Free Grace Grows by Shelle Sumners Page B

time the doctor came in, every muscle was burning and I was desperate to pee.
    She was a pretty intern, about my age, Indian-American. I moved to the chair and listened to him retell the whole story he’d told the nurse in triage.
    The doctor pressed gently on his lower belly. Ty recoiled and said, loudly, shit, fuck, motherfucker, son of a bitch, son of a fucking bitch, get away from me, I hate you, etc.
    “Right,” Dr. Pallava said. “We need to get a CT scan.”
    I waited in the hall outside Radiology. A nurse with a kind face came out and told me to go back to the ER and get his clothes. He had acute appendicitis and they were calling a surgeon.
    “He’s having surgery?”
    “Yes, as soon as the doctor gets here. We want to get that appendix out before it ruptures.”
    I stared at her.
    “Get his things and meet me at the fifth-floor nurse’s station.” She gave me a gentle shove in the right direction.
    When I got to the fifth floor, they told me the surgeon couldn’t get there till three o’clock.
    “That’s more than two hours!” I said to the nice nurse.
    “We’ll try to make him comfortable till then,” she said.
    “But what if his appendix bursts?”
    She patted me on the arm. “We hope that won’t happen.”
    She took me to his room. He was in the bed nearest the door. I couldn’t see who was on the other side; the curtain was drawn. There was another nurse, an older man, putting an IV in his arm.
    I piled all our stuff on the chair and sat on the bed and held his hand.
    “I have a cute appendix,” he said.
    “You would.”
    “The doctor can’t come take it out till three.”
    “I know. Let’s call your parents, and Bogue.”
    “Yeah, get my phone, it’s in my jeans.”
    I found the phone and brought it back to the bed.
    The nurse finished inserting the IV and said, “I’ll be right back.”
    “Hurry, man,” Ty said to the nurse. To me he said, “He’s going to give me morphine.”
    “Good.” I wanted that desperate look in his eyes to go away.
    He rested a weak hand on my shoulder. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
    Tears came, surprising me. One rolled down my face before I got myself together. I wiped it away fast. “Of course.”
    “I’ll be all right, darlin’.”
    “Oh yes, I know.”
    He laid his head back and closed his eyes. His hand slipped down and came to rest momentarily with his palm lightly cupping the side of my left breast. He was dangerously ill and still trying to cop a feel.
    The nurse came back in and inserted a syringe into the IV line.
    “Ty,” I said, “why did you come to walk the dogs? Why didn’t you just go to the hospital?”
    “I don’t know. It hurt , Gracie. I came to you.”
    I laid my hand over his. I didn’t know what to say.
    His eyes opened wide, looked at me in surprise, and rolled back in his head.
    “How’s that? Better?” the nurse asked.
    “Unnnnnhhhhh,” Ty said blissfully.
    “I’ll take that as a yes,” the nurse said.
    Ty floated away. I stepped out in the hall to make calls. I scrolled through his phone book, found Bogue, and left him a message that Ty was going to be all right, but to come to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt ASAP.
    Then, looking for his parents, I scrolled through numbers for Cathy, Celia, Cindy, Denita, Felicia, Gina, Giselle, Gita, Hannah, and Hosafeena (yeesh, his spelling) before coming to ICE: Mom.
    I was impressed that he was that organized. I’d been meaning to reprogram my In Case of Emergency numbers with the ICE prefix and just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
    I hit Send. Four rings, and a woman answered cheerfully. “Hi, son!”
    “Hello, Mrs. Wilkie?”
    Hesitation. “Yes?”
    My heart was pounding, I was so nervous about how sick he was, and how to tell her without scaring her.
    “I—my name is Grace Barnum, I’m a friend of Tyler’s.”
    “Is he all right?”
    “Well, I think he’s going to be, but he’s going to have to have his appendix taken out this