Broken Birthday Page 2

  We had more lessons after recess was over, and time went even slower. So slowly it practically felt like it had stopped. Finally there was a knock on the classroom door.

  “All right, everyone,” Mrs. Finkel said. “You can put your books in your desk.”

  She went to the door to open it. Can you guess who walked in? If you said my mom, then you are EXACTLY RIGHT.

  Mom was carrying two big boxes, which I knew had the cupcakes inside them. I wanted to run up and say hello. But since I was in school, and Mrs. Finkel was there, it was hard to know who was in charge. I raised my hand first.

  “You can go ahead and say hello to your mother, Stella,” Mrs. Finkel said.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said. “Where’s Dad?”

  “He had to stay at work,” Mom said. “He’s very sorry, but he has to make sure everything at the store is in order before the trip.” I felt a little bit sad, but then Mom added, “Come on now, we’ve got cupcakes to hand out.”

  Except it wasn’t time to hand them out just yet. First Mrs. Finkel told the class to sing to me. I stood next to Mom, while everyone sang the happy birthday song. It made my cheeks get warmed up, like when you’re embarrassed and they turn the color of pink cotton candy. I don’t know why I was embarrassed, since everyone was looking at me for a good reason. But that’s how I felt. Afterwards I said, “Thank you,” in a shy voice, like the way my friend Arielle’s voice is.

  “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, you look like a monkey, and you smell like one too!” Joshua called out.

  “Joshua!” Mrs. Finkel said. “One more outburst and you’ll spend some quality time with Mr. O’Neil—WITHOUT a cupcake.”

  Then Mrs. Finkel told me to pick two volunteers to help pass out paper plates and napkins. Joshua raised his hand. “Ooh ooh ooh, pick me!” he said. But I didn’t because he wasn’t acting like my friend right then, and I had lots of other friends to choose from.

  It’s hard to pick only two friends to volunteer when you have more than that. I picked Evie, and then I did eeny meeny miny moe to pick the next person, which was Lucy.

  Evie and Lucy gave everyone plates and napkins. Mom and I followed behind them and gave out the cupcakes. Everyone loved what they looked like. Even Joshua said they were the best-looking cupcakes he’d ever seen.

  “Mine has a mountain of candy on it!” he said.

  “So does mine,” said Eleanor.

  “And mine too,” called Clark.

  Evie, Lucy, and I were back at our seats. Mrs. Finkel didn’t tell us to be quiet again, because it was kind of like snack time, even though it was after lunch instead of before. I explained to everyone how Penny and I had made the cupcakes look so good. First we’d made vanilla frosting, and we’d mixed in food coloring, so some cupcakes were frosted pink, some green, and, of course, yellow and blue, because those were my favorite colors. We’d added regular toppings, like sprinkles and chocolate chips. Then there was the fudge Dad had brought home from Batts Confections. He had cut it up into eensy weensy little squares, and we’d piled them on top of the cupcakes.

  “Knock knock,” Talisa said.

  “Who’s there?” we asked back.

  “Al,” she said.

  “Al who?”

  “Al-most don’t wanna eat this, because it looks so pretty!”

  Then she took a big bite.

  “And it tastes better than it looks!” she said.

  It was cool to have Mom in my class because I got to show her things, like my desk, and the terrarium where we were growing moss for earth science.

  “Just one more thing to show you,” I said. “Wait here, I’ll get it.”

  It was my Free Write story from last week. Mrs. Finkel had pinned it to the back board, at the very top. I couldn’t reach it, so I pulled a chair over and stood on top of it, like a ladder.

  “Here, let me help,” Evie said, coming to my side.

  “I’ve got it,” I told her, reaching up. I had my story at my fingertips.

  “Stella, I’m going to have to ask you to step off that chair,” Mrs. Finkel called.

  “Come on down, sweetheart,” Mom said.

  My cheeks heated up again, with the bad kind of embarrassment, and it got worse when Joshua called out, “Get off that chair, Smella sweetheart.”

  “I said I’d help,” Evie said. “Because I’m tall.”

  She reached up as I reached down.

