Emma Donoghue - Room - A Novel

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.

“Actually, yeah,” says Ma, “could he maybe sit there at Reception? That would distract him better.”

The Pilar woman is behind the table talking on the phone, she smiles at me but I pretend I don’t see. There’s lots of chairs, Ma chooses one for me. I watch her going with the doctors. I have to grip onto the chair not to run after her.

The planet’s changed to a game of football with persons with huge shoulders and helmets. I wonder if it’s really happening for real or just pictures. I look at the fish glass but it’s too far, I can’t see the fish but they must be still there, they can’t walk. The door where Ma went is a bit apart, I think I hear her voice. Why are they taking her blood and pee and fingernails? She’s still there even though I don’t see her, like she was in Room all the time I was doing our Great Escape. Old Nick zoomed off in his truck, now he’s not in Room and he’s not in Outside, I don’t see him in TV. My head’s worn out from wondering.

I hate the mask pressing, I put it up on my head, it’s got a stiff bit with a wire inside I think. It keeps my hair out of my eyes. Now there’s tanks in a city that’s all smashed into bits, an old person crying. Ma’s a long long time in the other room, are they hurting her? The Pilar woman is still talking on the phone. Another planet with men in a ginormous room talking, all in jackets, I think they’re kind of fighting. They talk for hours and hours.

Then it changes again and there’s Ma and she’s carrying somebody and it’s me .

I jump up and go right to the screen. There’s a me like in Mirror only I’m tiny. Words sliding underneath LOCAL NEWS AS IT HAPPENS . A she person is talking but I can’t see: “ . . . bachelor loner converted the garden shed into an impregnable twenty-first-century dungeon. The despot’s victims have an eerie pallor and appear to be in a borderline catatonic state after the long nightmare of their incarceration.” There’s when Officer Oh tried to put the blanket on my head and I don’t let her. The invisible voice says, “The malnourished boy, unable to walk, is seen here lashing out convulsively at one of his rescuers.”

“Ma,” I shout.

She doesn’t come. I hear her calling, “Just a couple more minutes.”

“It’s us. It’s us in TV!”

But it’s gone blank. Pilar is standing up pointing at it with a remote and staring at me. Dr. Clay comes out, he says mad things to Pilar.

“On again,” I say. “It’s us, I want to see us.”

“I’m terribly, terribly sorry—,” says Pilar.

“Jack, would you like to join your mom now?” Dr. Clay holds out his hand, he’s got funny white plastic on it. I don’t touch. “Mask on, remember?” I put it over my nose. I walk behind not too near.

Ma’s sitting on a little high bed in a dress made out of paper and it’s split at the back. Persons wear funny things in Outside. “They had to take away my real clothes.” It’s her voice though I can’t see where it comes out of the mask.

I climb up to her lap all crinkly. “I saw us in TV.”

“So I heard. How did we look?”

“Small.”

I’m pulling at her dress but there’s no way in. “Not right this minute.” She kisses me instead on the side of the eye but it’s not a kiss I want. “You were saying . . .”

I wasn’t saying anything.

“About your wrist, yes,” says Dr. Kendrick, “it’ll probably need to be broken again at some point.”

“No!”

“Shh, it’s OK,” Ma tells me.

“She’ll be asleep when it happens,” says Dr. Kendrick, looking at me. “The surgeon will put a metal pin in to help the joint work better.” “Like a cyborg?”

“What’s that?”

“Yeah, a bit like a cyborg,” says Ma, grinning at me.

“But in the short term I’d say dentistry is the top priority,” says Dr. Kendrick, “so I’m going to put you on a course of antibiotics right away, as well as extra-strength analgesics . . .” I do a huge yawn.

“I know,” says Ma, “it’s hours past bedtime.”

Dr. Kendrick says, “If I could just give Jack a quick checkup?”

“I said no already.”

What does she want to give me? “Is it a toy?” I whisper to Ma.

“It’s unnecessary,” she says to Dr. Kendrick. “Take my word for it.”

“We’re just following the protocol for cases like this,” says Dr. Clay.

“Oh, you see lots of cases like this here, do you?” Ma’s mad, I can hear it.

He shakes his head. “Other trauma situations, yes, but I’ll be honest with you, nothing like yours. Which is why we need to get it right and give you both the best possible treatment from the start.”

“Jack doesn’t need treatment, he needs some sleep.” Ma’s talking through her teeth. “He’s never been out of my sight and nothing happened to him, nothing like what you’re insinuating.”

The doctors look at each other. Dr. Kendrick says, “I didn’t mean—”

“All these years, I kept him safe.”

“Sounds like you did,” says Dr. Clay.

“Yes, I did.” There’s tears all down Ma’s face, now, there’s one all dark on the edge of her mask. Why are they making her cry? “And tonight, what he’s had to — he’s asleep on his feet—”

I’m not asleep.

“I understand completely,” says Dr. Clay. “Height and weight and she’ll deal with his cuts, how about that?”

After a second Ma nods.

I don’t want Dr. Kendrick to touch me, but I don’t mind standing on the machine that shows my heavy, when I lean on the wall by accident Ma straightens me up. Then I stand against the numbers, just like we did beside Door but there’s more of them and the lines are straighter. “You’re doing great,” says Dr. Clay.

Dr. Kendrick writes things down a lot. She points machines in my eyes and my ears and my mouth, she says, “Everything seems to be sparkling.” “We brush all the times we eat.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Slow down and speak up,” Ma tells me.

“We brush after we eat.”

Dr. Kendrick says, “I wish all my patients took such care of themselves.”

Ma helps me pull my T-shirt over my head. It makes the mask fall off and I put it back on. Dr. Kendrick gets me to move all my pieces. She says my hips are excellent but I could do with a bone density scan at some point, that’s a kind of X-ray. There’s scratchy marks on my inside hands and my legs that’s from when I jumped out of the truck. The right knee has all dried blood. I jump when Dr. Kendrick touches it.