Secret for a Song Read Online Free PDF Page A

thought struck me, like an arrow to the forehead. I had a
meeting with the hospital administrator this morning, the one Dr. Stone was
going to tell about my “issue.”
    I
threw on an old t-shirt and a sweater hoodie over it and slid into my jeans.
After my syringe was safely ensconced in my pocket, I made my way downstairs.
My mother sat in a kitchen chair, poring over the newspaper. From the back, she
looked thin and frail and small, like a child whose parents had abandoned her
in this giant house and strange life. She looked lost. Why couldn’t she see
that I was lost, too? That we could both be everything to each other?
    I
cleared my throat and she tossed a glance my way.
    “Good
morning, Mum.”
    “You
should leave right now if you want to make that meeting on time. Would you like
a ride?”
    “No,”
I said, as she expected me to. “I can walk.”
    I
grabbed an apple, put on my jacket and boots, and slipped out the door.
    Gramercy
Hospital was private and only a short two-block walk from the gates of my
parents’ neighborhood. The architects had designed it to look like an old
Catholic cathedral. I suppose being seen going into a hospital that actually resembled
a hospital would be too tacky for its white-collar patients.
    The
double doors slid open and the musty cold air wrapped itself around me. If the
hospital looked like a cathedral from the outside, it looked like an elite day
spa on the inside. They even had New Age Muzak piping from the speakers between
pages. I walked up to the receptionist’s marble-topped desk.
    She
smiled at me, her teeth a brilliant white. “Hi there.”
    “Hey.
Um, I’m here to see Linda Adams. My name’s Saylor Grayson.”
    “Hmm...”
She looked down at the clipboard on her desk and her blond hair fell in a
curtain to the desk. “Ah, you’re the volunteer!” Another grin. “Super. If
you’ll have a seat right there in that chair, I’ll give you a form to fill out.
‘K?”
    I
sat down, my head feeling hot and muddled with the fever. I fiddled with the
zipper pull on my jacket. How much did this receptionist—I looked at her name
plate; Betty—know about me and why I was here? She wasn’t casting too many
“discreet” glances my way, which told me that maybe she didn’t know.
    “There
you are.” She handed over a translucent pink clipboard and a gold pen. “That’s
just a regular volunteer application that all our volunteers need to fill out,
‘k?”
    I
nodded and glanced down. The questions looked pretty standard. Name, age,
emergency contact...my gaze stuttered over one question at the bottom: special
medical conditions. I looked at Betty through the fringe of my eyelashes, but
she’d gone back to tapping away at her keyboard. Gripping the pen tight, I
tried to think rationally. Dr. Stone had said I didn’t have to tell anyone
about the Munchausen except the hospital administrator. Then again, this
paperwork was for the hospital’s administrative purposes, wasn’t it? Was I
supposed to be honest on this piece of paper? I didn’t want to have to ask
Betty. Damn it, where was Linda Adams? Why hadn’t Dr. Stone told me that this
might happen?
    My
hand shaking, I wrote “M.S.” in the area that asked about medical conditions
and handed the paperwork back. Betty scanned it, and when her eyes lit upon the
last column, she looked up at me with pity in her eyes.
    “My
aunt has M.S.,” she said. “You poor thing.”
    A
frisson of pleasure and guilt spread from my scalp to my toes, like warm wax. “Yeah,
it sucks.”
    “Well,
let me page Linda and she’ll be right down to get you.”
    I
sat in the chair, nursing my lie in secret glee.
    Linda
Adams came downstairs to get me a few minutes later. She was a short, squat
African American woman with her braided hair in a bun high up on her head. She
moved with a sort of uneasy grace, as if she used to be much more petite than
she was now. When she offered me her hand, it was smooth and dry, her grip much
surer