When We Laughed at the Dead Bed and Won

I’d been at the Crippled Children’s Hospital for nearly two months.

A week after my surgery, my hotdog fingers were still puffy but not as purplish and they only throbbed at night. But that Sunday afternoon, I was bored out of my skull. Visiting hours were from two-thirty to four, and we had to sit on our beds whether we had a visitor or not. A few had regular visitors, but most never saw their families at all.

I told myself that Yuma, Arizona was too far away for my family to travel just to see me for an hour-and-a-half. Mom’s job was too important to leave, and I tried not to believe that she didn’t want to come. Grams, who’d put me in this place to begin with, once had sent two of her friends who lived nearby, but they were total strangers to me. That Sunday, like this Sunday, I drew pictures or tried to write letters to my classmates at C. W. McGraw Elementary.

Besides, I’d proven that I could take care of myself. I didn’t need Mom or visitors.

The nurses had finally moved me to the other end of the ward, far from the nurse’s station. The Dead Bed had let me live after all. I made sure God knew how grateful I was and ignored the lonely tsunami lurking just outside my thoughts. I doodled on the envelope that held a stack of handwritten letters from my class.

I drew awful fire-breathing monsters flying over Mrs. Smith’s fourth grade class. The monsters burned up everyone, even Roy who said he really liked me.

Yesterday, when the big envelope from my class arrived, I was so happy. They hadn’t forgotten me after all. Maybe Valerie Q., who constantly tried to be teacher’s pet, had decided we could be friends. I scribbled pencil flames across Valerie Q. And what about Roy, the shy boy whose parents came from Mexico? I was a good head taller, and he was so quiet no one could hear him when he talked, but he had the cutest grin. And he liked me.

One time Roy walked me home. The wind blew up dust on the dried-up canal bank where we walked to and from school. It was hard to hear anything. But I believed that he said, “I like you,” and then he grinned.

So of course he’d write me a love letter. I prayed mean old Mrs. Smith hadn’t read it as I tore open the envelope.  My heart boomed in my ears.

I pulled out the letters, all written on the smooth white paper we only used for special projects. So far, so good. I unfolded the top sheet. It read:

Dear Linda,

How are you? I hope you get well. We are making a diorama. A diorama is a big box that shows you the background. We are making one about an Indian place. There will be teepees and some canoes to go in the Indian’s village.

Yours truly, Marcia Magdaleno

Marcia was my friend. We did Bluebirds and she came to my birthday party. I was glad she wrote, even though I didn’t see why anybody would get excited over a dumb diorama. I opened the next one.

Dear Linda,

How are you? I hope you get well. We are making a diorama. A diorama is a big box that shows you the background.

My heart fell out and my insides zinged. I checked the rest of the letters. They all said the same exact thing. Even Roy’s.

I drew horns and a moustache on Mrs. Smith. I wanted to light a match to each letter and watch it burn. The kids I called my friends thought of me as a penmanship lesson. Roy said he liked me, didn’t he? I pressed so hard that my pencil broke. He probably really said, “See you tomorrow.”

I’d survived the Dead Bed and Nurse Horn and swollen hotdog fingers without a single tear. But sitting here without a visitor, I worked extra hard to keep from blubbering.

And then I heard it.

Soft, muffled crying came from the other end of the ward. I craned my neck but couldn’t see what was going on. No nurses were around, and it was already four-fifteen. The coast was clear. I slid off my bed and tiptoed in my socks toward the sound.

The Dead Bed had just come back from the OR. In it, a girl named Kathleen softly moaned. I went to her side, scrunched myself small next to her bed rails.

Kathleen was one of the girls with severe cerebral palsy. She had silky red hair and lots of freckles. She was smart, too. A few days earlier, I’d held a barf pan under her chin when the nurses were too slow.

I smiled at her. “Wanna see something funny?” Her eyes were hazy, the way people look right after surgery, and she still smelled funny. With blankets over her, I couldn’t quite see which part had surgery, either. But her mouth turned up just a little. I took it as a yes and raced back to my spot. I grabbed the packet of letters and went back to Kathleen.

I held up my monster drawing. “See this? It’s monsters burning up my class.”

Kathleen’s eyes opened wider.

“Why, you ask?” I whipped out the letters, reading each aloud.

Kathleen’s brows squished together, as if to ask why I was reading these things.

I waved the stack around. “They all say the same thing! Who cares about dioramas, anyway?”

Kathleen, in her surgery-haze began to chuckle. I started laughing too, and even as the nurse came around to see what kind of trouble I was starting, I couldn’t stop, and neither could Kathleen. Somehow, the dioramas of our suffering became the funniest thing ever.

We were captives of our disabled bodies and of that world, but no longer prisoners of pain. Instead of infecting everyone around us with our suffering, we chose to embrace our weakness, at least for that moment. And we filled the air with our joy.

The nurse squeaked in again and announced visiting hours were over. I skittered back to my bed and sat there like I could conquer the world.