The Smell of Thirteen

Hospitals always had that smell. Couldn't really place it. Sterile, yeah, but it scared me to death. I smelled it that morning as soon as I stepped into the lobby of North Central.

The ride in the gypsy cab to the hospital up on Gun Hill was uneventful, except for my aunt's nervous laughter at all my jokes. I swore I was gonna let Moms have it to no end. Imagine, a woman as strong as she was, laid up in a hospital bed.

But the second those automatic doors shushed open, I ran out of wisecracks. It wasn't so much that my comedic repertoire wasnt as vast at thirteen as it might have been were I a few years older, although that did have something to do with it. Nope, what shut me up was that smell. Like it wiped away everything, leaving me naked, but not squeeky clean, all my sins exposed, ready for my turn on Judgment Day.

Try though I might have to get the smell out of my head while I asked the receptionist for directions to my mom's room, it stuck. I thought more of alcohol wipes than of the look on her face when she asked us to wait there while she went off to consult with who ever it was she needed to consult with before showing us the way. When she returned, she asked us to follow her, and whisked us around a corner and down a corridor, into a waiting room of sorts.

The scent wasn't so bad in there. Or maybe I don't remember it anymore, like I don't remember that receptionist's face. I do remember the young doctor who walked in the room after we were there for maybe 5 minutes or so. He introduced himself to my aunt and proceeded to rap away. She looked at me in panic, so I tapped him on the shoulder and explained to him that because my aunt had only been in the country for three months or so, she didn't speak much English beyond "jess" and "pleece", so he'd have to rap with me.

Young Dr. Ross or whatever was on his nametag asked me how old I was. When I told him I was thirteen, he asked if there was anybody older he could speak with. "Nope. Just me, doc." I had a tendency to talk to grown-ups like I was the cool, disaffected protagonist in an early 80s comedy. Always in control. Kinda like Bill Murray in Stripes or Tim Matheson in Animal House. I had all the answers, baby.

The doc looked around, maybe checking to see if I was lying. Or maybe as if by doing so, he'd see an older person he could speak with who he might've overlooked before.

"Listen, doc," said Otter, main man at Delta House and sometimes just a thirteen-year old Spanish kid from the Bronx, "she's my moms. You can tell me the deal, and I'll pass it along, dig? Its cool."

He shook his head, breathed heavily. The way I remember it now -- better yet, the way I interpret it these days, he probably couldn't believe that he was about to have this kind of conversation with a thirteen-year-old. "Okay, kid," he began, "I have some very bad news for you."

Another breath. Another grave shake of his head. "Your mother was in a very bad car accident," he said.

I smiled. Cool as the Fonz, that was me. See, I'm the one who spoke to the cop who'd called the house with that same news a little less than an hour before. I forgot his name a long time ago, but I remember the phone call:

"Are you related to Altagracia Fernandez?"

"Yes, sir. I'm her son."

"How old are you, son?"

"Thirteen."

A long, slow breath.

"Hello...? Officer...?"

"Your mother was in a car accident, son. She's at North Central Bronx Hospital on Gun Hill Road."

Now, I was the one breathing heavy.

"You there, kid?"

"Yeah..."

"North Central on Gun Hill, okay?"

"Yeah..."

Click.

A quick cab ride up the Concourse later, past the state-of-the-art sliding doors and into the sterilized atmosphere of North Central, into that... smell, and the proto-George Clooney was giving me the same news.

Me, I was ice, baby. In control. In fact, I quickly calculated that, hey, if that was the bad news, then anything after that was rice and beans. Routine. Broken leg or something I could crack jokes about.

"Aaaand?" I prompted.

"Okay, kid," he said. These days, I'd swear he wanted to add "you asked for it," but that's just me feeling sorry for myself. I mean, even a resident fresh out of med school had to know that he was about to change someone's life forever.

"A very, very bad accident. We did everything we possibly could. Everything. But it was just too much, and by the time we got to her, it was already too late."

Pause.

Not that I didn't hear him. I did. But I didn't think I did. So I had to double check.

"You lost me, doc. What does that mean, 'too late?'"

He looked around again, probably hoping my father or brother or somebody, anybody older than thirteen would walk through the door and spare him this assignment. But nobody came.

And all of a sudden, it hit me: that scent, again.

"Your mother is dead, kid. I'm sorry."

...

I hate hospital smells.