  I’m not exactly sure what happened next. Maybe Evie knocked into me. Maybe I knocked into her. Maybe we didn’t knock into each other at all, and I just lost my balance. All I know is one second I was on the chair, bending down. And the next second the chair and I were both sideways on the floor. And in between those seconds there was a SMASH CRASH, and a scream.

  It was ME screaming, because it hurt so much. More than anything had ever hurt before in my whole entire life. The hurting shot up from my ankle through my body to the tip of my head. I felt dizzy and before I even knew what was happening, I threw up. I’d never thrown up in school before. I was blushing and screaming and coughing and crying. Mom was suddenly at my side. So was Mrs. Finkel.

  “Stella threw up,” I heard Joshua say.

  “That’s enough,” Mrs. Finkel said. Her voice was stern, even though he’d said Stella and not Smella, and what he’d said was exactly right. “Stand back, kids. Stand back. Go sit at your desks.”

  My right ankle hurt so bad. SOOOO BAD.

  “Don’t touch it,” Mom said.

  I didn’t know I’d reached down to touch my ankle. I didn’t know what I was doing at all. I was crying and crying, and then Mrs. Finkel said the scariest words I’d ever heard anyone say.

  In a really low, really serious voice, she told Mom: “I think we need to call 9-1-1.”

  CHAPTER 4

  More Bad Things

  Mrs. Finkel had all the kids except me go across the hall to the other third-grade class, Mrs. Bower’s class. I heard Joshua complaining about it, because he wanted to wait for the ambulance people to arrive. But my leg hurt so much, I didn’t even care about what Joshua said.

  Mom stayed by me, except when she went to the front of the room to get paper towels to wipe the throw up off my shirt. Mrs. Finkel went out to the hall to show the paramedics in.

  “I didn’t know I was going to be sick,” I wailed.

  “Sometimes when something hurts a lot, it can make you throw up,” Mom said.

  “It does hurt,” I said.

  “I know, baby.”

  “Is my leg broken?” I cried.

  “Probably so,” Mom said. She was holding my hand tight with one hand, and stroking my hair with the other. “Don’t look, don’t look,” she said.

  “Does it look really awful?”

  “It’ll be okay.”

  “What if it’s not?” I asked. “What if it never is okay again in my whole entire life?”

  “Of course it will be okay,” Mom said. But her voice was shaky, so I knew she was scared, too.

  A few minutes later, Mrs. Finkel came back in, along with two paramedics. They told me their names, but it was hard to listen, because I was too busy being scared and hurting a lot. Plus, I was embarrassed again. This time because there was still throw up on my shirt.

  “I don’t want them to see my shirt,” I whispered to Mom.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “They deal with medical emergencies all the time. They’ve seen much worse.”

  Since I couldn’t walk, they put me on a stretcher and carried me out. Even moving an eensy weensy tiny bit made my leg hurt worse. Mom climbed into the ambulance with me. I was mostly crying, but in between I said, “I can’t hear the sirens.”

  “We turn them on when we need them,” one of the paramedics told me.

  But then we stopped. I guess maybe there was a red light up ahead, or something. I couldn’t see since I was lying down in the back with no windows. There was the “whoop whoop” siren sound, and we started moving again.

  I
t didn’t take very long to get to the emergency room of Somers General Hospital. I stayed lying down as the paramedics pulled me out of the ambulance. Mom was right by my side, jogging to keep up as they rushed me in. I was transferred to a new bed. “Ow ow ow,” I cried again, because every time they moved me, it hurt.

  When I looked around, I saw three other kids in beds around the room. Two of them were also crying, and their parents were in chairs next to their beds, like Mom was right next to mine. But the third kid wasn’t crying at all, and the chair next to her was empty.

  I guess she wasn’t hurt too badly. She didn’t look hurt AT ALL. As a matter of fact, she looked perfectly healthy and well.

  I wished I had whatever she had instead of what I did have. I would’ve clicked my heels together to make the wish, but I couldn’t move my leg.

  Just then a woman came by with a needle in her hand. I tried to scoot back in bed, away from her. But it’s hard to scoot back when you have a probably-broken leg, and I cried out again.

