Emily was reciting her poem about the color ‘blue’ to the class, when the intercom crackled to life and, “Will Emily Sailer please come to the office,” blared out. Her classmates looked around and started “ooh”ing.
“What’d ya do this time, Ems?” she heard some of the kids call from the back of the room.
“That’s enough of that,” said Ms. Lock, assertively shooing Emily towards the door while glaring at the rest of the misbehaving fourth graders.
Emily didn’t know why she was being called to the office. She carefully walked down the two flights of stairs while counting off the things she’d done and already been caught for on her fingers. When she pushed through the doors at the bottom of the stairs that lead into the corridor to the office, she suddenly was assaulted with the sounds of sirens blazing and feet shuffling. The sight before her consisted of the school gym teacher shuffling back and forth uncomfortably and a hospital stretcher being rushed out of the doors, followed by her mother, who was frantically on the telephone. She saw her brother sitting on the floor blankly, too.
“Oh Emily,” said the office attendance woman who seemed to appear out of nowhere, “I’m so sorry about this.” Emily was confused as to what was going on. Why was Ms. Elhove trying to console her. Nothing was going on that concerned her, save for the fact that her mother was here to pick her and her brother up early. That was obviously it. Obviously. She glared at Ms. Elhove and marched over to her mother, who seemed to have just spotted her.
“Emily,” she sobbed, drawing her in for a hug. Emily didn’t notice the tears before, but she assumed her mother was just happy to see her. After all, the last time had been all the way in the morning at breakfast. “Come on,” her mother said, “We’ve got to get to the hospital.”
“Where’s Tess, mom?” Emily asked. She saw her brother but not her sister. She didn’t know why her mother would only pick up her and her brother.
“Honey,” mom said, “Did you hear me? The ambulance is leaving now; Tess fell down in gym and hurt her head.” She turned around feeling overwhelmingly confused and looked at the gym teacher.
He refused to make eye contact.
She looked at her brother next, while her mother started to drag them out of the room and into the ambulance. All the sounds were starting to blur together and she didn’t know what was going on. “Caleb what happened?” she asked her brother. He started crying and told her that Tess was jumping rope in gym class and slipped and her head cracked open. He said there was blood everywhere.
Emily started crying too then, because when they loaded into the ambulance she saw that it really was Tess on the stretcher and there were doctors everywhere trying to put something on her head. She stared at Tess and sobbed until they got to the ER, where they unloaded and followed the stretcher in.
She couldn’t hear anything or see anything except for her mother and brother holding hands; she thought she saw her mother reach out to grab her’s too, but she couldn’t tell. She was so shocked and confused.
“We’ve got a serious head injury,” called the man in front of the stretcher. Everyone moved out of their way as they wheeled Tess into one of the rooms and shut the door, leaving Emily, her mom, and Caleb stranded in the waiting room.
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