Lily Robbins, M.D. Page 2

  Lily managed to mumble a “Thanks.” Her mind was already spinning a vision.

  I could be a rescuer and healer, she thought. I could learn first aid and just, like, be there whenever there was an accident and take care of people until the paramedics got there. The thoughts spun on: I could keep them from losing hope. I could find the injuries nobody else could detect—

  “I bet those pizzas are ice cold by now,” she heard her mother say as she started the van and reached for her cell phone. “I’d better call your dad and let him know what’s going on—if he’s even missed us!”

  Lily’s dad tended to lose track of things when he was absorbed in a book, which he usually was, being an English literature professor and all that.

  But Lily’s brothers had missed them. They were waiting at the garage door that led into the laundry room/ mudroom practically with their plates in hand.

  “We got the oven heated up,” Art said, grabbing for the pizza boxes Lily was carrying. “We can warm these babies right up.”

  “How can you think about food after what we’ve just been through?” Lily said.

  “You got in a traffic jam because of an accident,” Art said.

  “Big deal,” Joe said. “You didn’t eat it all while you were sitting there, did you?”

  Lily rolled her eyes and flounced on into the kitchen. Mom’s lips were twitching, but she did say, “We weren’t just hanging around in the traffic, guys. We were the first people on the scene. We had to help.”

  “We?” Art said as he opened the box to The Works and scrutinized the damages to his pizza. “What did you do, Lily?”

  He didn’t add, “Get in the way?” Mom and Dad didn’t let the kids say mean stuff to each other.

  “She was cool,” Mom said. “She kept a little kid with internal injuries from freaking out until the paramedics got there.”

  Wow, Lily thought. So, like, I helped save Thomas’s life?

  As pizzas were stuffed into the oven for warm-up and Dad and Art and Joe waited impatiently at the table, Mom filled them in on the whole event. Lily’s mind, of course, spiraled off.

  Maybe I could know more than just first aid, she thought. What about CRP? Or is it CPR? I’d have to find out . . . But why stop there? Why not just become, like, a doctor? I could wear a white coat, and I could say things like “Stat!”

  It was all there in her mind. She saw herself clad in white, breezing into a hospital room, and saying crisply, “Let’s have a look at that chart,” while nurses and paramedics ran around filling her orders and watching in admiration.

  “Lil, aren’t you going to eat?” Mom said.

  Lily looked up to find a piece of worn-out-looking pizza on a plate in front of her.

  “I’ll take it if she doesn’t want it,” Joe said. At nine, he was always either eating or bouncing a basketball.

  “Nope, it’s mine,” said Art. He too was what Mom called a “bottomless pit.” If he wasn’t doing something with his saxophone, he was standing at the refrigerator yelling, “There’s nothing to eat!”

  Lily pushed her plate toward him. “You can have it,” she said. “I’m gonna go call Reni, okay?”

  “What are ya gonna call her?” Joe said. That was his joke of the week.

  Lily ignored it, grabbed her phone, headed for her own room, and locked the door. She wasn’t about to break two of her own sacred rules. One, you call your best friend and tell her important things as soon as you can after they happen. And, two, you do it in total privacy, because brothers don’t always think what you consider important is really important, and they’ll tease you until you scream.

  Lily leaned back against China, her giant stuffed panda, and hit speed dial. Of course Reni was number one.

  “Hello?” Reni said.

  “You aren’t going to believe what happened to me tonight!” Lily said.

  That’s the way it is with best friends. You don’t have to bother with a bunch of “Hi, how are ya?” stuff, especially when you have something super exciting to share.

  Lily did share it, with all the buildup of suspense she could muster and precise detail she could remember. Reni listened with rapt attention, exactly the way a best friend is supposed to. She punctuated Lily’s tale with her usual “No, you did not!” and “No, he did not!” which only meant “This is too exciting to believe!” Reni’s reactions spurred Lily on to make the story even more delicious.

  “Did you call Suzy or Zooey or Kresha?” Reni said when Lily finally finished.

  “’Course not,” Lily said. “I called you first, naturally. I’ll probably tell them tomorrow.”

  “Do we have a meeting?”

