Two Girls Staring at the Ceiling by Lucy Frank

ER
    T he faces on the pain chart
    wear numbered bow ties.
    Zero has a dimwit smile.
    Ten’s eyes trickle tears.
    “Put ten. They’ll take us faster.”
    Mom’s face
    would be off the chart
    if they measured fear.
    A gray-faced woman cradles
    her belly. A cougher fights
    to catch his breath.
    A baby screams.
    What number?
    Four Face is like: Um, is there a bathroom here?
    Six ate a rancid clam.
    Eight’s ice cream fell off his cone.
    “Big as a grapefruit by the time
    they found it,” whispers the lady beside us.
    “And we’re not talking
    the three-for-a-dollar kind.”
    “Ow! Owww!”
    a girl’s voice behind us wails.
    “Owwwwww! This is getting
    really bad!”
    What number? Higher?
    So they’ll take us sooner? Lower?
    So I can be sure
    they’ll let me go?
    “Hey!” the girl yells.
    “I’m in pain here, people!
    I been sitting in this chair
    since two a.m.
    “And don’t be pretending
    you don’t know me!
    I saw that
Oh shit it’s Shannon
look
    before you went all blank and bland and shit!”
    The gray-faced woman groans.
    The baby thrashes in its mother’s arms.
    Everyone moves farther
    from the coughing man.
    “Chess, sweetie. Let me do the paperwork.”
    Mom’s cuticle is bleeding.
    If I say five,
    will they let me go?
    “And don’t give me some little med student!
    The last guy swore
    those pills would work,
    and look at me!”
    If we don’t look, will the girl stop screaming?
    Not even six a.m. I dressed for work.
    If they take me next,
    I might not be late.
    “Yo! I’m a walking pain chart,
    if I could even walk,
    which I’m in too much pain,
    which you would see
    if you’d take the fuckin’ time
    to fuckin’ LOOKIT ME!”
    The old lady holding
    the girl’s hand sees Mom wince,
    throws her a mortified,
    scared sigh.
    Paid today.
    Birthday next week.
    Boston trip
    to look at colleges.
    They could say
    it was a freak, a fluke,
    too much hot sauce, too many pickles,
    mixing marshmallows with beer.
    “Francesca Goodman?
    Vomiting, diarrhea, passing blood?”
    asks the nurse who takes my blood,
    my temp, my pulse.
    Or the thousands of raspberries I’ve been eating.
    Eight and a half?
    Fourteen?
    Ninety-three?
    “Is it a dull ache? A burning, stabbing,
    cramping, searing pain?
    When did it start?
    Is it constant or does it come and go?”
    If I don’t tell
    anyone,
    I can forget
    it happened.
    If I can forget
    it happened,
    I’ll never
    have to tell.
    “How’re you doing, Francesca?”
    The doctor’s face so kind
    I almost cry.
    “Not too good,” I say.
    “Yo! You better save me, Doc!
    Cuz your ugly face
    is not gonna be the last thing
    on this earth I see!”
    The spindle-limbed, stub-haired girl
    cuts dragon eyes at me—
    “Who the fuck you lookin’ at?”—
    before we’re both wheeled away.
    G reen scrubs blue scrubs white coats
    push park poke
    ID band IV tube
    toss terms
    start with
C
end w/
scopy
    CT
    catheterize
    colon
    chronic
    conservative
    clinical
    corticosteroids
    colonoscopy
    “Excuse me. Did you say steroids?
    Because my performance could use
    a little enhancement these days.”
    Monitor Me, floating somewhere
    near the ceiling, hears my voice,
    too shrill, too chipper,
    As peering docs
    see no Me,
    just belly.
    “I’m a runner, you know.”
    With legs lovely
    as an antelope,
    he said.
    “I don’t want big ugly bulgy muscles, though.
    Will this kind of steroids give me—”
    “Don’t worry,” says the doc, whose shaved
    head shimmers in the fluorescent light.
    “Those are anabolic steroids.
    This is a different drug entirely
    to suppress inflammamma …
    high dose shortest possible
    to minimimimize …
    “Okay then, Mom.
    It’s best if you step out now.
    So, Francesca, we’re just
    going to insert a little tube—”
    Monitor Me says run,
    run fast,
    run now.
    Then   somehow
    makes me find my mom
    a smile.
    W ith her last small wave
    as the door closes,
    Even the wings
    David drew
    On my hand around
    his number
    Seem
    to fade.
    “R