  “Hi, Stella, I’m Patricia,” the woman said. “I’m a nurse here at Somers General, and I’m going to put in an IV. That’ll help with your pain. Okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay,” I said. “No IVs and no needles. PLEASE! Mom, don’t let her give me any needles!”

  “I’m sorry, Stel,” Mom said. “But I think you need it.”

  “You do need it,” Patricia agreed. “We need to hook up an IV to get some pain medication into you. I bet that leg hurts a lot, doesn’t it?”

  I nodded miserably. Just thinking about how much my leg hurt made it hurt even more.

  “The needle only goes in for a couple seconds, so I can pass something called a catheter through it,” Patricia said. “That catheter will deliver your pain meds to make your leg feel better. As soon as the catheter is in, I’ll take the needle out.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad, Stella,” Mom said.

  I looked at the needle and catheter in Patricia’s hand. The needle looked just like you’d expect a needle to look. The catheter was white, and about the same width as one strand of a Pull ’n’ Peel Twizzler. I’ve always liked Twizzlers, but right then I wasn’t sure if I’d ever eat one again.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Patricia went on. “You can pick which arm we use. Any arm you want.”

  I looked up from Mom’s shoulder. “Any arm I want?” I asked.

  “A deal is a deal,” Patricia said.

  “All right,” I said. I reached a hand toward Patricia and grabbed her arm. “This one!”

  “You’re very funny,” she said.

  I wasn’t trying to be funny. Even if the needle was just for a couple seconds, it was STILL a needle, and I didn’t want it. “It’s My Birthday Observed,” I said to Mom.

  “Oh, Stel,” Mom said. “If I could I’d give you MY arm. But unfortunately you’re going to have to take the needle yourself. The faster you give Patricia your arm, the faster this part is over with.”

  I was so busy worrying about my shot that I didn’t see the girl come over—the same girl who hadn’t been crying. She didn’t come over alone. She had a pole with her. The pole had wheels, so she’d wheeled it over to my bedside. There was a long, thin tube hanging from the pole. The other end of it was attached to an IV in her arm.

  “Camille, what are you doing here?” Patricia asked.

  “I wanted to tell her it wasn’t going to hurt that much,” the girl said.

  “Did you hear that, Stella?” Mom said.

  I did hear it. But I didn’t really believe it.

  “Thank you for letting us know,” Mom told her.

  Patricia said she’d walk Camille back to her own bed. I watched her walk across the room with Camille. Then she walked back to Mom and me. She changed her gloves, and picked up the needle again.

  “No, no,” I said. “Please, no.”

  “Close your eyes,” Patricia said. “I’ll be done before you know it.”

  “Mom?” I asked.

  “I’m right here, Stella,” Mom said. “Close your eyes.”

  Mom held me. I could feel when Patricia tied a rubber thing around my left arm. Then she rubbed a spot on my arm with an alcohol wipe. There was a prick. “OW!” I said.

  “Almost done,” Patricia said.

  “There, there,” Mom said. “You’re okay.”

  “All right, we’re all done,” Patricia said. I opened my eyes. She was putting some tape on my arm to keep the catheter in place. Even if it wasn’t technically a needle, it still poked out of my skin, just the way a needle would. To be honest, it didn’t really hurt, but I was still sad about it. Across the way, I saw Camille watching me. She gave a little smile. I turned back to Mom.

  After that, Patricia got a portable X-ray to take a picture of my leg and make sure that it was broken. She handed Mom a bunch of forms to fill out. “A doctor will be with you soon,” she said. Then she left to talk to other people.

  I was starting to feel sleepy, even though it was the middle of the day. I closed my eyes, and I don’t know how much time passed. Maybe a few minutes. Maybe an hour. When I opened my eyes again, Mom was sitting there, in the exact same spot, but she wasn’t holding the forms anymore.

  “Did the doctor come?” I asked.

  “Not yet, sweetie.”

  “Patricia said the doctor would be here soon,” I reminded her.

