Sunny Sweet Is So Not Sorry (7 page)

The nurse walked over to me. “Hi, Maria,” he said, opening up a chart.

“Masha,” I said, “but I think …”

“Is your birthday March 7?” he asked.

“No, but that's my sister's birthday,” I said, which it was.

He rolled his eyes and then looked down at my wrist, I guess for that bracelet I had taken off.

“She doesn't have her ID bracelet,” he said over his shoulder to the nice nurse. His voice was loud, and it felt like it bounced off my chest.

“I pulled it off,” I whispered.

The nice nurse turned from collecting her stuff and walked over to us, looking at the mean nurse but really talking to me. “Maria is pretty nervous and in pain. It's not every day that you break your arm. She doesn't want to be here, and I understand that.” Then she smiled at me as if to say, ignore this guy, he doesn't get us.

“Um, I, you, have the wrong person. I didn't break my arm. I was just looking at the fish.”

“She took the splint off?” the mean nurse questioned. He reached for my left arm and I pulled it away, hugging it to my chest.

The nice nurse glared at the back of the mean nurse's head and rolled over a chair next to me, sitting down so her face was even with my face. Then she looked into my eyes, so sweet and kind, and my eyes filled with tears again. She put her hand on my leg. “Okay, honey, we realize that this day has been a real tough one for you.” I nodded and a couple of big, salty drips plopped onto my thighs. “But,” she continued, “it's all going to be fine now. We are going to take care of everything from here on out, okay?”

“Okay,” I whispered.

“Anyway,” she said, grinning and reaching into her supplies and pulling out a book, “this is the fun part.” She opened the book and started flipping through the pages, holding them for me to see. They were filled with different squares of colors. “What is your favorite color?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“Green? Blue?” She kept turning the pages. “Orange?”

“Orange,” I said. Sunny was right. My favorite color was orange. Sunny was always right.

“Orange it is,” she said, snapping the book closed and smiling. I smiled back.

In the corner of my eye, I could see the mean nurse's long face, but I tried to focus on my nice nurse. She told me to lie down and relax, which I did. Then she started talking about how great the cast was going to be. How I was going to be able to swim and take showers and how everybody was going to be able to sign it.

I lay on the scratchy paper, shaking. Was I really about to get a cast … a real cast? I couldn't believe it. I had wished for one for so long and here I was getting it, just like that. I wiped my face with my good arm and sniffed. All my sad thoughts from the fish tank disappeared and were replaced with visions of me walking into school with my new broken arm. And since I had broken my arm in two places, I bet that it was going to be one of those really good casts
where it included your elbow and went all the way down over your hand so you couldn't even use a pencil. From the glowing-white pictures, it looked like I had broken my left arm and I actually wrote with my right hand, but still, who cares because I was getting a cast! A giant white—no, wait—a giant orange cast! Then I remembered that you don't get to walk on crutches if you have a broken arm and my happiness dimmed for a second, but only for a second because, duh, a cast was a cast! Everybody was going to be able to sign it. And everybody included Nicole and Alex.

“Will the names come off if I get the cast wet?” I asked, a little worried.

The nurse stopped prepping my arm and smiled. “That is the best part. If you use a permanent marker, you can have all your friends sign your cast and the ink won't come off in the bath or shower. So you can scrub-a-dub-dub and all those signatures will stay right in place.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“That is so cool.” I giggled.

She gently wrapped a rubbery bandage around my arm, from my wrist to my elbow, and then got out a roll of long, thin cotton. “See,” she said, breathing lightly on my arm, “this isn't such a bad day after all. Right?” she asked, winding the cotton around the bandage.

“No,” I agreed. “Maybe not.”

The mean nurse hovered in the background.

“Nice hat,” he said.

I ignored him.

My cast was
awesometastic
! It was bright orange and went all the way from almost my shoulder down to my hand, just like I hoped it would. It was thick and hard and just so, so
real
. I have a broken arm! I broke my arm in two places! I can't wait to get out in the world and show everybody.

Shawna got done casting it in fifteen minutes. That was the nice nurse's name, Shawna. And she wasn't really a nurse, but a resident. That meant she was pretty much almost a doctor. She was putting my cast in a big blue sling when there was a light knock on the door.

“Come on in,” Shawna sang.

The door opened and in walked a small woman in a white coat followed by an even smaller figure in a white coat … Sunny Sweet!

My body jolted, and I slipped off the bed.

“Whoa,” Shawna laughed, catching me. “It's only Dr. Dorney. She's the attending physician, so she's going to take a quick look at my work and then you're on your way home.”

Sunny and I stared at each other while the doctor and Shawna said hello and began to talk about my arm, or rather, Maria's arm.

Oh my gosh, I just stole someone's broken arm!

Dr. Dorney introduced Sunny to Shawna and me as her “little assistant,” and Shawna introduced me to the doctor. I think I said hello, but I couldn't take my eyes off Sunny. Neither of us knew what to do. Sunny recovered before I did.

“How did you break your arm, Maria?” she asked. I could see the corners of her tiny mouth holding back a smile.

“My little sister pushed me in front of a car,” I said. Shawna and the doctor gasped.

