Swim the Fly (26 page)

There’s a small TV mounted in the corner of the room. It keeps fluttering from color to black-and-white. One of the Rush Hour movies is playing, but the sound is off, so you really can’t tell what’s going on. Still, I keep catching myself staring at the screen.

It’s surprisingly quiet here, save for the hum of the fluorescent lights, the flip of magazine pages, and the occasional whisper. The swirl of ammonia and rubbing alcohol is burning my sinuses.

“Matthew Gratton.” A wizened nurse with a scowl and a manila folder calls out my name. If there are going to be any sponge baths, I can only hope she won’t be the one administering them.

Mom, Grandpa, and me all stand and make our way toward her.

“This way,” the nurse says as she turns on her heel and walks down the hallway.

The three of us follow. We take a left at the corner and pass a long row of makeshift curtained-off rooms. There is a lady sobbing and sniffling behind one of the curtains and an old man moaning weakly behind another.

The nurse leads us to a free cubicle with an examination bed, a chair, and a small cabinet. She makes me sit on the bed and takes my temperature and my blood
pressure and then writes something down in the folder, which she places in a plastic file-holder at the end of the bed.

“The doctor will be in to see you shortly,” the nurse says before leaving.

“Goddamn it, I hate hospitals,” Grandpa announces. “The smell and the cold lighting and the attitude they serve you. It’s enough to make you never want to get ill.”

Mom gives Grandpa a look. “Everyone here’s overworked, Dad.”

“Please. That’s no excuse. It’s not like people get sick on purpose. Speaking of which, did you see the lady with the elephant arm in the waiting room?” Grandpa says. “Christ. What the hell do you think caused that?”

“Dad, please.”

“Must have been some kind of allergic reaction or something, don’t you think? She was a pretty good-looking gal, too, but if that swollen-arm thing were permanent? I don’t know that I could overlook something like that.”

“I’m sure your opinion’s the first thing on her mind.” Mom turns toward me. “How are you feeling, honey?”

“I’m feeling kind of nauseous.” Which is completely true. I don’t know if it’s the anxiety or all the sick people or what, but my head is light and I feel like I might pass out.

Grandpa huffs. “We should have said you were
having heart pains. They always take the heart-pain cases first.”

“Right,” Mom says. “And what happens when the doctor comes in and Matt says it’s his stomach?”

“We blame it on Nurse Sourpuss.”

Mom shakes her head. “Sometimes I don’t understand how we could be related.”

“Of course we are, Colleen. You just got the Goody Two-Shoes gene. Don’t worry, Matt. It usually skips a generation.”

This makes me laugh, and I use the opportunity to grimace in pain.

Mom glares at Grandpa Arlo. “Now see what you did?”

A small but stately woman with a great shock of gray-blond hair enters our cubicle. She’s wearing a long white coat and a stethoscope. “Hello. I’m Dr. Kesler.”

Mom introduces herself, Grandpa, and me.

Dr. Kesler grabs the folder at the foot of the bed and lifts a pair of black-rimmed glasses that hang from a thin chain around her neck. She positions them on the end of her nose and proceeds to read.

She closes the folder and looks at me. “So. What seems to be the problem?”

“Sounds like appendicitis, Doc,” Grandpa Arlo says.

“Dad. Let the doctor do her job.”

“You’re having pain in your abdomen?” Dr. Kesler asks.

“Yes,” I say. “Right around here.” I show her.

“Why don’t you take off your shirt?”

If I could snap my fingers and be back home right now, I would. But that’s not going to happen, and I’m too scared to tell the truth. So I slowly pull my T-shirt up and over my head, making sure not to play the pain too big.

The doctor moves in closer, and I get a whiff of her Popsicle-stick smell. She listens to my heart with her stethoscope. Has me breathe in and out. She looks down my throat, in my ears, in my eyes.

“Sit up tall.” Her hands are cold as she presses on the left side of my belly. “How’s that feel?”

“Fine,” I say.

She moves her hand right below my belly button and puts pressure. “That?”

