Claudia and the Bad Joke (5 page)

Chapter 6.

"More flowers!” announced a nurse. “I’ll just add them to the collection.”

     
“Maybe we should donate some of your flowers to the nursing home,” commented my mother. ~I bet they’d appreciate them.”

     
“Claudee, can I make your bed go up and down?” asked Jamie Newton.

     
“Where’s the lunch cart?” Kristy wondered. “I bet hospital food is even grosser than cafeteria food.”

     
It was Saturday. I’d been dreading Saturday. I’d thought that spending a gorgeous weekend cooped up in a hospital room would be as bad as taking a math test. But I was actually having fun — when I wasn’t thinking about my babysitting accident.

     
The rules about visitors at Stoneybrook’s hospital are pretty relaxed. In fact, there aren’t any rules (unless you’re in intensive care). Anyone can come visit. And you can have as

many visitors at a time as you want, as long as they don’t disturb the other patients.

     
As Janine had predicted, ever since I’d been in the hospital, I really had had a stream of visitors. Mimi was usually with me during school hours, but after school and in the evenings — oh, lord! All the members of the club had come by, and so had Mrs. Perkins and Mynah, Mrs. Newton and Jamie (Jamie is four and one of my favorite sitting charges; today was his second visit), Charlotte Johanssen and her mother, Dr. Johanssen (actually, she happened to be on duty in the hospital), Charlotte’s dad, my parents and Janine (of course), and even two of my teachers! Boy, was I embarrassed when my teachers came by. I mean, you don’t expect teachers to see you in your nightgown. But we actually had a nice visit. They didn’t even mention homework. Or my nightgown.

     
Then there were the flowers. Everyone sent them. I felt so special. My relatives sent them, our neighbors sent them, and Stacey and her parents sent a bouquet from New York. Plus, Stacey had called every day. (Stacey has diabetes and she’s been in the hospital quite a few times, so we could swap hospital stories.)

     
Now it was almost lunchtime on Saturday, and crowded into my half of the room were

Kristy, Jamie, my mother (she’d brought Jamie and Kristy with her), Mr. Pike, Mallory, and two of Mallory’s sisters — Vanessa and Claire, who are nine and five.

     
I felt kind of bad for my roommate, Cathy, who had no visitors, but I knew why she had no visitors. Cathy was (I’m sorry, but this is the truth) a great big baby. She was fourteen, and she’d broken her elbow and had an operation on it. I guess it was a bad break, but every time a doctor or a nurse wanted to do anything to her, she’d scream and cry as if she were two years old. No one knew what to do about it. Her parents tried to spend time with her, but they couldn’t be at the hospital every second, and no friends came or called or sent flowers. I decided that this was because Cathy didn’t have any friends. I wouldn’t want to be friends with such a baby. Still, I felt bad for Cathy.

     
“Mom?” I said as the nurse set the new bouquet of flowers on the windowsill. “Come here for a sec.”

     
Mom had been talking to Mr. Pike and Mallory. She left them and came over to my bed. “What is it, sweetie?”

     
“Giving some of the flowers to the nursing home is a great idea,” I whispered, “but maybe we should give some to Cathy, too. Do you

think she would feel insulted? I mean, it’s kind of like saying, ‘You poor kid, you don’t have any flowers at all. I’m so popular I’ve got more than I can handle. Here, take some of mine.’”

     
Mom looked thoughtfully at Cathy’s side of the room. Our beds were separated by a curtain, but there was hardly any privacy. My side was overflowing with flowers and getwell cards and presents and people. Cathy’s side was empty, except for Cathy and her bed.

     
“Why don’t you ask her?” said Mom. “She can hardly get mad with all these people around.” Mom grinned slyly.

     
Usually, I think my parents are dorks, but every now and then they come through.

     
I grinned back. “First, I better see who the flowers are from,” I said. I was keeping a list so I could write thank-you notes. I hate writing letters, but I thought that after I’d been in bed long enough, even writing letters wouldn’t be boring. Besides, I really appreciated what everyone was doing, and I wanted to let them know it.

     
I reached for the card that was stuck in the bouquet.

