The Captain shows us the way past the amazing machine and I touch the glass nearly at the chocolate bars. I wish I knowed the code to let them out.
There’s one two three four toilets, each in a little room inside a bigger room with four sinks and all mirrors. It’s true, toilets in Outside have lids on their tanks, I can’t look in. When Ma pees and stands up there’s awful roaring, I cry. “It’s OK,” she says, wiping my face with the flat bits of her hands, “it’s just an automatic flush. Look, the toilet sees with this little eye when we’re all done and it flushes by itself, isn’t that clever?”
I don’t like a clever toilet looking at our butts.
Ma gets me to step out of my underwear. “I pooed a bit by accident when Old Nick carried me,” I tell her.
“Don’t worry about it,” she says and she does something weird, she throws my underwear in a trash.
“But—”
“You don’t need them anymore, we’ll get you new ones.”
“For Sundaytreat?”
“No, any day we like.”
That’s weird. I’d rather on a Sunday.
The faucet’s like the real ones in Room but wrong shaped. Ma turns it on, she wets paper and wipes my legs and my butt. She puts her hands under a machine, then hot air puffs out, like our vents but hotter and noisy again. “It’s a hand dryer, look, do you want to try?” She’s smiling at me but I’m too tired for smiling. “OK, just wipe your hands on your T-shirt.” Then she wraps the blue blanket around me and we go out again. I want to look in the machine where all the cans and bags and chocolate bars are in jail. But Ma pulls me along to the room where the Captain is for more talking.
After hundreds of hours Ma’s standing me up, I’m all wobbly. Sleep not in Room makes me feel sick.
We’re going to a kind of hospital, but wasn’t that the old Plan A,
We’re driving along. When I see a car coming I squeeze my eyes every time.
“They’re on the other side, you know,” says Ma.
“What other side?”
“See that line down the middle? They always have to stay on that side of it, and we stay on this side, so we don’t crash.” Suddenly we’re stopped. The car opens and a person with no face looks in. I’m screaming.
“Jack, Jack,” says Ma.
“It’s a zombie.”
I keep my face on her tummy.
“I’m Dr. Clay, welcome to the Cumberland,” says the no face with the deepest voice ever booming. “The mask is just to keep you safe. Want to see under?” It pulls the white bit up and a man person smiling, an extra-brown face with the tiniest triangle of black chin. He lets the mask back on, snap. His talk comes through the white. “Here’s one for each of you.”
Ma takes the masks. “Do we have to?”
“Think of everything floating around that your son’s probably never come in contact with before.”
“OK.” She puts one mask on her and one on me with loops around my ears. I don’t like the way it presses. “I don’t see anything floating around,” I whisper to Ma.
“Germs,” she says.
I thought they were only in Room, I didn’t know the world was all full of them too.
We’re walking in a big lighted building, I think it’s the Precinct again but then it’s not. There’s a somebody called the Admission Coordinator tapping on a — I know, it’s a computer, just like in TV. They all look like the persons on the medical planet, I have to keep remembering they’re real.
I see the most coolest thing, it’s a huge glass with corners but instead of cans and chocolate there’s fish alive, swimming and hiding with rocks. I pull Ma’s hand but she won’t come, she’s still talking to the Admission Coordinator that has a name on her label too, it’s Pilar.
“Listen, Jack,” Dr. Clay says, he bends down his legs so he’s like a giant frog, why is he doing that? His head is nearly beside mine, his hair is just fuzz like a quarter of an inch long. He doesn’t have his mask anymore, it’s only me and Ma. “We need to take a look at your mom in that room across the hall, OK?” It’s me he’s saying. But didn’t he look at her already?
Ma’s shaking her head. “Jack stays with me.”
“Dr. Kendrick — she’s our general medical resident on duty — she’s going to have to administer the evidence collection kit right away, I’m afraid. Blood, urine, hair, fingernail scrapings, oral swabs, vaginal, anal—”
Ma stares at him. She lets out her breath. “I’ll be just in there,” she tells me, pointing at a door, “and I’ll be able to hear you if you call, OK?” “Not OK.”
“Please. You’ve been such a brave JackerJack, just a bit longer, OK?”
I grab onto her.
“Hmm, maybe he could come in and we could put up a screen?” says Dr. Kendrick. Her hair is all creamy colored and twisted up on her head.
“A TV?” I whisper to Ma. “There’s one over there.” It’s way bigger than the one in Room, there’s dancing and the colors are much dazzlier.