“Sore,” I say, because I figure she’s getting closer, so it must hurt a bit.

When she presses down on the right side of my abdomen, I give her my best it-hurts-like-hell-but-I’m-not-going-to-show-it face, accompanied by a minor gasp.

“That?” she says.

“Pretty bad.”

“Okay. Lie down on the bed for me.”

I do as I’m told. She has me sit up and lie back down again. She makes me bend my legs and lift them to my chest. Coop didn’t go over any of this, so I have to improvise when to wince and when to play it cool.

The doctor scribbles something down on my chart. “How long have you been feeling like this?”

“Since this morning,” Mom leaps in. “Sorry. I’ll let you answer, honey.”

“Actually,” I say, “I woke up in the night and felt it, too.” I just remembered Coop telling me to say this, because if you suddenly feel sick in the morning, it’s more obvious you’re trying to get out of something. But if you felt it in the night, it’s easier to believe.

“Okay, well,” Dr. Kesler says. “We’ll take some blood. Get a urine sample. See what shows up.”

“What do you think it could be?” Mom asks, rubbing her arm nervously.

Dr. Kesler places my file back on the counter. “I thought maybe gastroenteritis, but the pain’s localized so I’d say it’s most likely his appendix.”

Mom swallows loudly. “What do we do about that?”

“To be honest, I don’t like to fool around with something like this,” Dr. Kesler says gravely. “I’m inclined to just go in and remove it.”

“What?” I say. “An operation? I thought you only operated when it bursts.”

Dr. Kesler gives a little patronizing laugh. “No, no. We’d much rather get it before it progresses to that point. If it had burst already, you wouldn’t be able to talk right now. We have a saying when it comes to the appendix: when in doubt, take it out.”

“SHOULDN’T WE WAIT?”
I say. “To see if it gets better?”

Dr. Kesler studies me. “We could wait. But I wouldn’t recommend it. If we go in now, it’s a very simple operation. If we hold off and it ruptures, we’re talking about a much more serious situation.”

“You don’t want that, Matt,” Grandpa says. “Trust me. My buddy Arthur Gertzen had that happen, and he said it was like someone was stabbing at his intestines with a red-hot knitting needle.”

Oh, crap. What have I done? My whole body starts to sweat.

“Are you sure it’s his appendix?” Mom says.

“Am I one hundred percent sure? No, because there’s no way to tell until we get in there. We can only diagnose appendicitis by symptoms. Does he have most of the symptoms? Yes, he does.”

“All right. I’m going to call work,” Mom says. “Tell them I won’t be able to make it in today.” She starts
digging in her purse for her cell phone. She pulls out her cigarettes, her compact, her wallet.

“When was the last time he ate?”

“Just a mouthful of eggs at breakfast.” Mom has found her phone. “He wasn’t very hungry. Maybe three hours ago?”

“Good. By the time we get prepped, he should be fine for the anaesthesia.”

My face is buried in my hands.

“Don’t worry.” Dr. Kesler pats my leg. “It’ll all be over before you know it.”

Mom and the doctor both leave. One of them pulls the curtain closed, but I don’t look up to see who.

Grandpa Arlo sits in the chair. “Well, at least you’ll have a cool scar to impress the ladies with.”

“Yeah,” I say into my sweaty palms. “Lucky me.”

“Speaking of ladies. Guess who knew the whole time that I was the one who sent the kitten?”

I lift my head and look over at him.

“I knew that’d get your mind off things.” Grandpa’s smiling big. “I came clean yesterday when Edith wanted to expand the search. Put up a few hundred more posters. She laughed at me when I finally told her. Said she’d known all along. She was just waiting for me to say something. I thought it was just your grandmother, but it turns out all women are psychic. You think they have no idea what you’re thinking, but they know. They know everything.”

“Everything?” I say, wondering if Dr. Kesler could see right through my charade the way Mrs. Hoogenboom saw through Grandpa’s.

