32
My hope evaporates the minute Tata begins examining Mikey. Tata’s face is grim as he takes Mikey’s pulse and listens to his heart.
“Tell them they need to get this boy to a hospital,” Tata finally says to me. “There’s nothing I can do for him here.”
I want to scream. I realize that it’s my fault we don’t have any extra Amber to spare. If I hadn’t stolen from the supplies in our basement, Tata wouldn’t have dumped the rest in our yard.
When I translate Tata’s words, Aunt Flora’s face goes pale. But she doesn’t seem surprised at the news. It’s as if she knew the truth but didn’t want to admit it to herself.
“If we could just get more Amber—” Daniel starts to say, but Tata cuts him off with a wave of his hand.
“Tell them the boy needs a blood transfusion,” he says to me. “Without that, more Amber won’t help him.”
“If we bring Mikey to the hospital, they might realize his papers were forged. There’s a good chance they’ll deport him,” Aunt Flora says when I’ve relayed Tata’s words.
“Yes, but they’ll give him the blood first,” Tata has me say. “They’re ethically bound to stabilize him.”
“But not to cure him,” Aunt Flora says with a weary sigh. “They’ll get him well enough to send him back across the border, but he’ll still be sick. Without Amber, he’ll die.”
I start to translate what she said, but Tata must have understood because he cuts in. “Stay here, he die faster.”
The room is still for a long moment. Then Tata’s voice takes on a gentle tone, one I’ve rarely heard. “Tell them that I lost a son while we were waiting to be allowed into this country,” he says to me. “Every day I wonder what would have happened if we’d tried to find another way in. But we didn’t. We waited like we were supposed to. When our time came, it was too late. Tell them that they’ll never regret anything more than doing nothing.”
Tears trickle down my face as I say the words, and when she hears them, Aunt Flora nods. “All right,” she says. “We’ll bring him in.”
“Aunt Flora, we can’t!” Daniel cries.
“He’s right,” she says. “We’ve already waited too long. We need to do something now.” Then she scoops Mikey out of the bed as though he weighs almost nothing, and we follow her out of the house.
Once Mikey is stable, as Aunt Flora predicted, the doctor refuses to give him any more Amber. While the hospital officials wait for immigration agents to come review the case, Tata and I are asked to leave, since we’re not family.
“I sorry I could not more do,” Tata tells Aunt Flora, but she warmly shakes his hand and thanks him anyway.
We walk back through the crowded emergency room waiting area, which is full of sick kids coughing and sneezing, their noses raw and red. Mikey must have skipped by all of them to be seen by the one doctor and one nurse on duty. Miss Patel told us there weren’t a lot of doctors in Amberland, but I didn’t realize she meant almost none.
“We’ve been here for hours,” I hear a little girl complaining to her mom as she groans and holds her stomach. I think of all the kids who’ve been missing school lately, sick for the first time in their lives without Amber to protect them. Have they all had to wait in lines like this?
Tata stops walking for a second and studies the girl. Then he turns to me and says, “Tell the mother to make sure she’s giving her daughter plenty of fluids or she’ll get worse.”
I blink at him.
“Translate it for me,” he instructs.
Finally understanding, I shyly go over to the woman and tell her what Tata said.
“Is he a doctor?” the woman asks.
“Yes,” I answer.
“Then why isn’t he doing something to help all of these people?”
“He—he’s not from here. He was a doctor back home but—”
“A doctor’s a doctor,” she says. Then she turns to Tata and says, “Please, we need your help.”
I translate for him even though I can tell he understands. But a man nearby who must have heard us speaking another language growls, “Why don’t you folks get out of here?” Tata takes a step back, as if he’s been slapped. The man has one arm around a small boy who looks feverish, but his eyes are narrowed at us, as if we’re the reason why his son is sick.
“I am sorry,” Tata says to the woman. Then he takes my hand and pulls me away.
As we march down the hospital hallway, I can’t help saying, “There were a lot of sick kids waiting.”
“Most of them have illnesses that will clear up on their own,” Tata says. “It will take time for people to adjust to how things are now. They’ll need to hire and train more doctors and learn to heal without Amber.”
“But what about the really sick ones?” I ask as we head toward the main entrance. “Who’ll help them now?”
“I don’t know,” Tata says simply, and the words chill me. Tata has always had an answer to my questions before, even if it’s not one I wanted to hear.
As we go through the hospital doors, I hear chanting and shouting. Protestors. They’re holding the now-familiar signs. SAVE OUR AMBER. But I see a couple of new ones too: SEND THE BOY BACK! and NO SHORTCUTS INTO AMBERLAND.
“Word must have spread about Mikey,” Tata says.
“But they can’t be protesting him. He’s five!”
“They’re protesting what he represents,” Tata says.
For a moment I think about putting on a crazy costume like Aunt Flora and holding up my own signs, but I’m not sure what the signs would say. Is it fair that Mikey gets Amber when he’s not legally allowed to be here? No. But does that mean his parents should have kept him at home and let him die?
I don’t know the answer. But yelling and screaming at the hospital windows for Mikey and his family to “go back where they came from” can’t be it.