Care the Bear

 

July 4, 4:20 P.M. EST
Children’s Hospital Pittsburgh

 

D

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…

The pressure in the back of her left hand brought Rainbow Bridge leaping into view all around as the rushing of cozy sleep waters came to her on her lily pad as she floated up and over Rainbow Bridge—and there, across the way stood Mom and Dad, their arms wide open, both dressed up in the wedding dress and tuxedo they had been married in long before Dandelion came along…