  “Uh-huh. Did I tell you that the paramedic thanked me for my help?”

  “Yes, you did. Two times, I think.”

  “No, he only said it once.”

  “I was talking about you. You told me twice. So what do you think we should do at the meeting? Mama made some brownies tonight, so I could bring those.”

  Lily plucked at China’s fur. She really wanted to talk about the accident some more. She hadn’t gotten to the part where she’d decided to become a doctor. That was the best part.

  “So do you want me to bring the brownies?” Reni said.

  “Bring them where?”

  “To the Girlz Only meeting, silly!”

  “Oh,” Lily said. But the mention of the Girlz Only Group suddenly gave her an idea. “Bring them!” she said. “Yeah, and I know just what we should talk about at the meeting.”

  “What?” Reni’s voice stopped sounding bored. “Tell me!”

  “Nope,” Lily said. “It’s a surprise.”

  “Oh.” There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. Then Lily heard Reni sniff. “I am the vice president, you know.”

  “I know,” Lily said. “But I want it to be a surprise. I mean, I’m the president.”

  “Okay, fine. Never mind,” Reni said.

  Pretty soon they hung up, and for a minute Lily felt a little funny, kind of the way you do when you just stepped on somebody’s toe and you didn’t mean to.

  But the vision that was already forming in Lily’s head reassured her. She could just see herself explaining their new focus to the Girlz, to Zooey and Kresha and Suzy and Reni. She could picture Zooey’s round face going all red with excitement and Kresha babbling happily in Croatian and Suzy actually smiling instead of giggling nervously like she did when she wasn’t quite sure of herself.

  But best of all, she could imagine Reni completely forgetting that she was irritated with Lily. Reni’s dimples would deepen and she’d pull her chin in and say, “Girl, you are good!”

  Lily was so wound up when she went to bed that she couldn’t fall asleep, which was okay, because that gave her time to pray. Ever since last fall when she had been in an accident, she tried to take everything to God.

  “God,” she whispered as she snuggled down into bed with China. “Would You please help me become a great healer?”

  Later she fell asleep and dreamed about Joe and Art in white coats, grabbing pizzas from her and yelling, “Get these in the oven—stat!”

  Three

  Wow, Mom,” Lily said at the breakfast table the next morning. “Before we saw the accident, I was all stressed about going to school today and having Shad Shifferdecker telling everybody how I fell on the ice with the pizzas. Now I can’t wait to get there to tell everybody about what we did.”

  Art grunted over his bowl of Froot Loops. Even at sixteen, he had to have at least two bowls of them every morning, or he complained.

  “What?” Lily said.

  “I’m sure glad I’m not gonna be there. I bet you’ll tell it until everybody’s ready to lose their lunch.”

  “That would be ad nauseam,” Dad muttered. He was looking over a folder full of lecture notes as he ate his bacon and fried egg.

  Lily was pretty sure Mom could put a roof shingle in front of him and he’d eat it, for all he was aware of when he was ge
tting ready to teach a class.

  “What’s ad nauseam?” Joe said. “We got any more Pop-Tarts?”

  “Pantry,” Mom said.

  “When something goes on until everyone is nauseated,” Dad said.

  “Oh, like till they hurl,” Joe said and proceeded to pretend he was throwing up onto his plate.

  “No one is going to throw up,” Lily said.

  “Except maybe that Chad Whiffenpoof kid,” Mom said.

  “Shad Shifferdecker,” Lily said. “And I’m not telling him anything.”

  But as it turned out, Lily couldn’t help but tell him. It just worked out that way.

  In the first place, she was later than usual getting to school because it was snowing and Dad said he’d drive her and Joe to Cedar Hills Elementary instead of them walking, only he couldn’t find his glasses for what seemed like forever, and Mom and Art had already left for the high school, where Mom taught PE, so Dad was their only ride, and then when they did get going, Dad got so busy telling them about the new thing he’d just read about C. S. Lewis, he missed the turn to the school complex and had to go around the block.

  “I don’t mind bein’ late,” Joe said, his brown-eyes-like-Mom’s twinkling. “I might even miss the spelling test.”

