July 4, 4:20 P.M. EST
Children’s Hospital Pittsburgh
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andelion Machi had lain alone in
this bed all day since the nice little man brought her medicine and lime Jello.
Before long the not-so-nice lady, the
big one, would be along with her soup.
It was always like that, Jello and soup. It was so much nicer back before her parents
went over Rainbow Bridge.
Mom and Dad used to argue with the hospital ladies all the
time until one of them could be suited up safely and be let in to see her. Since Dandelion had ARDS—the kid’s version she
called it—she couldn’t get hugs or kisses or even her hand held, except by a
gloved hand. It had been hard for
Dandelion to understand that she was so dangerous to adults, and at the same
time, that they could make her sick somehow when she was already sick.
“Grownups,” as Uncle Rick had often told her, simply “sucked,”
and were impossible to figure out. This
was an interesting thing to hear from the most grownup of grownups, for nobody
Dandelion had ever met was older than Uncle Rick.
She well remembered Uncle Rick sneaking out of grownup
hide-and-go-seek with the police and ARDS-chasers from the government to come
take her for secret walks by night, on his big shoulders, where no one could
see, not the ARDS-chasers, not nobody! He
would tell her about raccoons, possums, rabbits, squirrels, foxes and owls. They would even play soccer in the yard by
night, once even made a snowman.
Then she had got the ARDS, which the mean lady said, over,
and over again, was short for Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. Since Mom and Dad had gone over Rainbow Bridge
without her she was so sad. The nice
little man with the food was not allowed to talk to her and smiled a lot to
make up for it. He was a little tan man
in a blue uniform. He had tried to speak
with her but his English was really hard to understand and then the mean nurse
lady, almost the same color as her white uniform, had chased him off. That lady, from behind her hawk-like nose,
down which she peered like a monster, kept telling her that the other lady, the
one in the suit who looked like a boy, would be back to sign the Rainbow Bridge
release and then she could leave and be with Mom and Dad.
With the ARDS she was not allowed to leave except by Rainbow
Bridge. This confused her, because the
little kids with the nice skin and the dark eyes, who weren’t all pale and
freckled and pasty like her—with her sick eyes like a winter sky—they would
sneak in for visits and play with her and tell her about the new parents they
were getting from the hospital. They had
somehow recovered from the ARDS. It
seemed that she was especially sick. The
little girls felt so bad for her, that they even lied and told her how pretty
she was even though she was almost the color of the bed sheets and felt ugly
amongst them as they smiled and giggled and brought her their extra chocolate
milk. They seemed genuinely sad about
Dandelion not being allowed to leave or have new parents.
“I wonder when you guys will sneak out again and come see
me? Or did you get your new parents
already?”
As if the TV was listening to her—not that she had any idea
why it was called a TV, though it seemed to have a lot of ideas about her—it
turned on and the great Rainbow Bridge opened before her on the screen, the
kind mommy voice of the unseen speaker announcing, “Dandelion, you have a
visitor.”
The screen spiraled into a rainbow swirl and opened up like
a flower and there was… a teddy bear. This
was no ordinary teddy bear. It wore
overalls, like the overalls that Uncle Rick had made for her from one of his
warm shirts. It had little black buckle
shoes like the shoes that Uncle Rick had brought her from grownup
hide-and-go-seek ARDS-chasers. The bear
was, of course, pink and had a fancy hat like Uncle Rick wore as a disguise one
time, with a green Molly feather in it—Molly the hero parakeet who tricked
ARDS-chasers! And, to identify the
messenger for sure—because you had to sneak to be near the ones who loved you
in hospitals and among grownups in general—the bear had a dream catcher made by
Uncle Rick’s own caring hand. For Uncle
Rick brought a dream catcher for Dandelion every time he had come to visit, for
all of her eight years of life. This
made her smile and brought back the memory of Uncle Rick making her a dream
catcher out of dandelions, despite the fact that it was against the law to go
on the grass at the park without a mask—but Uncle Rick didn’t care about laws. He just cared about Dandelion!
The teddy bear then spoke, spoke in that voice equal to
three dads, like the voice of a police that was not a mean ARDS-chaser, that
was not a lock-you-up-until-you-are-better safe spacer, a voice that was like
an unstoppable machine, the voice that always came back for her—the voice of
Uncle Rick:
“Hello, Dandelion!”
“Hello, I know who!” answered the little girl, suddenly
alive with color.
Uncle Rick’s voice came from the moving mouth of the bear,
“That’s right, Dandelion, I’m the Bear that Cares. Call me Care Bear!”
“Oh, Care Bear, thanks for visiting me. It would be so nice to have a hug.”
“One day, Dandelion, we will have a hug!”
“Oh, Uncle Rick I miss you!”
The bear then shook and spoke, “Care Bear, I am Care
Bear! I love you, Dandelion! I will be there.”
“Really?” she said, amazed. “They told me that Mom and Dad are waiting at
Rainbow Bridge. But they didn’t say
anything about you, Uncle Rick—I mean Care Bear.”
“Uncle Rick?” came the voice of the mean nurse lady with the
eagle nose as Dandelion felt a gloved hand pinch her thigh through the bed
sheet and saw the face shield of the mean lady fog in anger and then her
non-pinching gloved hand reached for the remote stem. Dandelion snatched her TV controller back and
let it drop off the right side of her bed as the mean nurse lady glared into
the TV screen and began touching the screen itself, bringing up various images
of Rainbow Bridge officials, doctors, police and barked in her shrill voice,
“The Rainbow Bridge account of Dandelion Machi has been hacked by an
ARDS-denier named Rick. Alert Safety
Officer on duty.”
The Rainbow Bridge screen was now replaced with the heads of
these terrible grownups as the mean lady responded to the boy-looking lady in
the suit who worked for Rainbow Bridge, “Yes, Facilitator Landry, I am
initiating sedation while downloading authorization.”
The lady then pressed the screen and it was filled with the
face of a triple-masked man who spoke clearly, “The harvesting team will be
bed-side in twelve minutes. Initiate
pressure-lock and reduce temperature.”
Dandelion did not understand these words. But the adults who ganged-up to chase Care
Bear and Uncle Rick’s voice from the TV were mean and that made being little,
ARDSed-up and alone all the more unbearable…
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