For breakfast, I’m given lukewarm oatmeal that tastes like cardboard. I want real food. Something that will sink into my stomach and stick to my insides. I want a cheeseburger and french fries and a Coke from the Belmont Diner across the street from school. But I bet the diner is gone.
Nurse Cathy, in another pair of soft pink scrubs, the hem of a purple T-shirt peeking out, comes into my room while I’m eating. The bun on top of her head droops lower today, as if it’s tired like her eyes. She looks like she’s been working for a week straight. It’s possible. Probable. I take another bite of oatmeal. It struggles down my throat before it sits like a rock in my stomach.
“Good news.” Nurse Cathy turns to me, hands on her hips. “You’ve been cleared to get out of here today.”
I shake my head. “I have nowhere to go.” Is there still a home to go home to?
“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. Not the hospital. Just here. The ICU.” She looks around my private space. “They’ve designated a special ward a couple floors up for kids like you.”
“Like me?”
She pats my shoulder like she senses my distress. “Minors who still need medical attention and their parents.”
“Parent.”
“Our outreach team will meet with you and get all your information. They’re working with FEMA to reconnect families. They’ve had tremendous success over the last few days.”
If they’re so successful, why can’t they find my mom? Is it because she can’t be found?
“But you won’t be there?” I ask.
“Chin up. You don’t need me, Ruby.”
I can’t help the way my eyes dart to the room across from mine. The one that went dark last night. Moving to another unit means it’s not my turn to die. As much as that brings me peace, the thought of going somewhere else, with more people I don’t know, makes my stomach hurt. But I can’t give in to that. Because leaving here means I’m one step closer to getting out of the hospital. I didn’t come here to die.
“When am I going?”
“After breakfast.”
I set my spoon to the side of the bowl. Push it across the tray. “I’m ready.”
Nurse Cathy comes to my side. “You’re a fighter, Ruby Babcock.” She unwraps my arm bandage and dabs on a fresh coat of ointment. I dare a glance at the rack of stitches. My cut is red and angry. A reminder of the rubble. “You’ll have a scar.” She fastens the self-stick tape at the end of the bandage, rests her hand above my elbow. “Let yours remind you of how brave you’ve been. How brave you are.”
“I’ll try.”
She takes off her gloves. Drops them into the red hazardous-waste bin. Heads back to the workstation and into my room again with clothes in her hands.
“I found a clean sweatshirt and sweatpants and some sneakers in the donation box. You can change before you go.” She sets them down on my bed along with a T-shirt for a 5K marathon I’ll never run and a big pair of clean white underwear like my grandma might wear.
“Like the first day of school,” I say. She laughs.
She gives me privacy to change, then helps me into a wheelchair. She puts my dirty team sweatshirt and Charlie’s journal into a plastic bag and sets it on my lap. I look down at myself and instantly remember a photo of my mom and dad leaving the hospital with me after I was born. She’s sitting in a wheelchair like this one, but instead of holding a plastic bag with a dirty sweatshirt, she’s holding me. I am pink and tiny and wrapped in a blanket. My mom looks unsure. My dad looks proud.
“Ready?”
I nod.
The pod people stand and wave farewell as we go by. Even though they’re strangers, they’re happy for my recovery. The Big One has connected all of us.
Nurse Cathy pushes me toward the elevator. Punches the button with her knuckle. “Good news: the elevators are running again. Progress.”
I remember the way the men from the ambulance brought me through the stairwell, passing the bodies piled up. I remember the stench and my being afraid I’d be one of them. Because of Nurse Cathy and Doctor Patel and the man with the big hands and the calm voice, I’m not.
The bright lights inside the elevator make Nurse Cathy look extra tired.
“Do you get to go home after this?”
She shrugs. “Unlikely. The work is endless. I’ve been catching a couple of hours of sleep at the hospital when I can.”
“I’m glad you took care of me.” I need to say the words because I want her to know them. I want her to know I’m thankful for her.
She smiles. “I am too.”
The elevator dings, the doors slide open, and Nurse Cathy wheels me through some big doors on another floor. It doesn’t even look like a regular hospital corridor. It’s just a big room, like an auditorium, full of cots and people. Young people. Little kids. Kids who are whimpering. Some curled into their own bodies, sucking their thumbs. Others my age, sitting in corners or gathered around the big window in the back. There’s a crack through the middle of the window. A jagged and uneven scar like the one on my arm. A reminder that this building shook but didn’t break.
“I have Ruby Babcock for you,” Nurse Cathy says to another nurse who wears white scrubs with teddy bears on them.
“Nice to meet you, Ruby. I’m Nurse Yvette.”
I’m holding Nurse Cathy’s hand even though I don’t remember reaching for it. “It’s hard to say goodbye to you.”
She crouches next to me. Meets me eye-to-eye. “This is a happy goodbye, Ruby. You’ll be out of here in no time.”
I hope she’s right.