When they rolled him in, it took me a minute to realize it was Frank because he was dressed in the T-shirt and khakis and tennis shoes he’d cried over wearing that morning. Then I saw how slowly the gurney was moving and put my palm against the wall to keep from collapsing. There’s no need to rush, I thought, because he’s already dead. The T-shirt did it, on the playground, with a knife to his heart.
But the paramedics looked neither crushed nor sympathetic. They looked pissed. Frank’s body wasn’t covered by a sheet, either, as it would have been in a hospital drama. Why waste budget on hiring an actor to play a corpse, I could hear Frank’s explaining voice say, when nonunion pillows under a sheet work equally well? Frank’s eyes were squeezed shut in a way that didn’t suggest death. Also, he was moving, his limbs jerking ever so slightly, arrhythmically, like a horse twitching off flies on a hot summer afternoon.
He was faking.
Once, standing on a street corner in New York waiting for the light to change, I saw a bicyclist get hit by a taxi. He’d zipped through a red light the way bicyclists do sometimes, and the greenlit taxi was going fast, as taxis will. The bike crunched under the tires and the bicyclist got tossed onto the hood. His body shattered the windshield before he rolled up and over the roof. I don’t know if the bicyclist lived or died, because that was when I did an about-face and walked as quickly as I could in the opposite direction. A good person would have stuck around to help, would have called 911 and made a statement to the police. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stick around to bear witness to an act of such shattering foolishness, something that would ever after alter the life of the bicyclist, the taxi driver, his passenger, and the innocent onlookers like me who couldn’t unsee the guy rolling over that taxi roof. I didn’t want to know how it actually ended. I needed to believe that everything turned out okay.
Seeing Frank lying on the gurney like that, I fought the urge to pull another about-face. I willed myself to go to him, and almost but not quite put my hand on his forehead.
“Frank,” I said. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I was being pursued by a pack of coyotes on the playground and ended up flat on my back. I assumed I’d been brought low by some type of seizure. The principal saw me lying there and told me to get up. I explained my situation and he said, ‘If you’re having a seizure, we need to call an ambulance.’ Miss Peppe told him that wouldn’t be necessary. But he said if I claimed I was having a seizure, then by gum, I was going to the hospital.”
“He said that?” I asked.
“Not exactly. He didn’t use the phrase ‘by gum.’ But that seemed appropriate to the situation. Did you know ancient man chewed a gum derived from birch tar during the Neolithic period more than five thousand years ago? Also, I’m guessing, ancient woman.”
I felt a little bit like having a seizure myself. “So Dr. Matthews called an ambulance to come and get you instead of calling me?”
“In his shoes, I would have opted for giving you a jingle, but I would rather not be in the principal’s shoes because they were right by my head while I was convulsing and I would rather drop dead than wear horrible shoes like that. I suppose the principal called the ambulance because he is a doctor and so he might assume I required hospitalization.” While he spoke, Frank forgot to twitch.
I had to put the hand I’d had hovering over his brow on the gurney to steady myself. “He’s not that kind of doctor, you know,” I said.
“I know,” Frank said.
“CAN’T YOU SEE he’s faking?”
I’d pulled one of the paramedics aside while the other carted Frank into the emergency room.
“You his mother?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. It was easier than explaining.
“Can I see he’s faking? Hmm. What do you think?”
“Then why did you pick him up?”
“When the school called, we had to go. Once we got there, we had to take him. We’re legally bound to. As the principal told me more than once, in case I’d forgotten.”
“But I don’t understand. Frank’s done this before. The school never used to call an ambulance to come for him. They called us.”
The paramedic shook his head. He looked disgusted. “That guy’s a tool. Stood over the kid, saying, ‘You have a seizure, we call an ambulance and you go to the hospital. That’s how things work in the real world, my friend.’ Like that’s any way to teach a kid a lesson. Give an eight-year-old boy a chance to cut class, run red lights, and blast a siren? What kid says no to that?”
“He’s almost ten,” I said.
He shrugged. “Still.”
“The school told us Frank was having a seizure,” I said. “They didn’t say ‘faking a seizure.’ I’ve never been so scared.”
“Maybe you’re the one the principal wanted to teach a lesson. He seemed like that kind of guy.”
IN THE WAITING room, I explained what had happened. “Mimi,” I said. “Frank’s all right.”
She opened her eyes but her face didn’t register any emotion. “He’ll never be all right,” she said. “He’s like my brother.” She picked up her purse and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Back to work.”
“What about Frank?”