Ask Me Why I Hurt Read Online Free PDF Page B

had not approved. The van was considered a clinic under the Phoenix Children’s Hospital; the administration wasessentially our boss, I felt, and we needed to follow its rules and regulations.
    Before I knew it, we were parked again in Tempe. A week had passed since our first visit. I was hoping to see the girl with the cherub’s face, but she didn’t appear, and when I asked the other kids, no one seemed to know who she was or where she had gone. The kids came all day, in dusty waves. They came with uncontrolled asthma, injuries from fights, broken teeth and noses, tooth abscesses, old scars from beatings, and long lists of symptoms that sometimes began in early childhood. I was already learning that this would be a typical day. None of the kids came with easy solutions either. As soon as I treated one symptom, a child would nonchalantly mention another. “I’ve had this bad cough now for months,” he or she would say, or, “My tummy hurts all the time.” Under it all was a desperate need for help: for shelter, housing, a search for relatives or friends to take the child in. But at least today I felt the day was going better. Jan had the kids organized and the new intake forms made care much easier. Jan was seeing as many patients as I was, or even more. We dashed in and out of the rooms, calling names.
    The day whizzed by. My last patient left, carrying a new inhaler. It had to be close to quitting time, I hoped. I stretched my back and looked at my watch. It was past eight, and I was starving. I hadn’t eaten all day, let alone taken a break. I stepped outside the van to take a breather. Dusk was falling. The heat was still a heavy mantle over my shoulders. Fresh sweat trickled down my back.
    That was when I saw her. She was sitting in one of the lawn chairs outside, as if waiting for someone to notice that she was there. I hoped she hadn’t been waiting the whole day. I grabbed a bottle of water and took it to her.
    She was slender and waiflike, almost ethereal. She had dark hair cut in elfin wisps around her face. She was far too pale for Arizona, a porcelain girl in the desert heat. Her jeans were stained, and the hems dragged in the dust. Thin adolescent shoulders jutted out from her T-shirt. She was just sitting there, slumped in her chair, looking exhausted. Her arms seemed immobilized fromweariness, almost dead in her lap. I noticed she wore something on one wrist, a bracelet.
    I sat in the chair next to her.
    “I’m Dr. Christensen,” I said. “What’s your name?”
    The moment stretched out. Finally she answered. “Mary.” It was a small and unimportant voice, the voice of a girl who has learned how to be forgotten.
    She took the bottle of water, reaching in slow motion. The bracelet swayed. The pockets of her jeans were pouched and grimy, and her fingernails were dirty. She obviously needed a bath and a change of clothes. She slumped back in her chair as if I weren’t there. The sun was setting, and the sky was aflame in streaks of magenta and orange, while the red stone mountains stood in sharp relief. The smell of citrus from ornamental orange bushes was heavy and florid, a thick perfume. In other places of the city people would be getting ready for dinner. They would be having meals in air-conditioned restaurants and later strolling in cool malls where fountains tinkled. Tempe was such a beautiful city, crowned with tall palm trees and rimmed with red mountains. Yet even here, like everywhere else, there were children like Mary.
    I sat next to her for a moment, making conversation, trying to help her feel comfortable. I sensed a fear about her, and I worried she might bolt. She sat with her hands loosely folded in her lap. We watched as a group of kids played hacky sack outside the van against a backdrop of the setting sun. Even in one-hundred-degree heat they would play, stopping every now and then to pant. Jan came out with several water bottles and left them on a chair for the kids.
    In