AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Since I have nothing better to do, I am going to compose a poem that expresses my true feelings over everything that is going on. I intend to call it “Spring Fever.” If it is good enough, I am going to submit it to The Atom. Anonymously, of course. If Leslie knew I wrote it, she’d never print it, since as a cub reporter, I have not Paid My Dues.
But if she just FINDS it slipped under the door to The Atom ’s office, maybe she’ll run it.
The way I see it, I have nothing to lose. It’s not like things can possibly get any worse.
Tuesday, May 6, St. Vincent’s Hospital
Things just got worse. Very, very worse.
It’s probably all my fault. All my fault because I wrote that before. About things not possibly being able to get any worse. It turns out things most definitely CAN get worse than
Flunking an Algebra quiz.
Getting in trouble in Bio for passing notes.
Getting Asperger’s syndrome as your Health and Safety project.
Your father trying to force you to spend most of your summer in Genovia.
Your boyfriend refusing to take you to the prom.
Your best friend calling you weak.
Her boyfriend needing stitches in his head from a self-inflicted globe wound.
And your grandmother trying to force you to have dinner with the sultan of Brunei.
What’s worse is your pregnant mother passing out in the frozen foods section at the Grand Union.
I am totally serious. She landed face-first in the Häagen-Dazs. Thank God she bounced off the Ben and Jerry’s and came to rest on her back, or my potential brother or sister would have been crushed under the weight of his or her own mother.
The manager of the Grand Union apparently didn’t have the slightest idea what to do. According to witnesses, he ran all around the store, flapping his arms and yelling, “Deadwoman in Aisle Four! Dead woman in Aisle Four!”
I don’t know what would have happened if the New York Fire Department hadn’t happened to be there. I’m serious. Ladder Company 9 does their grocery shopping for the firehouse at the Grand Union—I know, because Lilly—back when we were friends and first realized firemen are hot— and I used to go there all the time to watch them as they picked through the nectarines and mangoes—and they happened to be there, stocking up for the week, when my mom went horizontal. They checked her pulse right away and figured out she wasn’t dead. Then they called an ambulance and whisked her to St. Vincent’s, the closest ER.
Too bad my mom was unconscious. She would so totally have loved to have seen all those hot firefighters bending over her. Plus, you know, the fact that they were strong enough to lift her… and at her current weight, that’s saying a lot. That’s pretty cool.
You can imagine when I was just sitting there, bored out of my skull in French, and my cell phone rang… well, I freaked. Not because it was the first time anyone had ever called me, or even because Mademoiselle Klein fully confiscates any cell phones that ring during her class, but because the only people who are allowed to call me on my cell phone are my mom and Mr. G, and then only to let me know that I need to get to home, because my sibling is about to be born.
Except that when I finally answered the phone—it took me a minute to figure out it was MY phone that was ringing—I kept looking around accusingly at everybody else in class, who just blinked confusedly back at me—it wasn’t my mom or Mr. G to tell me the baby was coming. It was Captain Pete Logan, to ask me if I knew a Helen Thermopolis, and if so, could I meet her at St. Vincent’s Hospital immediately. The firemen had found my mom’s cell phone in her purse, and dialed the only number she stored in it….
Mine.
I about had a coronary, of course. I shrieked and grabbed my backpack, then Lars. Then he and I booked out of there without a word of explanation to anyone… like I had suddenly developed Asperger’s syndrome or something. On our way out of the building, I skidded past Mr. Gianini’s classroom, then backed up and stuck my head in to scream that his wife was in the hospital and that he better put down that chalk and come with us.
I’ve never seen Mr. G look so scared. Not even the first time he met Grandmère.
Then the three of us all ran out for the Seventy-seventh-Street subway station—because there was no way a cab was going to get us there fast enough in the midday traffic, and Hans and the limo are off duty every day until I get out of school at three.
I don’t think the staff at St. Vincent’s—who are totally excellent, by the way—ever encountered anything quite like a hysterical princess of Genovia, her bodyguard, and her stepfather before. The three of us burst into the ER waiting area and just stood there screaming my mom’s name until finally this nurse came out of triage and was like, “Helen Thermopolis is just fine. She’s awake and resting right now. She just got a little dehydrated, and fainted.”
“Dehydrated?” I about had another coronary, but this time for different reasons. “She hasn’t been drinking her eight glasses of water a day?”
The nurse smiled and said, “Well, she mentioned that the baby is putting a lot of pressure on her bladder….”
“Is she going to be all right?” Mr. G wanted to know.
“Is the BABY going to be all right?” I wanted to know.
