Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 03 - When the Carny Comes to Town Read Online Free PDF

carnival.  If I hadn’t stayed to have breakfast at Newhart’s Diner I’d have been long gone.” 
    He shook hands with me and then Aunt Madge, ignoring Ramona for probably sanitary reasons.  “I expect you’ll know the local doctors who will care for him,” he said.
    Aunt Madge gripped his hand and looked him in the eye.  “I will forever regard you as a miracle.”
    He pulled back his hand and gave her a tap on the shoulder.  “I’ll tell my wife you said that.” 
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    IT WAS ANOTHER HOUR before anyone came to talk to us again.  Once Aunt Madge made sure the right people knew where we were waiting she wouldn’t let me go bug them.  The cleaning person who came to deal with the trash can refused Aunt Madge’s offer to buy him a cup of coffee and a roll.  “Comes with the territory,” was all he said.
    Finally a woman in scrubs came in to say Scoobie had been moved to Intensive Care and we could go to the waiting area there.  As we took the elevator to the fourth floor I wanted to scream.  Didn’t they know we needed to see Scoobie right now ?
    We sat and I scanned the room for the nearest waste basket.  Just in case. 
    After a few moments Ramona got up and walked to the window.  She stood looking out for a minute and then turned back to us.  “I can’t believe this is happening.”
    Aunt Madge looked at her and then me, and asked her question a bit differently.  “You two are sure you don’t know anyone mad at him, right?”
    I shook my head.  “Everybody, even Joe Regan, talks about how great Scoobie’s doing, with school, and everything.”
    “And half of them say it’s because of you,” Ramona said, nodding at me.
    “Me?”  I stared at her.  “What did I do?”
    “Nothing annoying at the moment,” Aunt Madge said, dryly.
    Ramona shrugged.  “You guys had a lot of fun in high school.  You know Scoobie’s always been…”
    “A little different,” Aunt Madge threw in.
    Ramona nodded.  “You guys hung out all the time in junior year, and you do again.  You get him.”  She shrugged.
    I knew what she meant.  Scoobie and I had talked a couple of times over the winter about how unhappy we both were during eleventh grade — not that we had talked about it back then.  For me only that one year was really unhappy.  My life was okay once my parents got back together and I went home to Lakewood.
    Scoobie won’t talk to me much about his life then, but I guess his severely alcoholic mother, to use Aunt Madge’s phrase, either ignored him or tried to get him to sneak booze to her when his father was not around, which was a lot of the time.  I didn’t know this at the time.  I just figured he was allowed to be where he wanted to be when he wanted to be there.  Aunt Madge, of course, kept a much tighter rein on me, but she went to bed early, so if the weather was halfway warm I’d sneak out.
    Before I could say anything a nurse walked in.  “Hi, Madge.”  She leaned against a small table and faced the three of us.  “He’s doing a lot better than anyone thought he would when he got to the ER, but he’s got a long way to go.”
    “Has he been conscious at all?”  Aunt Madge asked.
    “Several times he responded to commands to wiggle his toes.  And about the third time I asked him to squeeze my hand he scratched his index finger on the sheet, and when I looked at it he made a loose fist and then raised his middle finger at me.”
    I don’t think I’ve ever cried that hard in my life, not even the night Robby told me he was going to be arrested for embezzling.  It was a couple minutes before I could stop, even with Aunt Madge giving me a continual one-armed hug and Ramona pushing tissues at me.
    “I’m so sorry,” I hiccupped and wiped my sweaty face with a handful of the cheap hospital tissues. 
    “It’s okay,” Ramona said.  She was kneeling on the floor in front of me and she grinned.  At least you didn’t need the waste