  I’m going to miss telling about my adventure before school starts, Lily thought anxiously.

  In fact, when she walked in the door, class had already started, and Ms. Gooch was making the first assignment.

  “I want you to write a narrative this morning,” she said. As usual Marcie McCleary’s hand shot up before Ms. Gooch could even finish the sentence. “What’s a narrative?” she blurted out.

  “Now, isn’t that amazing, Marcie,” Ms. Gooch said. “I was just about to tell the class that.” As one of her black eyebrows went up, Marcie’s hand went down.

  Ms. Gooch went on to explain that a narrative is the telling of something that has happened. “I want you to choose something important that you’ve experienced, and then I want you to try to describe it so vividly that we all feel as if we were there with you as it was happening.” Hands shot up all over the room, and Zooey’s plump arm was one of the first.

  “What’s vividly mean?” she said.

  “Who cares?” Daniel said without even raising his hand. He was one of Shad’s friends, so it figured. “What I wanna know is, do we gotta read it in front of the class?”

  Daniel and Leo both looked at Shad as if he had the answer to that.

  “Some of you will,” Ms. Gooch said.

  “Can I read mine?” Marcie said.

  “You haven’t even written it yet.” That came from Ashley Adamson, who was one of the prettier girls in the class. She was also one of the ruder girls, as far as Lily was concerned. But Ashley’s manners didn’t bother Lily so much this morning, because Lily already had a wonderful idea. I’ll just write my story about the accident, and then I’ll read it to the class, and then everybody will hear it.

  This plan was so perfect that she didn’t even wait until everyone quit asking questions and Ms. Gooch told them all to hush up and get to work. Lily had her narrative halfdone when most people were still at the pencil sharpener.

  When she wrote her final sentence and read over her story, Lily couldn’t help smiling to herself. It sounds even better on paper than it does when I tell it, she thought. Ms. Gooch has to let me read mine.

  Just to make sure, she tiptoed up to Ms. Gooch’s desk and whispered to her, “Could I please read mine to the class?”

  Ms. Gooch’s eyebrow went up again. She could say more with that eyebrow than most people could in a whole sentence. Lily was sure right now it was saying, What a silly question. Of course you can!

  “You’re already finished?” Ms. Gooch said. “Most people take the whole time figuring out what to write about!”

  “May I?”

  Ms. Gooch nodded. Still, until Ms. Gooch actually called her name, Lily was afraid her teacher would forget. Shad Shifferdecker, of course, yawned loudly and elaborately arranged his jacket on his desk like a pillow.

  He’s getting a lot of mileage out of that jacket lately, Lily thought.

  But she walked proudly to the front of the room, cleared her throat, and read her title: “‘The Night I Saved the Day.’”

  Shad snored. Ms. Gooch raised an eyebrow. Lily’s mouth started to go dry.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, she thought. After all, she’d even told Mom she wasn’t going to let Shad know about what had happened. She ran her tongue nervously over her lips and looked out at the class.

  Suzy Wheeler was biting her lip and watching Lily. Behind her, Zooey’s round face was pink with anticipation. Across the aisle, Kresha was mouthing something, probably in Croatian. And there was Reni, sitting tall at her desk—or at least as tall as petite Reni Johnson could sit. Her dimpled coffee-with-cream face was all smiles, and she was nodding her head firmly at Lily.

  The Girlz were behind her, especially Reni, and that was all Lily needed to see. She took a deep breath and read on, using her own words to weave the story of Thomas and the teenager and the paramedics.

  “‘And as the ambulance screamed off into the night,’” she read in her last sentence, “‘I knew I had somehow helped little Thomas survive.’”

  Then Lily let out a breath and realized she’d practically been holding it the whole time. The class was quiet, like they’d all been holding their breaths too.

  Suddenly, Shad’s hand went up, and he waved it like he was hailing a lifeguard. Lily’s heart skipped. Could it be that Shad Shifferdecker was actually going to ask her a real question?

  “What is it, Shad?” Ms. Gooch said.

  “Can I read mine now?” Shad said.

  Ms. Gooch looked pleased. “Sure, Shad. I thought I’d have to twist your arm to get you up here for something serious.”