     
“From Buddy, Suzi, and Marnie,” I read out loud. “Get well soon.”

     
“Is that the Barretts?” asked my mother.

     
I nodded. Our club sits for the Barretts a lot.

     
“You must be pretty popular with your clients,” commented Mom, shaking her head. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

     
At the mention of “clients,” I felt a funny, crawling sensation ripple through my body, but I shook it off. “Hey, Cathy!” I called.

     
“Yeah?” Cathy drew our curtain back.

     
“Would you like these flowers?” I asked her. “I thought they’d look really nice by your bed.”

     
“Well . . . well, sure!” Cathy smiled at me.

     
Mom set the flowers on Cathy’s night table. Then she turned to me. “Honey, Mr. Pike and I are going to go get a cup of coffee. We’ll be back in a little while.”

     
“Okay,” I replied.

     
As soon as the adults were gone, I looked at Kristy and Mallory. “All right!” I said. “On our own!”

     
“And just in time for lunch,” added Kristy, as a nurse came in with covered trays for Cathy and me. She set mine on this table that rolls over the bed, right across your lap. Then she raised my bed so I was sitting up higher.

     
“Cool!” cried Vanessa, watching with interest, at the same time that Jamie said, “I wanted to make her bed go up!”

     
“You can put it down for me after lunch,” I told Jamie. “How’s that?”

     
“Okay.” Jamie looked satisfied.

     
“Mallory, I’m hungry,” complained Claire. “I want a lunch, too.”

     
“We’ll get lunch at home when Daddy comes back,” Mal told her.

     
“You might get to eat something before that, though,” I said. I was looking disgustedly at my tray. It held a pale piece of baked chicken, a helping of extremely limp broccoli, something white that I couldn’t even identify, a pudding cup, a roll, and a container of milk. “Here, have my pudding,” I said to Claire, holding out the container along with a plastic spoon.

     
Kristy was staring at my tray, bug-eyed. “Well, it’s finally happened,” she said. “We’ve found something worse than cafeteria food and airplane food put together.”

     
“I know,” I moaned. “What I wouldn’t give for a Ring Ding or a big bag of Fritos right now.” I thought longingly of the junk-food stash in my room. Since I knew the Babysitters Club meetings were being held in my room without me (they had to be, because people call my phone number), I said, “Puhlease sneak some decent food in here next time one of you visits, okay? Look in my desk drawer or under my bed or in almost any shoebox.”

     
Kristy and Mallory agreed, and I tried to eat my lunch.

     
“Hi, Claud!” someone called from the doorway.

     
I looked up. There was Mary Anne. She was holding a cardboard carton and looking sort of, oh, furtive. (That’s a word Janine uses. It means secretive.) She tiptoed into the room, not saying a word to anyone. Then she smiled at Cathy, said, “Excuse me,” pulled the curtain between my bed and Cathy’s, and opened the box.

     
Inside was her kitten, Tigger. “Mew,” he said in his tiny voice.

     
Now, the hospital may not have many rules, but I know animals are not allowed.

     
“I know it, too,” Mary Anne said when I mentioned that to her. “But I thought you could use a cuddly visitor.”

     
Everyone crowded around my bed. I pushed my lunch table away and we began cooing over Tigger. I hoped Cathy wouldn’t blab, and decided she wouldn’t, since I’d just given her flowers.

     
After a few minutes, Mallory said, “Hey, where’s Jamie?”

     
He was gone.

     
That caused some panic, as you can imagine.

     
My friends went to look for him, leaving me with Tigger. Thanks a lot. What if a nurse came in? But Jamie was found pretty quickly. He was down the hail, in a room where a little boy was recovering from having his appendix removed.

     
“What were you doing there?” I asked Jamie.

     
“Visiting,” he answered. “I’m a visitor, right?”

     
I smiled at him. “Right.”

     
My mom and Mr. Pike returned then, and Mary Anne quickly put Tigger in his box and shoved the box under the bed. Since it was lunchtime, everyone left, except for Mary Anne and Tigger.

