Kalila Read Online Free PDF Page B

spectacular. This morning she’s been making playdough for her preschool class. Emily’s caught the flu. Yesterday Iris took her to the doctor. She’s home from school today. They are forecasting high winds. Maggie, what can I do to help?
    The radio is playing, I want you to tell me why you walked out on me .
    The morning sun a cheerful flush against Nose Hill, the barren trees.
    I’m so lonesome every da-ay …
    Are things any better? Is there any news?
    The doctor says she has right ventricle hypertrophy.
    What?
    Her heart is enlarged, Iris. And she has pulmonary hypertension.
    Maggie, you have to speak my language.
    Her lungs aren’t working right, okay? Her blood pressure is way too high. She has too much fluid. They don’t know why. And now they’ve found her left kidney’s not developed.
    Skipper shoves against me.
    Walk right back to me this minute ,
    Bring your love to me, don’t send it …
    I am crying, and Iris begins to cry, and we chalk up tears at thirty-seven cents a minute while outside people scrape their sidewalks and enter taxis, light cigarettes, someone holds up a bank on Centre Street, a woman murders a man in an apartment complex, and children dash along the river hand in hand.

I cart language around this foreign landscape.
    What’s that tube doing up my baby’s nose? Why is a neurosurgeon checking her out? She’s not #524010. She’s not Baby Solantz. This baby has a name. Kalila. Why didn’t someone say she needed a hearing test? Why can’t you find the vein?
    The nurses chat among themselves. The mother-in-law of the redhead dislikes her, always has. The big one with the neck scar touts the merits of microfibre cloths over paper towels. The freckled one orders shoes online. You can do returns if they don’t fit.
    Dr. Vanioc strides down the hall. I feel the urge to break and enter, take an axe, smash barriers down. Can we talk?
    Dr. Vanioc skids to a stop.
    What’s apnea?
    When a baby forgets to breathe, Mrs. Solantz.
    Watson. What are bradys?
    Severe apnea can lead to bradycardia, a dangerous slowing of the heart rate. He glances at his watch.
    You mean it might stop?
    He looks at me.
    What’s interstitial?
    Fluid sometimes seeps into the tissue. We’re careful as we can be.
    You mean the skin?
    I mean the tissue.
    Will that kill her?
    Mrs. Solantz, it just swells up the tissue.
    She’s doing relatively well, but … She’s some better today, although … Today’s results are somewhat optimistic, yet …
    I cling to intensifiers and conjunctions. What’s wrong with her? It’s been nine weeks. Can you just give it a name? Didn’t have my hand up. Spoke out of turn. I’ll be sent back to the social worker’s office. Nope. Not going there. Babies airlifted here from Brooks, Nanton, the Porcupine Hills, from Field, B.C., dropped down in Calgary sunlight from place names that conjure pure spring water, fresh earth, mountain streams, healthy outdoors. Babies spin down corridors past oatmeal-coloured walls, a collection of nurses bagging on the run, heralding another birth, a forlorn father staring from the birthing room door.
    Don’t expect a forecast. The weather here is unpredictable.
    I turn my back, walk out the hospital doors, drive to a bookstore, buy myself Cartright’s Medical Home Dictionary . A thousand pages. Four pounds. To hell with them, I’ll learn the language myself.
    I stop at the bank, mail electricity and gas bills, fill the car, wind tearing at my clothes, pay library fines, pick up a windshield scraper, renew Maclean’s , buy Brodie garlic pills. The airwaves resonate with heartache: a gang of teenaged boys’ tough bravado, a woman in an electric wheelchair hailing a cab, a couple standing in Mark’s Work Warehouse, fighting about jeans. I head for the grocery store. My gaping heart. Like Jesus’s, it has no protective cover.

You help