Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson

flattened palm for all to admire. “He said I was a natural. He also likes my coat.” He was still wearing his white cotton duster, now smeared with Mimi’s blood.
    â€œThat’s nice,” Mimi said. She sounded so calm that I suspected the tube taped to her left forearm contained morphine rather than saline. “Please do check me for brain damage, Monkey. The doctors might have missed something.”
    Frank handed his goggles to me, moved the visitor’s chair to the head of Mimi’s bed, and climbed up so he’d be tall enough to shine his light down into her pupils. “Nurse,” he said. “Come closer. Let me show you how this is done.”
    I was about to suggest to Frank that maybe the nurse knew already, but from the indulgent way she smiled and came to his elbow I imagined she had lots of experience with people in bloody white coats showing her how to do things she already knew how to do.
    â€œSee her pupil contract when I do this? That’s a good sign,” Frank said. “With brain damage, I get no response when I flash the light. If the pupils are different sizes, then we’ve got real trouble. The injuries we have here are minor. Superficial scalp lacerations, swelling and bruising, maybe a concussion. We’ll keep tabs on her for the next twenty-four hours to make sure she doesn’t show evidence of an intracranial bleed.” Frank hopped down without turning anything over or bringing the bed curtain down with him. So that was a relief.
    â€œIs that so?” the nurse asked. She winked at me.
    â€œThat’s what the paramedic said,” Frank said.
    â€œPretty much word for word,” I added. “Frank has an incredible memory.”
    â€œMaybe Frank should go to medical school. The triage nurse says he’s told her plenty about cholera outbreaks in London in the nineteenth century.”
    â€œJohn Snow proved it a waterborne illness by tracing the 1854 outbreak to London’s Broad Street well,” Frank said. “He removed the pump handle and within days the outbreak ended. Would it be all right if I checked you for brain damage, too?”
    â€œSure,” she said, and settled on the chair Frank had carried over.
    Holding that penlight somehow freed him to study her face closely. “You look like Tinkerbell,” he said, then snapped his light on. It was true. She had blue eyes, a pert nose, and pink lipstick, plus lots of blond hair done up in an elaborately casual topknot.
    â€œThank you,” she said. “Does that mean I’ll live forever and never get old?” I wasn’t surprised by her question. She had a smooth, unworried brow that looked suspiciously younger than her hands.
    â€œI’m just saying you don’t have brain damage,” Frank said.
    â€œWell, if I’m not going to be young forever, then I’d better get back to work.” She checked the bag of fluid flowing into Mimi’s arm and made notations on her chart.
    â€œMy father was a doctor,” Mimi said. “Frank would love medical school. But first he has to make it through elementary school.”
    â€œWinston Churchill failed the sixth grade,” Frank said. “Noël Coward—”
    â€œFrank,” I said. “The nurse is busy.”
    â€œOh, that’s okay,” Tinkerbell said. “I’m done. So, Frank, just to be extra sure your grandmother’s brain is in good shape, we’re sending her upstairs for an MRI. That stands for magnetic resonance imaging. It’s a way of taking pictures inside her brain without actually having to poke a hole in her skull to see how everything looks on the inside.”
    â€œMy grandmother?” Frank said. “My grandmother died in 1976 . You could look inside her skull through one of the eye sockets without having to poke a hole, but I doubt there’d be much to see in there anymore.” He plunged both his hands into his