Cirque Du Freak: A living nightmare

Chapter Twenty-Two

THE AMBULANCE ATTENDANTS ASKED MY mother if Steve was diabetic or epileptic. She wasn't sure but didn't think so. They also asked about allergies and everything, but she explained that she wasn't his mother and didn't know.

I thought they'd take us with them in the ambulance, but they said there wasn't room. They got Steve's phone number and the name of his mom, but she wasn't home. One of the attendants asked my mother if she'd follow them to the hospital, to fill out as many of the forms as she could, so they could make a start. She agreed and bundled me and Annie into the car. Dad still wasn't home, so she called him on his cell phone to explain where we'd be. He said he'd come right over.

That was a miserable ride. I sat in the back, trying not to meet Annie's eye, knowing I should tell the truth, but too afraid to. What made it even worse was, I knew if I was the one lying in a coma, Steve would own up immediately.

"What happened in there?" Mom asked over her shoulder. She was driving as fast as she could without breaking the speed limit, so she wasn't able to look back at me. I was glad: I don't think I could have lied straight to her face.

"I'm not sure," I said. "We were chatting. Then I had to go to the bathroom. When I got back..."

"You didn't see anything?" she asked.

"No," I lied, feeling my ears reddening with shame.

"I can't understand it," she muttered. "He felt so stiff and his skin was turning blue. I thought he was dead."

"I think he was bitten," Annie said. I almost gave her a dig in the ribs, but at the last second remembered I was depending on her to keep my secret.

"Bitten?" Mom asked.

"There were a couple of marks on his neck," Annie said.

"I saw them," Mom said. "But I don't think that's it, dear."

"Why not?" Annie asked. "If a snake or a... spider got in and bit him..." She glanced over at me and blushed a little, recalling her promise.

"A spider?" Mom shook her head. "No, dear, spiders don't go around biting people and sending them into shock, not around here."

"So what was it?" Annie asked.

"I'm not sure," Mom replied. "Maybe he ate something that didn't agree with him, or had a heart attack."

"Children don't have heart attacks," Annie retorted.

"They do," Mom said. "It's rare, but it can happen. Still, the doctors will sort all that out. They know more about these things than we do."

I wasn't used to hospitals, so I spent some time looking around while Mom was filling out the forms. It was the whitest place I'd ever seen: white walls, white floors, white uniforms. It wasn't very busy but there was a buzz to the place, a sound of bed springs and coughing, machines humming, doctors speaking softly.

We didn't say much while sitting there. Mom said Steve had been admitted and was being examined but it might be a while before they discovered what was wrong. "They sounded optimistic," she said.

Annie was thirsty, so Mom sent me with her to get drinks from the machine around the corner. Annie glanced around while I was putting in the coins, to make sure nobody could overhear.

"How long are you going to wait?" she asked.

"Until I hear what they have to say," I told her. "We'll let them examine him. Hopefully they'll know what sort of poison it is and be able to cure him by themselves."

"And if they can't?" she asked.

"Then I tell them," I promised.

"What if he dies before that?" she asked softly.