Read Online Stacey's Emergency by Ann M. Martin - Free Book Online

on and on, and the students scribbled away on their clipboards and sometimes glanced at me. I felt like a fish in a glass bowl or an animal in a cage at the zoo. The doctor talked about me as if I weren't sitting just three feet away from him.
    Anyway, the group left my room after five
    minutes or so. Once again, I settled down to work. And this time I was able to accomplish a few things even though a nurse came to check my blood, and even though I knew Jeopardy was on TV, followed by a rerun of The Beverly Hillbillies. After a bland, tasteless lunch, I worked some more. Then Mom reappeared with a Benetton bag. (Yea!) In it was a beautiful emerald-green sweater and a matching beret.
    "Oh, thank you!" I cried. I tried on the new things immediately. Mom stayed with me until about four-thirty. Then she said she had to leave. I think she was afraid she'd run into my father, since she wasn't sure when he was going to show up that day.
    By 4:45, I was alone.
    At 5:00, the telephone rang. I reached over to pick it up.
    "Hello?" I said. "This is the funny farm. To whom are you speaking?"
    There was a pause. Then a giggly voice said, "I'm speaking to you!"
    It was Claud. Even so, I said, "Oh. Well, who's this?"
    "It's me! Claudia!"
    "I know that," I replied. We were both laughing by then.
    "How are you doing?" Claud wanted to know.
    "Okay," I answered. "I feel a lot better, but I might have to stay here awhile."
    I knew Claud wanted to ask, "Why?" I also knew that she could tell I didn't feel like talking about whatever was wrong with me. So after a brief, uncomfortable pause, Claudia said, "The rest of the club is here. Everyone wants to say hi."
    "The rest of the club is there?" I repeated. "It's only five o'clock."
    "I know. We all wanted to talk to you, so we met early."
    "Hey, how are you guys going to pay for this phone call?" I asked suspiciously. "It's going to be an expensive one."
    "With treasury money?" Claudia replied.
    I sighed. Then I said, "Well, I guess I'm worth it."
    Claud laughed. She put Kristy on the phone. Kristy announced that Emily Michelle had learned a new word: stinky. Only she pronounced it "tinky." Everything was tinky, according to Emily.
    I talked to the rest of my friends. When Jessi got on the phone, I asked her how Charlotte Johanssen was doing.
    "She's . . . fine," Jessi replied, and quickly handed the phone to Mallory.
    By the time we hung up, it was nearly five-thirty. We were all talked out, and I was wor-
    ried that the cost of a few more half-hour, long-distance phone calls would wipe out the treasury. Oh, well. I needed my friends. I could tackle the treasury problem when I returned to Stoneybrook.
    Just as I was putting the phone back in its cradle, Laine showed up. But we barely had a chance to say hello when a package was brought into my room by a hospital aide. (You never know when you are going to get mail at the hospital. It seems to appear whenever it pleases.)
    "A package!" said Laine. "Cool. Who's it from?"
    I checked the return address. "Hey, it's from Charlotte!"
    I ripped the brown paper off the box, then lifted its lid. The lid was labeled CARE PACKAGE. Inside I found the things that Claud and Charlotte had put together on the evening of my first day in the hospital.
    "I think I'll call Char," I told Laine. I was remembering Jessi's response when I'd asked her how Charlotte was doing. Was something wrong?
    I soon found out. Char was ecstatic to hear from me. At first. But soon her excitement changed to a series of questions, each one more anxious than the first. When was I going to get out of the hospital? When would I come
    back to Stoneybrook? I was coming back to Stoneybrook, wasn't I? Why hadn't my insulin shots been working? Did I really feel better, or was I just saying so to be polite? Char's last question was, "Do people die from diabetes?" (I'm pretty sure she meant was 7 going to die?) But before I could answer her, she said, "Oh, that's okay. Never mind, Stacey. I'll ask