip isss gonna be soooo awessssommmmme.” And with that, I dropped into a seat and stared happily at the ceiling.

“Oh my God,” Amber said. “And she got fuckin’
drugs
? Why the fuck does she get everything and I get bullshit?”

The driver turned on the engine and the A/C. Most of the students clapped with a mixture of sarcasm and relief. Leann leaned across the aisle and said, “I’m so glad you’re feeling better! I finished all my postcards while we were waiting. I have some extra blank ones if you want any.”

“Thankssssssss,” I replied happily.

“Can we get to the goddamned beach now?” Amber demanded.

“Actually, Amber,” Mr. D’Angelo said, glancing at his watch, “we gotta head back about forty minutes in the other direction and get Sara settled in at the hotel, so we’re not gonna have time for the beach today. But we’re still taking the tour of the Museum of Agricultural Implements at four—not you, Sara, I want you to stay and chill out, just nap or go shopping or whatever you want, that goes for the rest of the week too. Leann, you can stay with her if you want, or you can come with us. No stress!”