  Shad shot out of his chair and hurried to the front of the room. Lily went slowly to her seat.

  That is so unfair, she thought. Nobody even had a chance to say my paper was good or my experience was cool or even ask any questions. Shad does something right for the first time all year, and all of a sudden everybody forgets all about me—

  “You paper was so good, Lee-Lee,” Kresha whispered to her. Lee-Lee was “Lily” in Kresha-language.

  Lily nodded her thanks, but she was watching Shad. There was something weird about him volunteering, and as he looked at his paper, he had a gleam in his eye.

  “‘What I Saw Last Night,’” he read. Lily’s heart sank to her toes.

  “‘I—was—standing—in—the—pizza place—last night. Who—do—I—see—but—somebody I knew—’”

  Lily held her breath and waited to hear her name. Shad didn’t say it. Maybe she was wrong about what he had written about . . .

  But in his just-like-a-kid-in-a-second-grade-readinggroup way, Shad toiled through a description of Lily stumbling out the door with a couple pizza boxes, supposedly with cheese dripping down her leg, and staggering “like she’d had one too many” until she fell flat on top of the pizzas, exposing her underwear to the world. Shad’s paper got a chorus of whistles and clapping from Leo and Daniel, who also tried to give it a standing ovation except that Ms. Gooch stopped them with a disapproving eyebrow. Shad was grinning earlobe to earlobe.

  Lily was not. She could feel her face going all blotchy, and she had to force herself not to bury it in her arms on her desk. She stared straight ahead and clutched her hands in her lap.

  “That wasn’t very nice!” Zooey cried out. “He was making fun of somebody!”

  “She didn’t say it had to be nice,” Ashley said, patting the butterfly clips in her blonde hair. “She just said write about something that happened.”

  “I did!” Shad said. “I just dressed it up a little.”

  “There’s dressing it up, Shad,” said Ms. Gooch, “and there’s exaggerating beyond belief just to get a laugh. And at someone else’s expense, I might add.”

 
“But you have to admit, it was funny,” Ashley said. Her friend Chelsea let out her loud shriek of a laugh.

  “And he didn’t mention anybody’s name,” said Marcie.

  Shad looked blankly at his paper. “I didn’t? I meant to—it was Lily Snobbins.”

  “Shad!” Ms. Gooch said.

  “I know! I meant Dobbins.”

  “It’s Robbins!” Marcie said.

  “Thank you, Marcie. Now you’ve both embarrassed Lily,” Ms. Gooch said.

  “I’d be embarrassed too if I’d showed my underwear to everybody in Little Caesars,” Marcie said.

  “She did not show her underwear!”

  That came from a wild-eyed Reni, who was almost standing up at her desk, looking at everybody. Although Lily’s face was going from blotchy to solid red, she felt a smile forming inside. Good ol’ Reni.

  “I don’t think we need to get into the fine points,” Ms. Gooch said. “Shad, bad form, pal. Write another paper, and while you’re at it, write an apology letter to Lily too. I want both on my desk by lunchtime. Now, who wants to read next?”

  Marcie McCleary bolted out of her chair and headed for the front of the room. While everyone else was rolling his or her eyes, Reni turned to Lily and made her face dimple. Lily smiled back. Still, as Marcie began to drone on about “The Day I Got Mad at My Little Brother,” Lily felt something besides just better-because-my-bestfriend-stuck-up-for-me. It was as if something clicked in her head and now fit in snugly, like it was going to be there for a while. That something was a thought: I have to start my medical career now, so people like Shad Shifferdecker will stop making a fool out of me.

  The idea she’d had last night seemed even more brilliant now. She could hardly wait until after school when the Girlz would meet. Once again she imagined their faces as she announced the next exciting adventure they were going to take together.

  “So I think we should add it to our list of rules,” she said when they were all gathered in the remodeled playhouse in Reni’s backyard, “that every member of the club has to be trained in basic first aid and CPR.”

  She waited for the faces she’d imagined. Zooey’s going red with excitement. Suzy’s shining with quiet anticipation. Kresha’s crinkling as she chuckled out Croatian words of praise for Lily. Reni’s deepening into admiring dimples.