Page 48 - WTP Vol. VIII#2

Independence Day (continued from preceding page)
It was dark when Louise and Claudia arrived at the park. At the crosswalk, Macy was waiting to lead them to where the two families had spread their blankets. She reached out and touched Claudia’s hair with her fingertips.
“You okay?” she said. Claudia nodded.
“I think Jim should have a look at her arm when we go home,” Louise said. “She may need stitches.”
“I don’t want stitches,” exclaimed Claudia. “Don’t worry about it now,” said Macy.
A loud explosion caused them all to look up. A foun- tain of green sparks surrounded by smaller, sparkling golden sprays arched across the sky. The crowd oohed and aahed.
~
It was strange being in the doctor’s office late at night when no one else was there. Jim walked ahead of Claudia and her mother, briskly flipping on wall switches. Fluorescent lights fluttered awake, reveal- ing an environment of gleaming stainless steel and white Formica. The absence of nurses and patients allowed the cold technology of the place to assert itself in an almost sentient way.
Claudia had had stitches once before, in her knee, so she knew it wasn’t that terrible an ordeal. She actu- ally felt a mild thrill at being in the office at this ille- gitimate hour, as if she and her mother and Jim were partners in a small adventure.
That feeling had begun during the ride to the office. They’d come in Jim’s Alfa Romeo with the top down. It had only two bucket seats, so Claudia had sat on her mother’s lap, something she did less often than she used to, now that she was older. The warmth of her mother’s body pacified her, and the cool night air blowing on her face was a lovely contrast. In three distinct areas of the moonless sky she spied the dis- tant, noiseless fireworks of neighboring towns.
“All right, Claudia, get up there.” Jim indicated an examining table, then turned to wash his hands in a small sink. Next he began pulling instruments out of drawers and lining them up on a metal tray: scissors, syringes, glass vials of clear liquid, cotton balls and gauze pads, three or four curved needles, heavy black thread, a plastic bottle of orange-red Betadine soap, adhesive tape.
Claudia couldn’t take her eyes off his businesslike motions. Her anxiety was returning, a nervous “dentist stomach,” as her sister called it. Macy held Claudia’s hand and stroked the uninjured arm.
“You can lie down,” Jim said to Claudia. He perched
on a stool on the opposite side of the table from Macy and shone a bright lamp on Claudia’s arm. She felt its heat on her skin.
“This won’t take long,” he said and set about his task.
Maybe from a doctor’s point of view the suturing didn’t take long, but to Claudia it seemed an end- less procedure. The tight circle of bleached light in which Jim’s hands worked cast the rest of the room into shadow. Claudia felt as if the three of them were huddled together in the one habitable spot in a vast emptiness, like lost travelers round a campfire in a desert. It was the sharp boundary between the light and the dark that implanted the notion, that plus her own hurt condition and Jim’s grimace of concentra- tion and her mother’s glittering eyes.
“Last one,” Jim finally said. “You’ve got some pretty tough skin. It bent two needles.”
“How many stitches?” Claudia asked, reluctant to look. “Eight.”
Claudia sat up and Macy held a gauze pad against the cut while Jim taped it. “You were very brave,” her mother said. She put her arms around the girl’s shoulders and kissed her forehead.
For the first time that day, Claudia felt tears in her eyes. She pressed her face against her mother’s chest just above the soft swell of her breasts. She was glad that before coming here Macy had changed out of her white dress into a sweatshirt and jeans. Claudia wouldn’t have wanted to lay her face against the bloodstain from Jim’s cut. She wished her father had come with them so they could go home now in their own car. Exhausted, she craved the familiar.
“I’ll go call Dad and let him know you’re all right,” Macy said. Apparently she, too, had been thinking of her father.
A few moments after Macy left the room, Jim left also. Claudia waited for five minutes or so, wandering around the room and looking disinterestedly into cabinets and drawers. It was once again simply a room in a doctor’s office, dimly lit and hushed, but neither grand nor ominous.
Bored, Claudia opened the door and walked down
41