Some Kind of Normal by Heidi Willis Read Free Book Online Page A

It's as if she's suddenly let go of trying so hard to be
well and has given in to being sick. I wonder how hard it's been on
her the last few days trying to stay functional if she's been this
sick all along.
    "It's all right," he says, looking at Ashley and then
at his watch. "It's almost noon. I should get back to my own office
and see my other patients. I'll drive back after the office closes
and we can talk then."
    "Your office? Don't you work in the hospital?"
    He laughs. "No. I go in occasionally when one of my
patients needs me, but mostly I work in my private practice."
    "You're gonna drive all the way back home, and then
back here tonight?" Travis asks.
    "Sure. It's only about an hour." We don't answer
that, but I'm sure Travis is thinking the same thing that I am:
that an hour might as well be cross-country for us.
    When he leaves, Travis and I feel alone in the room.
There's some machine hooked up to Ashley that keeps beeping every
few seconds, and her breathing is still more like a fish flung on
the floor, but as we are the only two awake people in the room, the
unquiet quiet feels unnatural.
    Travis breaks the awkwardness by standing and making
a big deal out of stretching his arms over his head, which expose
his belly hanging over his belt. "Should we go see if we can get a
Dr. Pepper or something?"
    "I'm not going and facing those women."
    "I thought they were your friends."
    "They aren't. Just 'cause we go to church with them
don't mean we're friends. I don't have the energy right now to deal
with them, and if there are four of them down there by now, it'd
take all the oil wells in Houston to get me enough energy."
    He shrugs. "How 'bout a coke machine?"
    We find the machine in the waiting room at the end of
the PICU wing. Travis pulls a wrinkled bill out of his pocket and
tries to feed it into the machine. The machine don't like it and
spits it out. He smoothes it down and tries again. Again it comes
out.
    "For Pete's sake. You got any money?" I don't have to
check my wallet 'cause I don't carry cash. At least, not the bill
kind. I start pulling out everything in my purse to see if there
ain't some change at the bottom when a lady thrusts a crisp, new
bill at us.
    "Here. I have a pocket full of them. I get them at
the bank down the street. I ask for new bills there, because
otherwise I might never get a drink here."
    Travis thanks her, trades his wrinkled dollar for her
starched flat one, and slides it in. It eats it immediately and
deposits a can with a loud clunk. He pops the top and takes a long
swig and hands it to me. I wave it off and thank the lady. "You
visiting someone?" I ask.
    She shakes her head. "My son's in here. He was in a
bike accident. He fell down a ravine and hit his head and broke a
few bones."
    "That's awful," I say, but not meaning it
wholeheartedly because right now I wish Ashley only had a few
broken bones.
    "What kind of bones did he break to land him in
PICU?" asks Travis.
    I elbow him to give him the signal he's been rude,
but the lady tears up and suddenly I'm looking for the tissues.
"He's in a coma. He slammed his head pretty good. It ricocheted his
brain against his cranium and now. . ." She trails off, and I feel
awful for thinking what I did about Ashley.
    "Motorcycles are dangerous things," I say, trying to
be sympathetic.
    She stops sniffling a moment and looks up at me
confused. "Not a motorcycle bike. A bicycle. He's eight."
    My vision of a teenager careening down a hill comes
to a halt. I think of Logan when he was eight, still innocent and
fun. He'd stopped hugging me by then, but he still let me wrap my
arms around him and tell him I loved him. To lose him in those
years. . ..
    "I'm so sorry."
    "Yes," she says, dabbing at her eyes. "Me too."
     
    ~~~~
     

Chapter Six
     
    "Inside our bodies we have lots of different organs
that do different things," Dr. Benton is saying. He settles back
down on Ashley's right side and is talking directly to her. "Take
the heart. What