In the Clear Read Free

“H.” But the last three words, I read easily. I sounded them out and felt a tremendous sense of relief wash over me. I guessed at the first, long word: “Hospital for Sick Children.” This was the place that would get me better for the first day of school.
    But in the hospital, the doctor took one look at me and growled at the nurses, “This child needs a spinal tap. Get her up to the infectious ward. I hope there’s a space left.”
    I overheard the nurses explain the spinal tap to my parents – the need to draw out some of my spinal fluid to test for polio. No one bothered explaining anything to me. I was just a kid. But I heard the nurses warn my parents that I’d feel a sharp pinch when the needle went in. Ha! They’d have been more honest if they’d said, “It’s going to feel like a knife in her back.” And even if they had, I could hardly jump up and run away. By then, I couldn’t even crawl. Already I was so weak and achy all over, I could barely roll over for them when they wheeled me, alone, into a little room. They tucked me into a fetal position on my side, exposing my back. When that needle stabbed into my spine, I screamed for all I was worth.
    Out in the hallway again, I saw my mother. Her eyes had a new, wild look. Had she heard my scream? Why did she let them do that to me? She looked as terrified as I was beginning to feel. Two nurses had to hold her back as they wheeled me by. “No, Mrs. Teal. You can’t kiss her or touch her. She’s highly contagious.”
    They wheeled me into an elevator, down a hall and into a ward which had a long hall with glass walls showing many rooms. Each room was big enough to hold four children. They wheeled me into one and stopped. I saw the tin-can prison, the one I’d seen in those pictures and the poster in the doctor’s office. It was an empty iron lung – it was for me. Why did I need one? I could still breathe, couldn’t I?
    There were three other iron lungs in the room. They made me think of coffins, only there were real live girls inside each one. Just their heads stuck out near the glass wall, and I saw the reflection of their eyes, watching me, in the little mirrors fixed above their heads.
    The other girls didn’t talk to me. We were too sick to talk. Besides, the room was noisy with the sound of the bellows sucking air in and out of the airtight iron lungs. Whoosh, whoosh. “Sixteen times a minute,” one of the nurses explained loudly. “The iron lung forces air in and out of your lungs. It will do the breathing for you until your muscles work again.”
    The kind nurse who explained this had red hair and freckles, and looking at her I thought of Anne of Green Gables, from my mother’s favorite book. “The iron lung will keep you alive,” Nurse Anne continued.
    I shook my head, terrified, sure it was a coffin.
    â€œYou’re lucky,” the other nurse interrupted impatiently. She was young too, but she had enormous bulging eyes and appeared to have no hair beneath her starched white cap. I called her Nurse Toad in my mind, for I was afraid of toads. “There’s an epidemic. This is the last iron lung available in the hospital. The next child who comes in here will be out in the hall without one.”
    Nurse Anne ignored her and continued to explain how the iron lung worked as she opened up one end and slid out my bed. Then they lifted me onto it and pushed me inside. Only my head stuck out the hole, through a rubber collar. They clamped the bed shut and turned it on.
    â€œYou’ll feel better soon,” Nurse Anne said with a smile before she turned away to help another girl.
    Whoosh, whoosh, went the bellows. In and out. Whoosh, whoosh.
    I looked around me at the other girls. Did I look like them?
    Someone in the room was crying. Or was it … me?
    Whoosh, whoosh. I could feel a strange pressure on my chest as the air was