  “I’m sure the doctors have a lot of patients to get to,” Mom said.

  “Isn’t this an emergency?” I asked.

  Mom nodded. “I can go ask the nurse.”

  “No, don’t leave me.”

  So we waited some more. Finally a woman arrived. “Hello, I’m Dr. Marconi,” she said. She turned to me. “You must be Stella.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She pulled a curtain around my bed for privacy, and stuck some X-ray pictures up on a light board. “Well, Stella,” she said. “You certainly did a good job breaking your leg.”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” I told her.

  “Of course not,” she said. She pointed to some of the jaggedy edges on the X-ray picture, and said something about a compound fracture of my left tibia, whatever that meant. It was all very confusing. Mom nodded like she understood. I was too tired to ask what all the words meant.

  Outside the curtain, I heard someone say, “Excuse me. I’m looking for my daughter.”

  That made me feel more awake. “Daddy!” I cried.

  The doctor pulled the curtain back open, and Dad came to my side. Mom was already holding my right hand. Dad reached for my left, but he had to hold it very carefully because that was the arm with the IV in it.

  “Don’t you have to be at work because Stuart’s not there?” I asked.

  “Jessica and Claire are taking care of the store,” he said, naming two more people who work at Batts Confections. “I have to be with YOU.”

  “What about Penny and Marco?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Miller is with them,” Dad said. “Don’t worry. What about you—how are you?”

  “Scared,” I told him. And just saying that word made my eyes tear up an eensy weensy bit again.

  “There’s no need to be scared,” Dr. Marconi said. “Do you know how many dozens of kids come in here with broken tibias? I’ve fixed them all up, good as new. You’ll get an operation and—”

  “An operation?” I broke in. “I don’t want an operation.”

  “I’m afraid you need one,” Dr. Marconi said. “You’ll stay here for a couple days, but don’t worry—”

  “But I can’t stay here for a couple days,” I broke in again. “I have to go to Pennsylvania tomorrow.”

  Mom, Dad, and Dr. Marconi shared looks with each other across my bed. The kind of looks grown-ups give each other when they think kids are too young to understand what’s going on.

  “How about if you just give me a cast, like other people get? And maybe crutches, too.” Crutches would be fun to show Willa. “I think that’s a good plan. My leg isn�
��t even hurting so much anymore.”

  “The medication in the IV is why your leg doesn’t hurt anymore,” the doctor said.

  “That’s what Patricia said,” Mom reminded me gently.

  “But can’t we try a cast and crutches?” I asked. “If I still need an operation, we can do it after I get back from Pennsylvania. That’ll be on Tuesday.”

  The grown-ups gave each other more looks above my head. But even if they thought I was too young, I knew exactly what was going on.

  “Oh no!” I cried. “My birthday is ruined!”

  CHAPTER 5

  All of a Sudden

  All of a sudden I had a bunch of visitors. Patricia came back to take off my clothes and put me into a hospital gown. It sounds like it should be an easy thing to do, like taking off what you wore to school and changing into a nightgown at the end of the day. But when you have a compound fracture of your left tibia, it’s not easy at all. Even with all the pain medicine and my leg in a splint, the nurse had to be really careful about moving me. Instead of pulling my shorts off like normal, she CUT THEM OFF.

  Yes, you read that right! Patricia took a pair of scissors and cut them right off me. They were my favorites, too. Dad said don’t worry, I could get new ones. I didn’t think he was right about that though, because Mom got them for me LAST summer. The store probably didn’t have the same ones anymore.

  But I had bigger things to be upset about. Like how I wasn’t going to see Willa for my birthday.

  And the biggest upsetting thing of all: THE OPERATION.

  When my clothes were off and my gown was on, Patricia put all my stuff in a plastic bag and handed it to Mom, even my cut-off shorts. They were ruined, but they went in the bag, too.

  My heart was pounding pounding POUNDING. Harder than when I accidentally cut too many bangs in my hair. Harder than when Penny, Lia, and I got locked in a hotel closet. Harder than when Joshua and I thought we saw a ghost on the library sleepover. Harder than it had ever pounded in my whole entire life.