The Giant-Slayer by Iain Lawrence Read Free Book Online Page B

elevator doors were wide open. Laurie wanted to push her way past the nurse.
    “Carolyn likes people to think that she’s strong and brave,” said Miss Freeman. “But inside, she’s a frightened girl. Just a sad and lonely girl with not very much to look forward to.”
    “You said she’s getting better,” said Laurie.
    “Oh, there’s lots of ways she can make improvements.” The doors closed and the elevator hummed as it started down. “If wishing was medicine, Carolyn would have been home a long, long time ago. What she needs right now is a little understanding. She craves that, though she’d never admit it. Not many people come to visit Carolyn.”
    “No wonder,” said Laurie.
    Miss Freeman smiled. “If you showed some interest, it might surprise you what could happen.”
    “I think I should go home now,” said Laurie.
    “Of course,” said Miss Freeman. “But if you want to come back and see Dickie again, I think I could allow it.”
    “I’d like to,” said Laurie. “Sometime.”
    “Saturday would be terrific.”

    For the rest of the week, Laurie kept thinking about the polio ward and the iron lungs. She kept seeing the faces floating in the mirrors: Dickie Espinosa smiling as though he had no worries at all, Carolyn Jewels turning angrily aside. The first image made her happy, the other made her miserable. She wanted to talk to someone about it but didn’t dare say a word to her father.
    At the Valentine house, it was a week like any other. Mrs.Strawberry came and went, never particularly happy nor particularly sad. Mr. Valentine commented on stories in the newspaper, about Eisenhower and the atom bomb. On Saturday morning he settled at the dining table with his tax forms and a shoebox full of receipts. He grumbled about the tax man. “I slave away while he gets richer.”
    Laurie went out right after breakfast. She said she would be at the library, but of course she went back to the hospital.
    Miss Freeman came down to the lobby, and all the way up on the elevator she fussed with her hair and her little white cap. She pulled out all her bobby pins and held them in her lips as she put everything back in order. “I don’t know how you plan to spend the day,” she said, mumbling past the pins. “But don’t think you have to be everybody’s entertainment. You don’t need to do a song and dance.” She looked at her reflection on the elevator’s shiny wall. “Chip likes to read his car magazines, so maybe you can turn the pages for him if it isn’t much trouble. Carolyn would drop dead if she knew I told you this, but she likes to hear about the movie stars. If you could mention something about Marilyn Monroe or Rudy Vallee or—”
    “I don’t know anything about them,” said Laurie.
    “Well, it doesn’t matter.”
    The number 4 lit up. Laurie felt the elevator slowing. “Last time,” she said, “I started telling them a story.”
    “Well, I guess you could always do that,” said Miss Freeman. “I would think they get their fill of stories from books and things, but I suppose you never know.”
    There was no one racing wheelchairs that morning. In thebig room at the bend of the hall, everyone was crowded in front of the television, cheering as a tiny Roy Rogers galloped across the screen on Trigger, his palomino. On the little round screen, his white hat was the size of a pencil eraser.
    In the respirator room, Carolyn and Chip and Dickie lay in their row, in the steady pulse of their machines. The mirrors above them had been turned around, and on their backs were metal clips and straps. Carolyn had two books fastened to her mirror, held side by side in the fastenings. Chip had a car magazine, Dickie a comic book. All three twisted their necks to look toward the doorway.
    It was clearly Miss Freeman’s first visit to the room that day. She went in all happy and chirpy, talking about the weather, about things she’d seen on the way to work. All the time, she kept moving