     
The afternoon passed quickly. Dawn arrived, then left later with Mary Anne. (I have to admit, I breathed a sigh of relief to see Tigger go, cute as he was.) Jessi and her sister arrived. They brought me a sock to put over the foot of my cast. The sock looked like a moose head. Once it was on, Becca started laughing and couldn’t stop. Cathy laughed, too.

     
Jessi and Becca left. Ashley arrived. Ashley left.

     
Then the room was silent. It would be a good time to — Ring, ring.

     
I reached for the phone. Since I’d been in the hospital, every single call had been for me. Not one for Cathy.

     
“Hello?” I said.

“Hi, Claud! It’s me!” “Stacey! Hello!”

“How are you doing?” I paused.

     
Stacey could tell immediately that something was wrong. “How are you really doing?” she corrected herself.

     
“I’m — My leg is okay. It hurts, of course, and being in traction is uncomfortable. And I’d give anything for a Ring Ding, but. . .“

     
“What’s wrong?”

     
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” I told her. “I keep coming back to this one thing. What if I’d ruined my hands or arms when I fell? Baby-sitting can be dangerous, Stace. And there’s a good chance that when I grow up I’ll be an artist, not a sitter. I don’t want to lose that chance. So I’m thinking of dropping out of the Baby-sitters Club. Just to be on the safe side.”

Chapter 8.

I was lying in bed, laughing. Kristy had

brought the club notebook by for me to read,

I had never had so much fun with it as when

I read Jessi and Mary Anne’s entry. I’m sure

not everything that had happened that afternoon seemed funny then, but it seemed pretty

funny later.

     
The afternoon began when Jessi and Mary Anne arrived at the Pikes’, rang their bell, and were frightened out of their wits by sevenyear-old Margo, who sprang from behind some bushes, shouting, “BOO!”

     
“Aughh!” screeched Jessi and Mary Anne.

     
“Scared you! Scared you!” Margo cried delightedly.

     
She let her sitters inside the house.

     
“Hi!” cried Nicky. (Nicky is eight.) “Hi, you guys! Boy, am I glad you’re here!”

     
He stuck out his hand and Mary Anne reached for it. She was thinking, Nicky isn’t usually this enthusiastic or this polite, but what the heck.

     
She shook Nicky’s hand.

BZZZZZZ!

     
“Aughh!” Mary Anne screamed again.

     
“What is going on out there?” called Mallory. She rushed into the hallway, followed by her parents.

     
Nicky was laughing and jumping up and down. “I got Mary Anne with the joy buzzer!” he exclaimed.

     
“And I scared Mary Anne and Jessi!” cried Margo.

     
Mr. and Mrs. Pike shook their heads.

     
“Please don’t give your sitters a hard time,” said Mr. Pike.

     
“Who, us?” asked Nicky innocently.

     
“Any of you,” their father replied sternly.

     
Mrs. Pike gave Jessi and Mary Anne some instructions about the afternoon~

     
“The triplets are out in back,” she began. (The triplets are Byron, Adam, and Jordan, and they’re ten.) “Vanessa is over at the Braddocks’ playing with Haley. And, let’s see. Who are we missing? Oh, yes. Claire. She’s up in her room, I think.

     
“All the kids have had lunch,” Mrs. Pike went on, “and we’ll be back around five-thirty, so you don’t have to worry about dinner. Mr. Pike and I will be visiting friends in Haddonfield. Their number is by the phone in the kitchen. I guess that’s it. You girls know everything else,”

     
“And I’ll be sitting for Jamie Newton, if you need me,” added Ma!. She checked her watch. “Wow, I better go. See you later. ‘Bye, Mom! ‘Bye, Dad! ‘Bye, you guys!”

     
Mallory took off on her bike. Her parents took off in their car.

     
“I think I’ll go upstairs and see what Claire is up to,” said Jessi.

     
But before she had moved an inch, the phone rang.

     
“I’ll get it!” said Mary Anne. She answered it in the kitchen. “Hello, Pike residence.”

     
“Hello,” said a familiar voice, “is your refrigerator running?”

     
“Yes,” said Mary Anne impatiently. That was the oldest goof call in history. She waited for the caller to say, “Then you better go catch it.”