by Paul Stinson
Kids aren’t stupid. They see everything. They’re full of questions, too. Not that we have too many answers.
I just say, “We’re going to have you feeling much better soon, sweetie. Trust me.”
The smallest ones sometimes get spooked around all the doctors and nurses. They get scared of all the equipment. It helps to give them something to hold. Something they can squeeze.
“Sweetie, meet my friend, Teddy. If it hurts, just pass the hurt on to him. He can’t feel it—that’s what makes him a teddy bear.”
If they’re in pain, we have to find out how bad it is. We have to take the qualitative and make it quantitative. Progress is numbers.
“Sweetie, how much does it hurt? One is a little, ten is a whole lot.”
Most kids say ten right off. That’s normal. I ask questions like “How many people were there?” They answer with “a billion.” “How much cake did you eat?” They say, “a lot.” You have to believe them, but you also have to know how to talk them down. I use a pain chart with cartoon faces for each number.
“See the red-faced man on the chart here? He’s a ten, but he looks silly, doesn’t he?” (Yes, he does.) “He doesn’t look like you, does he?” (No, he doesn’t.) “So maybe more like seven-and-a-half?”
One kid said nine. His back was welted like tire tracks in mud. He couldn’t bend over or move his arms. When the caseworker told him that the police took his stepfather away, the kid just sat there, flicking at his Batman underpants.
“Don’t worry,” said the caseworker. “You’ll be going to live somewhere where nobody can hurt you anymore.”
Only then did the kid start to cry. “I don’t want to go live somewhere else,” he said. “I just want to go home.”
It’s my five-year anniversary this week. Gwen and I carpool and park out in Lot D. From there, it’s a shuttle to the main building. It’s a long breezeway to Emergency. The cafeteria now has decent coffee, an omelet station at breakfast, and a sushi station at lunch. We always sit by the big windows facing the smokers’ courtyard. We still like to watch, even though we both quit last winter.
Today, Gwen said, “Eleven years old. Cut from here to here”—she traced her finger across her cheek from ear to chin—“then raped. Says to me, ‘Nurse, what if I’m pregnant? Am I gonna have a big scar? What if it never stops hurting?’” Gwen laughed the way she does, and sipped her coffee.
I laughed too, but I was thinking, Now that’s one I’d like to ask one of these kids. You tell me, sweetie. Does it ever stop hurting? Because honestly, I’d like to know.
Then I thought: No, I wouldn’t.
Gwen got up and came back a few minutes later with a cupcake and a candle. She lit the candle with her lighter, which she never uses anymore but still keeps in her pocket. “Happy anniversary,” she said.
We looked out the big windows. The smokers’ courtyard was empty. We stared for a while at nothing.
My pain chart goes from one to ten, but nobody shoots low. One, three, five—who even cares? I think the only thing that matters is that there’s an upper limit. That nothing can be more than ten.
Paul Stinson is an incoming student in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. His first chapbook of poems, GOALS (Bottlecap Press 2025), was published in August, and his previous poems and stories have appeared in AMBIT, The Evergreen Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Cleveland, he currently lives in Austin.