“I know.” Grandpa Arlo nods. “It’s scary. And if they don’t know right away, they’ll find out soon enough. Trust me on this, Matt: there’s nothing you can get away with as far as women are concerned.”

“Nothing?” I say.

“It’s taken me seventy-six years to learn the few things I know about women.” Grandpa counts these off on his fingers, starting with his thumb. “Tell them the truth. Tell them about your feelings. And tell them in excruciating detail. If you can remember even one of these things, you’ll get more jazz than I could have ever imagined at your age.”

My eyes shoot over to the closed curtain. I don’t want to wait around for Dr. Kesler to call my bluff. I look over at Grandpa Arlo in the chair. He’s the only one who’d understand. “Grandpa, I need your help.”

Grandpa sits up. “What is it?”

“I lied,” I whisper. “I don’t have appendicitis. I was just trying to get out of the swim meet today.”

“Holy crap.” Grandpa’s eyes look like they’re going to shoot across the room. He leaps to his feet. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“It had to be something big or my coach wouldn’t believe it.”

“Well, we have to tell them.”

“Maybe they know already,” I say. “Like you said about women.”

“They don’t know, Matt. Believe me. Give them some time and they’d probably figure it out, but we don’t
have
time. We need to say something. Now.”

“No. Please. Can’t we just — I don’t know — pretend I’m feeling a little better or something. Otherwise it’ll get back to Ms. Luntz and if it gets back to her —”

“They want to operate on you, Matt. Do you understand that? It can’t be worth getting sliced open for.”

I look down at the floor. I don’t know what to say. You’d think it’d be more clear-cut, but there are good arguments for both sides.

“What’s all this about?”

“It’s a girl. I was trying to make her think I was a jock, so I volunteered to swim the butterfly for our team. I thought I’d be able to practice enough so that I could actually swim it, but I’m not ready yet.”

Grandpa laughs and smacks my shoulder. “Uh-huh. I told you it skipped a generation.”

“Can you help me?”

Grandpa does his tongue-rolling thing as he mulls this over. “All right. All right. Let me think.” He moves over to the small cabinet in the corner. He finds a box of latex gloves and pulls one out. “Here we go. This could work.”

“What are you going to do?”

“No time to explain. You just play along.” Grandpa starts blowing up the rubber glove like a balloon. It gets bigger and bigger until it’s the size of a beach ball. He pinches off the end with one hand and tugs his dress shirt up with the other. “Let’s hope this does the trick.”

“Grandpa?”

“On three, I need you to groan, but not too loudly, okay?”

“Groan?”

Grandpa doesn’t wait to clarify. “One. Two. Three.”

I have no alternative, so I let out a soft low moan.

Grandpa Arlo licks his right hand and wets the loose skin on his belly. He presses the closed-off end of the inflated glove to his stomach and then starts to let the air out.

It makes a very realistic farting sound. “Groan a little louder,” he whispers.

“Ohhhhhh,” I wail.

And with that, Grandpa releases even more air, creating an even louder, floppier fart noise.

He nods to me. “Now for the grand finale.”

“Oh, my God!” I scream. “Uhhhhhhh!”

Grandpa Arlo lets the last rush of air fly from the glove through the soggy folds of skin on his stomach, and it’s the loudest, wettest fart I’ve ever heard in my life. It echoes through the emergency ward.

“Whoa-lly Jesus!” Grandpa calls out. “Clear the area. That was some explosive flatulence. Whew!” Grandpa
Arlo rips open the curtains and flaps them in the air like a crazy man. “Nobody light a match.”

The nurse, the doctor, and Mom all rush back in.

“What the hell’s going on?” Mom demands.

“I think we might have to make a new diagnosis,” Grandpa says to the doctor as he continues to flutter the curtains. “That boy had more gas than the
Hindenburg.
”

“Matt? Are you okay, honey?” Mom asks.

I glance up at Grandpa, who gives me the slightest smile.

“I can’t believe it,” I say. “I feel so much better.” I stand up and press my hand into my right side. “There’s no pain at all. It’s like a miracle.”