Catfishing on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer [best e ink reader for manga .txt] 📗

I don’t have my laptop with me. I wish I did, because I could get on CatNet and everyone who told me to get my mom to a hospital could reassure me that she’ll be okay now that she’s at the hospital. I have no idea what to do.

Someone says that the surgeon’s arrived, and most of the team leaves the cubicle, apparently to go get ready for surgery. For the first time since I got to the hospital, I can get close to my mom without feeling like I’m in anyone’s way. They’ve moved her to a bed, and she’s lying flat with her feet up, and her eyes are closed. I touch her hand, wondering if it’ll feel as hot now as it did before, and her eyes open and lock on me.

“Steph, you need to get out of here,” she whispers. “Your father might come looking. He needs to not find you, even if he finds me.”

“I gave them a fake name for you,” I whisper back. “It’ll be okay. He won’t find you.”

“You can’t count on that,” she says. “Hide. You need to hide. Or go to Sochie and tell her you need help,” and then the staff comes back to wheel her off to surgery.

A woman who’s wearing a white coat but isn’t dressed like a surgical nurse comes and leads me off to a waiting room with a TV, a stack of old magazines, and a fish tank. She has a clipboard full of papers and sits me down. “I know you gave some of this information to the EMTs, but I’m going to have to ask you to go through it again,” she says. “Were you able to grab your mother’s wallet before you left?”

“No,” I say. “Sorry.”

“That’s fine; she’s going to be here for a while. We’ll have plenty of time to get her insurance information and the rest when she’s feeling a bit better.”

“How long?” I ask as she asks, “Can you give me your mother’s name?” She’s looking at me expectantly and not answering my question, so I say, “Her name is Dana Smith. How long is she going to be here? Is she going to be okay?”

“The doctor seems to think it’s peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. That’s consistent with the symptoms you described and what we’re seeing now. They’re going to do surgery to remove her appendix, but she’s going to need to stay on antibiotics for a while, and how long is going to depend on a lot of factors. It could be a week or it could be a couple of weeks.”

I imagine my mother, tethered to a hospital bed, unable to run. She is going to be so unhappy about this.

The woman looks into my face, concerned. She’s trying a little too hard to get me to make eye contact. I hate it when people do that. I try to focus on her forehead. “You did a really good job, calling the ambulance for your mom,” she says. “She might have died if you hadn’t brought her in. This is a really serious illness.” She nudges a Kleenex box like she’s worried I’m about to start crying, but I don’t feel like crying; I feel terrified, hollowed out, shaky. We’re going to be stuck here for weeks. I mean, even if we really need to run, we’re going to be stuck. Hide, Mom said. I don’t even know where to start trying to hide. Does she want me to take the van—which I’ve never learned to drive—and take off for the northern forests to hide with the bears? Find Sochie, who I don’t know, who I don’t know how to contact?

But then the woman wants more information—address, phone number, if you don’t have your mother’s Social Security number, do you know your own, sweetheart? What’s your father’s name?—and I realize that if I fall apart in a pile of Kleenex she’ll probably leave me alone for a while. So I put my head down so she can’t see whether I’m crying or not, and after a minute she pats me on my shoulder and says, “I’ll give you a few minutes; there’s no rush,” and I hear the slow fade of footsteps. I wait for quiet, then raise my head and look around. I don’t see her anywhere, so I get up and peer down the hallway, looking for an Exit sign. And spot one. I escape out the side door.

It’s one of those doors that lets you out but not back in, and it locks behind me, and a cold, damp wind hits me in the face, and I realize no one’s waiting for me at home, the only person I have in the world is on her way into surgery and just told me to run, I am alone.

I start shaking, partly from the cold, partly from feeling like I’ve been swept out into a dark sea. I start walking, anyway. I have my coat but not my hat or gloves, so I tuck my hands into my sleeves. I walk quickly, even though there’s a 50 percent chance I’m going in the opposite direction of my house because I’m worried the lady from the hospital will come out looking for me. Or send the cops.

In my pocket, my phone buzzes faintly; someone’s sent me a text. I flip it open to take a look.

I have five texts and two missed calls. They’re all from Rachel. Hey, is everything OK? says the first one. Then something that’s probably an emoji that doesn’t translate on my stupid flip phone, it’s just a . Then a text saying I heard sirens heading to your house. Then a missed call. Then Just send me a text when you have time. Then another missed call. Then Hey, are you OK?

I text back, Came home + Mom was really sick. Went to