I help her cross the parking lot. “Be careful,” I say. There’s a layer of ice on the ground. We skate across it to the door. She can’t get rid of the damn cough, though she lied and said she was feeling better.
The office is on the second floor, above a copy shop. We enter and head straight up the narrow stairway. She says that it’s heaven to be somewhere warm. Heaven. I wonder if she really believes in that kind of shit.
There’s a lady sitting behind the desk, this woman who’s humming Christmas crap. I usher Mia into a seat. She buries her nose into a tissue and blows. The receptionist looks up. “Poor thing,” she says.
I get the paperwork from her and sit down in the bariatric chair. I watch Mia fill out the forms. She manages to remember Chloe, but when she comes to last name her hand becomes still.
“Why don’t I do it for you?” I ask. I slide the pen from her hand. She watches me write Romain. I make up an address. I leave the insurance information blank. I bring the paperwork up front and tell the lady we’ll be paying cash. Then I sit beside her and ask if she’s okay. I take her by the hand. My fingers slip between hers and I squeeze lightly and say to her, “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
She thinks it’s all a ruse for the receptionist’s benefit, but what she doesn’t know is that I suck at acting.
The lady leads us to a back room and takes Mia’s vitals. The room is small and there’s an animal mural painted across the walls. “Low blood pressure,” the lady says. Increased respiration rate and pulse, temperature of 104. “Poor thing,” she says again. She says the doctor will be in soon. I don’t know how long we wait. She sits on the edge of the table staring at whimsical lions and tigers while I pace back and forth across the room. I want to get the hell out of here. I say it at least three times.
Dr. Kayla Lee knocks and then lets herself in. She’s chipper—brunette, not blonde as I expected. A blonde bimbo was what we were hoping for.
The doctor is loud and she talks to Mia like she’s three. She sits on a swivel stool and pulls it close to Mia. Mia tries to clear her throat. She coughs. She’s a fucking mess. But maybe feeling like shit helps disguise the fact that she’s scared half to death.
The doctor asks if she’s seen us before. Mia can’t come up with the words so I step in. I’m surprisingly calm. “No,” I say. “New patients.”
“So what’s going on—” she peeks down at the file “—Chloe?”
Mia is growing exhausted from this trip. She can’t hold the doctor’s stare. I’m certain the doctor smells the BO on both our clothes, clothes we’ve worn almost every day so that we no longer smell the stink. She’s hacking up a lung. There’s a barking cough that sounds like a dozen terriers fighting inside her. Her voice is hoarse. It threatens to disappear.
“She’s been coughing like this for about four days,” I say. “Fever. Chills. I told her we needed to get in to see you Friday afternoon. But she said no, it was only a cold.”
“Fatigue?”
Mia nods. I tell her that Mia is lethargic, that she passed out at home. She writes this down in her notes.
“Any vomiting?”
“No.”
“Diarrhea?”
“No.”
“Let me take a look,” the doctor says and quickly shines a light in Mia’s eye, up her nose, into her ears. She tells her to say ahhhh and feels her glands. And then the stethoscope finds its way to Mia’s lungs. “Take a deep breath for me,” Dr. Lee says. Behind her I continue to pace. She moves the stethoscope around Mia’s back and chest. She has her lie down. Then sit up again as she taps on her chest and listens.
“My suspicion is pneumonia. Do you smoke?”
“No.”
“History of asthma?”
“No.”
I take in the artwork: a polka-dot giraffe. A lion whose mane looks like one of those damn cones dogs wear when they can’t stop licking themselves. A baby-blue elephant that looks like it just crawled out of the delivery ward.
“I hear a lot of junk in your lungs, in layman’s terms. Pneumonia is inflammation of the lungs, caused by an infection. Fluid blocks and narrows your airways. What starts as a cold might decide to settle in your lungs for whatever reason and what you get is this,” she says, sweeping her hand across Mia’s perimeters.
The doctor reeks of perfume. She doesn’t shut up when Mia’s hacking, though we all know she hears.
“We treat it with antibiotics,” she continues. She lists the possibilities. Just give us a prescription. “But first I’d like to confirm with a chest X—”
The color fades from Mia’s face, as if there was any there to begin with. There’s no way we’re stepping foot into a hospital.
“I appreciate your diligence,” I interrupt. I step forward, close enough to touch the doctor. I’m bigger than both of them, but I don’t use my size to change her mind. We’d run into dozens of people in a hospital. Maybe more.