“Just joking,” I mumbled.

The doctor called Sunny over to see “my” X-rays. I tried to escape by telling Shawna that I had to use the bathroom.

“Let's wait until the doctor is finished,” Shawna said.

“I see she broke both her ulna and her radius,” Sunny said. Turning to me, she added, “You must be in a lot of pain, Maria.”

“I'm fine.” I coughed.

The doctor picked up my chart from the small desk by the X-ray board. “It's been about three hours since you came through the ER, Maria,” she said to me. And then she turned to Shawna. “Have you given her anything for the pain, Shawna?”

“I don't need anything,” I told them. “I feel super great.”

“I've read a lot about pain management,” Sunny said. “Isn't it best to keep on a steady dosage to keep the pain from returning, Dr. Dorney?”

The doctor looked at Sunny like she was one of the Seven Wonders of the World instead of the freak of nature that she was. “I think that Dr. Sonya Sweet is correct,” said the doctor.

“I'm on it,” said Shawna, coming at me with a needle.

“No!” was all I got out before she stuck me in my good arm.

My mouth fell open, and I looked over at Sunny. She backed away a little and giggled.

“That will take care of the pain for a while,” said the doctor, “although it may make you a little sleepy.”

A warm feeling ran through me like someone had covered me in a soft, cozy blanket. Shawna rolled a wheelchair into the room, and the doctor and Shawna helped me into it. Shawna then wheeled me back out into the waiting room. I tried to catch Sunny's eye, but she was busy playing with a piece of X-ray equipment. I guess the joy of poisoning her sister didn't last as long as the actual poison did.

Shawna positioned me next to the fish tank. “I will be right back,” she said. I waited for Sunny to follow me out of the room, but she didn't. After staring at the closed door between Sunny and me for five minutes, I began to forget why I cared whether Sunny came through it or not. My cast sat in my lap. I ran my hand lovingly over it. It was still a little wet, but Shawna said it would dry in about half an hour. At least I still had my cast. It was so orange, and I mean really orange.

The swimming fish caught my attention. I watched
them until my eyes started to water, then I let out a giant yawn. Sunny once told me that scientists learned that animals were attracted to certain colors, and that sharks were attracted to the color orange. I made a note in my head that I better not go swimming in the ocean in the next six weeks. That is how long Shawna said I would get to wear it. Six whole weeks.

To test the shark theory, I clunked my cast up against the glass of the fish tank to see if any of the fish noticed. Before I could tell if they liked the color orange, I was interrupted by a lady walking into the waiting room, followed by a girl my age with her arm in a splint and a blue sling just like mine. The girl looked pale and was moaning, and the lady seemed a little angry. She glanced around the room, and then with a sigh sank into one of the seats. The girl sat down next to her. She sniffed a couple of times and then started moaning again. I knew exactly who they were: Maria, who was born the same day of the year as Sunny, and her mother. I slid down into my wheelchair.

“Look at that brave little girl,” the mother said to Maria, motioning over to me. “She isn't whining about
her arm.” The mother gave me a tight smile. “And her arm looks like it's been broken much worse than yours.”

I choked on a breath of air that was trying to get down into my lungs. And then I couldn't stop coughing. It sounded like I was coughing inside a tin can.

I needed to get out of here. I tried to wheel my chair with my good arm, but all I did was turn myself in a semicircle so I totally faced Maria and her mother.

Maria glanced up at me. I could tell she wished I would disappear in a puff of smoke. I kind of wished I would too. Maybe she somehow knew that this was actually her broken arm I was wearing.

Somewhere inside my head a voice was shouting at me to get out of there, but that voice
didn't seem to have control over my legs. Weirdly, I wanted to close my eyes and take a nap, even though I knew that if Shawna came through that door and saw Maria and her mother, I was going to be in huge, huge trouble.

The door opened, and out walked Shawna with juice and crackers in her hand for me. She looked over at Maria and her mother. “I'll be with you in just a moment,” she said. She put the crackers in my lap and tried to hand me the juice, but my arm wouldn't move from the arm of the wheelchair. I blinked at Shawna, waiting for her to realize what was happening, when there was a pinging of a few notes over a sound system followed by a woman's soft voice,
“Code yellow, department 66, room 452. Code yellow. Code yellow, department 66, room 452
.
Code yellow.”

Shawna stood next to me until the woman over the sound system had repeated the message. Then she put my juice next to the fish tank, gave my head a quick pat, and hurried from the room.

I swallowed a giant breath of air, and relief washed over me.

Once again the pinging sounded overhead. “Great, another one,” I thought. Hopefully this would keep everyone busy until I could figure out how to use my legs again and I could get out of here.

The same female voice came back over the sound system.
“Would Marsha Sweet please come to the front desk on the main floor of the Shapiro Building? Marsha Sweet, please come to the front desk on the main floor of the Shapiro Building.”

My face flushed red, and I started to sweat. I looked over at Maria and her mother, but of course they just looked back at me. They didn't know that I was “Marsha.”

The door opened again. I closed my eyes and waited for the world to end.

“Let's get out of here,” whispered a voice that wasn't Shawna's.

I opened my eyes.

Sunny
.