High Noon in Sandbridge

Chapter 2-2

It was dim but not dark when Billie opened her eyes. She knew this room; it was where the nurses and sometimes the doctors took naps when they had long shifts. Mom brought her here when Ms. Hillard couldn’t take her sometimes.

For a moment, everything seemed normal and quiet, and then the awful memory exploded: Dr. Huang telling her—”No,” she said, and her voice broke. “No, no no—”

“Oh, honey,” said a voice. Billie turned to look, and it was Nurse Huang, sitting up now from the cot where she’d been resting. She came over to sit beside Billie. “Honey, I’m sorry, it’s—”

“I want Mommy,” Billie sobbed. Nurse Huang pulled Billie into a hug. Billie wanted to push her away, like before.

She’d yelled and pushed Nurse Huang and for a second, everything had seemed very strange. But Mom hadn’t said, “Billie, you stop that right now!” and somehow that had been even worse, and she had…She had…She couldn’t quite remember what had happened after that. She was crying harder now, and Mom wasn’t going to come and hug her and take her home for ice cream or…She folded into Nurse Huang’s arms and cried.

The door opened slowly. Billie looked, hoping it would be Mom, telling her it had been a terrible mistake and for just a second, it was.

And then it wasn’t.

Billie had an uncle—two of them now. When she’d told her friends at school about them, Derek had overheard and been really mean about it, and told her having two gay uncles meant she was really a boy in a dress, which made her so mad she’d gotten in trouble with her teacher for biting Derek. Again.

She had two uncles, but she didn’t know them very well. She’d just met them for the first time, Christmas not last Christmas, but the one before that. She hadn’t realized how much her uncle looked like Mom, though, and it made her throat get all tight and hurt to swallow.

“Hey, kiddo,” her uncle—she wanted to call him Winnie, which is what Mom called him most of the time, but she remembered he didn’t like that name. She couldn’t remember what she was supposed to call him though. She clung to Nurse Huang and stared at him, unable to respond.

Behind him was Uncle Andy—Mom just called him Andy, mostly, unless she and Uncle Winnie got in a fight, in which case Mom called him a bunch of words that Billie wasn’t allowed to say. He wasn’t really looking at her though. He looked at his phone and at Billie and at Nurse Huang and at Uncle Winnie and then back at his phone.

Uncle Winnie just looked at her, though, like he was waiting for her. She sniffled and dragged her arm across her nose. “Hi.”

“I don’t even—” Uncle Winnie started, holding out a hand like he expected her to take it, or hug him, or something.

Mom had sort of told her she ought to, but that if she didn’t want to, she didn’t have to. Mom was big on something she called bodily autonomy. Billie only really knew how to say that because she got a lecture every time Billie hit someone at school. Or hugged them. Or pretty much anything. Other people weren’t for touching, mostly, except for how sometimes they were. Billie still hadn’t figured out the rules yet.

“I’m sorry about your mom, kiddo.”

Billie’s throat closed up again. “I wanna go home.” Home was where everything was okay.

Uncle Winnie nodded. “Yeah, we’re uh…we’re gonna go there for a bit. Get stuff settled for your ma. Stay there for a while. Ms. Hillard’s gonna come by. An’ we’ll get your stuff all packed up.”

Packed up? She pushed off of Nurse Huang and frowned at Uncle Winnie. “Packed up for what?”

“Honey,” Nurse Huang said.

Uncle Andy made a face and said, “Maybe now isn’t—”

“Packed up for what?” Billie demanded again, louder.

Uncle Winnie made that face that adults did when they didn’t want to answer a question. “s**t,” he said under his breath. Then the face got worse.

Mom would—No, Mom wouldn’t be mad. Mom was never going to be mad again. Billie knew what dead meant. Her mom was a nurse. Billie knew an awful lot about dead. “Sorry. I’m…well, really, she’s gotta be told sometime,” he said. “You’re gonna come live with us in Sandbridge now. After…we get things settled.”

Billie shook her head. “Mom says we’re not ever going to Sandbridge,” she told him. Billie had asked, after her uncles had come to visit the first time, if they were ever going to go visit them, and Mom had been very firm on that. Sandbridge was a terrible place and they weren’t ever going.

“Well, not today at least,” Uncle Winnie said. “Right now we’re gonna go to your home. Is that okay?”

There was something wrong there, she just knew it, but home was what she’d asked for, wasn’t it? She nodded carefully. “Okay.”

“Thank you for looking after her,” Uncle Winnie said to Nurse Huang.

Nurse Huang pushed her hair out of her face. She was growing it out, she’d told Billie a few weeks back, and it was “in that awkward in-between stage”. “Is the service going to be here? A lot of Mace’s friends will…and co-workers. They’ll want to say goodbye, and Virginia is pretty far away.”

Uncle Andy nodded. “Yes, that’s the plan. Mace cut most of her ties with the people she knew in Virginia, so having it here will be more convenient for the most people. Were you close at all? We’ll need help figuring out…all the details.” He looked at Billie when he said that.

“We had opposite shifts a lot,” Nurse Huang said. “It makes patients weird when I’m calling the doctor ‘mom.’ Mom’s got your number, and I’ll have Danielle Hammond give you a call. That’s Mace’s best friend, she’ll know what to do.”

Uncle Andy just nodded. “Your mother has my cell number, feel free to pass it along to Ms. Hammond, then.” He smiled at Billie, just a tiny bit, not the big smiles he’d made at Christmas. “You ready to go?”

Billie nodded, and let Nurse Huang nudge her off the cot. She crossed the room on trembling legs to look up at her Uncle Winnie, who was looking back. He looked very sad, and maybe a little scared. Maybe he’d feel better when they got home, too.

“You want me to carry you? Or you want to walk?” Uncle Winnie dropped down to one knee to get on level with her.

For just a second, Billie wanted to ask him to carry her. It would be a little like a hug. But she shook her head. “I’m not a baby,” she told him. “I’m too big to be carried.”

“I know you’re not a baby,” Uncle Winnie said. “But even big girls get tired sometimes. Let me know if you change your mind.” He stood up and offered a hand. “And even grown up uncles need a hand to hold once in a while.”

Well. If it would help him, she supposed. He did look very sad. She slipped her hand into his; it was big and warm and had lots of little hard-rough spots on it. It wasn’t much like Mom’s hand at all.