Inside, sitting at a scuffed pine desk, a woman in a yellow gingham blouse was sorting through stacks of orange and pink files. When I held up my pass, she beckoned me inside.

Hang on a sec, she said, scribbling something on a piece of paper.

I had seen this nurse before at school assemblies, usually standing with whoever had a broken bone. She was the chaperone of the broken bones. She didn’t wear white, but she had soft-looking arms, one wrist encircled by a watchband of overlapping burgundy silk. After adding comments to two files, she looked over at me, sitting in the one free chair. Another sick kid, in a long line of sick kids.

So what’s the problem, hon? she said, picking up a thermometer and shaking it out.

I held my elbows, thinking.

Do you feel hot?

No, I said.

Is your nose stuffy?

I sniffed. The room smelled faintly of cherry medicine. I looked back at her soft elbows, her dark-red ribbon watchband. I used those arms as the first point of trust.

Food tastes bad, I said then.

This was not entirely true-I’d eaten a pretty good apple in my lunch. The recess milk carton was fine. But almost everything else-the cake, the chicken dinner, the homemade brownie, the craving in the peanut-butter sandwich-had left me with varying degrees of the same scary feeling.

What kind of bad? the nurse said, glancing over my body. Do you think you’re overweight?

No, I said. Hollow, I said.

She attached a fresh piece of paper to a clipboard. You think you’re hollow?

Not me, I said, scrambling. The food. Like there’s a hole in the food.

Food has a hole in it, she wrote slowly, on the paper. I watched as she added a question mark at the end. Arc, line, space, dot.