Life on Banana Street

Sick Joey

The phone rang. "Hello?”

“Addie! Thank God you answered!”

“I thought you went on tour?”

“No, no. I stayed home. I need your help. Can you come over?”

“Yeah sure.” I didn’t bother to ask what. I just turned off the TV and gently picked Joey up and went to Kate’s. I knocked on her apartment door and she was in some kind of hooker clothes. “Did you want me to buy you a pole?”

“No.” She laughed. “I need your help planning the wedding. We’re having it on the day they get back from touring.”

“Shouldn’t you do that with Mike?”

“No. I do plenty of things with Mike, but he’s not here right now, so I need a girl’s help,” she said desperately.

“Fine. I need to lay Joey down.” She pointed down the hallway where her black baby was and I put him in the crib. I came out of the room. “Kate, what’s your baby’s name?”

“It doesn’t have a name. I’m not naming it until it can speak.”

“So, what do you call it?”

“Smokey.” I laughed. Naming a black kid Smokey. That’s funny. “What are you laughing at? I need your help seriously!”

“Alright, alright.” We sat down at her table and I turned on MTV to watch the concert.

“Aw look at my baby! He’s so cute!” Kate said. I stared at her. What a sick messed up person.

“Look at my baby!” I mocked looking at Billie as they were playing Brat.

“Alright,” she started. “What I was thinking was…” I drifted off, thinking about high school. It wasn’t much. I wish I could go back. All of a sudden, what woke me up from my drifting was Joey.

“MOMMY!” Kate stopped what she was doing, too.

“Did you teach Joseph how to speak?”

“No, he’s just kinda speaking on his own.” I went down the hallway and went into Smokey’s room. Joey was coughing up everything that seemed he ever ate. My baby is sick. “Joey, what’s happened to you?!” Kate came in the room after me.

“What did I miss?”

“Joey’s vomiting.” Kate went and got a bucket from under the sink. As I tried to calm down Joey, she came back and we went to the hospital. Kate and I were sitting in the waiting room while they were operating on my child. Joey. After a while, the whore she is, Kate fell asleep on my shoulder. As tired as I was, I could never sleep while my Joseph was in an operation. But somewhere along the line, I eventually did fall asleep. I was woken up by the doctor a few hours later. “Mrs. Armstrong?”

“Yes?”

“I have some good and bad news.”

“Bad?”

“Young Joseph almost didn’t make it, but the good news is he did.” A sigh of relief came over me and Kate was still asleep.

“Um when will he be able to go home?” I asked.

“Well, he needs to stay over night so we can run some tests on him. Then we need to see if he can survive without tubes.” Tubes? In my child? I couldn’t bear the thought of that. “So in the meantime I’m going to have to ask you to go home.” Oh shit doctor I can’t go home at a time like this.

“Ok.” I shoved Kate’s shoulder and she awoke.

“Huh?”

“We can go home,” I said bitterly like I didn’t want to do it.

“Alright!” Bitch. We got in the car and I dropped her off at her house and I went back home. I turned on the TV to see if the concert was still going on. Nope. I dialed Billie’s number.

“Hello?” said a tired voice.

“Billie,” I said almost crying. A hint of sadness in my voice.

“What’s wrong?”

“Um, Joey…Is in the hospital.”

“What? Why?”

“He was really sick and he wouldn’t stop vomiting. He had to undergo an operation.” There was a silence. I knew he was as pissed as I was.

“Do you want me to come home? I can post-pone the tour to another date.”

“No, I can’t let you do that. It would disappoint the fans.”

“Screw the fans!” He said getting angry. “I need to come home and check on you.” We hung up a few minutes later and I lay on the couch crying myself back to sleep. Poor Joey.

-5:34 a.m.-

I was woken up by something that sounded like a bull in a China store coming through the front door. “Addie, is everything ok?” Billie asked coming over to me and kissing me.

“No, our son is in the hospital. And all we can do it wait. Wait for him to live, wait for him to die. Wait for the impossible.”

“Don’t talk like that, Ads,” Billie said. He kissed me again. And the phone rang as he dashed to it. “Hello?”

“Mr. Armstrong, you are free to come get Joey.” I saw his facial expression turn from anguish to happiness and I could tell he was going to be okay. He grabbed my arm and put me in the car as he sped full speed to the hospital.

“Billie, wanna slow down there?”

“No. I can’t wait to see my baby.” We pulled into the hospital parking lot and we practically flew into the waiting room. The counter lady had a smile on her face and she said into the speaker phone, “Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong are here. You can bring him out. I repeat, Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong are here. You can bring him out.” At that moment, a nurse brought out Joey. He looked the exact same, except for a few stitches. Billie looked so grateful for Joey to be here. I was too.