“Off you go,” said Carla, whose Snarla aspect, Jemma had discovered, was quite isolated from her regular personality — offend her in the slightest and she’d threaten to fuck you up with a mop handle, but she never held a grudge, and they’d been getting along very nicely for a whole week. Jemma ran down the hall and into the room. Sylvester was bouncing in his bed and watching a videotape, aping a bouncing blue dog on the television. When he saw Jemma he waved and said, “Bloopee!”
“Bloopee to you, too,” Jemma said, flying serenely through the exam until she crashed in his lungs. He had a finding, an area of decreased sounds over the left lower lobe, and maybe a crackle or two. His lungs had been entirely clear the day before. They’d been clear for weeks, and he’d finished his tuning-up course of antibiotics three days earlier. Jemma percussed awkwardly on his back with her fingers, and thought he was perhaps a little dull over the left lower lobe. He turned around and tapped on her, too, crying bloopee all the while.
“There you are,” said his mother as she came through the door. Jemma’s heart sank as she turned around to look at her. She had a mass of curly poodle hair on her head that hung down just far enough to obscure her eyes, which like her son’s were a lovely shade of blue-gray, but, dog-like, she seemed to see just fine through the hair. From underneath that bushy mass her nose stuck out, pointy as a weapon over her pale, full lips. “I was just getting Sylvester some crackers. Would you like one?” Jemma shook her head. “Well, how does he sound? Is he crystal clear? Is he soft as a pillow? I think he’s so much better. Don’t you think he’s better? I haven’t seen you lately. Do you still come to see him? Do you think you should still come and see him? I think you should still come to see him. I’m not the doctor, I know. And you’re not the doctor, either. I just wonder, you know. Cracker?” She poked a graham cracker in Jemma’s face, so it scraped above her lip and filled her nose with the odor of cinnamon.
“No thank you,” Jemma said, batting at the cracker. “I come by every day, just like always. I just keep missing you.”
“Oh. Of course. I didn’t mean it as anything. I was just wondering. I didn’t mean to accuse, you know.” But she was still pointing at her with the cracker, as if to say, with this graham cracker I accuse thee.
“He’s got a little noise. I’d like to check an x-ray.”
“In his lung. He’s got a little noise in his lung?”
“Yes.”
“In his lung?”
“Yes, like I just said, in his lung.”
“Oh God, do you think it’s the pneumonia? Do you think it’s the pseudomonas? Do you think it’s a fungus? His poop is all floaty again. This morning it floated like crazy. It popped right up so fast I thought it was going to fly through the air. I thought it was going to follow us back to the room. It’s always like that, it always gets floaty just before he gets sick. Do you think it’s related? Do you think he needs more enzymes? I think he needs more enzymes. Will you get him some more enzymes?”
Jemma had been opening her mouth to speak, once and twice and three times. “I think he’ll be fine. We’ll just check to make sure there’s nothing new happening.”
“Is that your final opinion? Is that your professional opinion? Have you got a professional opinion yet? You’re just a little student. I don’t mean anything by it. But it’s hard, you know. It’s just hard, to see him like this. I mean look at him.” Jemma looked. The child was bouncing again in his bed and shouting “bloopee” at the television in a spray of graham cracker.
“He looks okay,” Jemma said.
“Is Dr. Snood here? Is Dr. Snood coming? Has he come already? Will you tell him I’m waiting for him? Did I tell you the poop is smelly again? You should smell it, it’s awful. He went three hours ago but it still smells like it in the bathroom, if you want to come. I thought I was going to die. It even seemed to bother him, and it never bothers him, not unless it’s really, really bad. And it’s really floaty. My hair still smells like it. You should smell it. Smell my hair, then you’ll know.” Jemma’s pager sounded just as the lady was pushing her head toward her.
“Oh boy,” Jemma said, “it’s an emergency!” She flashed the number on the display and said, “I’ve got to go.” As she fled the room, she called back that she’d return after the x-ray was done.
“Bring Dr. Snood!” said Ms. Sullivan. She started to pursue Jemma down the hall, but Jemma had learned that if you actually ran from her she wouldn’t follow. If you walked she’d follow you for up to twenty minutes, even into the bathroom. “It’s really quite floaty!” she called out
“I believe you!” Jemma called back. She ran to the nurses’ station, slowing down as soon as she was out of Ms. Sullivan’s line of sight. She filled out the x-ray requisition and dropped it off with the clerk, then continued around the desk and down the hall to the next room and the next child. Jeri Vega had already had a liver transplant, but was waiting for another. She was one of two children on the liver transplant service, part of the GI service and therefore on Jemma’s team. Dr. Snood was not a transplant doctor, and paid little attention to Jeri. Her problems were chronic, not acute, and she’d been hospitalized more to move her up the transplant list than for her chronic rejection and liver failure. “It’s a sea full of livers,” her mother had said, standing at the window and looking over the water. Her daughter had a unique metabolic defect that had poisoned her first liver. She was the only girl in the world with it, the product of a mutation so rare, shy, and retiring that it required cosan-guinity to bring it out: Jeri’s father was also her great-uncle.
Jeri was a very hairy five-year-old, partly on account of her immune suppressants, and partly on account of her extraction. With her bushy black head of curls, thick synophrys, downy mustache, and hairy cheeks, she looked like a Sicilian Annie. Today Jemma thought she looked a little more yellow than usual. Her mother said it was just the light. Jemma listened to her chest, heart and belly, and felt her big, useless liver. When Jemma tickled her she didn’t laugh, but only gave Jemma a bored look.
“She’s tired today,” her mother said matter-of-factly. “Maybe she’s got an infection.”
“We could look at some blood.”
She shrugged. “Let’s watch her.”
“We’ll talk about it on rounds. Her vitals have been fine.” Jeri’s mother shrugged again. She was another mom reputed to be difficult, but she’d always been nice to Jemma, and her management plans, when Jemma passed them on to the team, only rarely drew ridicule from Dr. Snood. Jemma would have liked her more if she did not have a tendency to lurk in the corners of the room, squatting in the darkest shadow, seeming to size you up.
“Have any more bodies floated up?”
“No. No more.”
“And the one, is it still alive?”
“Ishmael was just fine when I saw him last.”
“And that was long ago? Was it days? Something could have happened, yes?”