When You Wish upon a Rat by Maureen McCarthy Page B

pain and turned away.
    Mr. Craze rose from the table.
    â€œI’ll ring Faye now,” he said. “You and Ruth go to the hospital. I’ll come by with the boys later.”
    Her mother nodded and left the room.
    Ruth pushed her breakfast aside, glad that it was taken for granted that she wouldn’t be going to school. So Mary Ellen had taken a turn for the worse.
But what did that mean?
She was going to get better because people did
beat cancer
these days, and Mary Ellen, of all the people in the world, simply
must.
    On the way to the hospital, Ruth worried about how she could possibly tell her aunt that Rodney was gone. Again and again she tried to string together a few sentences to explain how it had happened.
Marcus and I were fighting, and before either of us knew it or could even think … It happened so quickly …
But how could she tell Mary Ellen that? And yet how could she not! Her aunt loved Rodney the way she did.
    Since being in the hospital, Mary Ellen had become even more attached to him, if that were possible.
How is our little guy doing?
she’d whispered during Ruth’s last visit to the hospital, the same mischievous giggle in her voice whenever Rodney was mentioned.
    Ruth had become so accustomed to the prone, wasted body in the hospital bed that it was easy for her to forget her aunt was so ill. She firmly believed that Mary Ellen would start getting better soon because …
she had to.
    Occasionally, Mary Ellen would lie back on her pillows dreamily and her voice would become wistful.
Rats make good use of whatever is around them, Ruthie. They know how to forage and look under the surface for what they want. Life is never quite what it seems … for a rat.
    As it turned out, there was no need to worry about telling Mary Ellen that Rodney was lost. By the time they got to the hospital that day, she was slipping in and out of consciousness.
So this was what “taking a turn for the worse” actually meant.
Ruth was totally stunned. It was such a huge change from when she’d seen her aunt only a few days earlier.
    She sat back and watched as her mother and Auntie Faye tended their sister. They held her hand and gave her sips of water and turned her over and rearranged her pillows and had hushed conversations with the doctors and nurses. Sometimes Mary Ellen opened her eyes and smiled a little; then she would become fretful and agitated as though she were struggling with something huge sitting on her chest. The nurses would come in then and give her an injection and she’d become easy and calm again.
    Ruth’s shock gave way to numbness after a while. By mid-afternoon she was not only numb but scared. Her aunt’s sallow skin and featherlight frame were things she’d grown used to, but now her skin was as yellow as cheese and weirdly translucent too, like plastic. Every bone in her body looked like a sharp stick trying to push through her skin, and her breathing had become harsh and raspy. Every now and again it stopped altogether and Ruth, her mother, and Auntie Faye would wait expectantly until the air came rushing back in deep, desperate, ragged gasps.
    So what was happening? Ruth didn’t dare ask. This was her aunt and yet … it wasn’t. Someone else was lying in her aunt’s bed.
But no … it
was
Mary Ellen.
    At one point, Mary Ellen waved her sisters away as though their fussing irritated her and motioned feebly for Ruth to come nearer. Right up close, her aunt’s gaunt face became huge, as big as the whole world, the eyes enormous and glittering as though someone had lit bright blue flames behind each one to make them shine. Ruth had the strange feeling that her aunt was actually in some other place, already seeing things that no one else had seen.
    â€œRuthie,” Mary Ellen whispered as she took Ruth’s warm brown hand in both of her cold, thin, bloodless ones. “My wonderful girl.” And then, with a weak