What was he hearing? Was there something

wrong with her insides? Why didn’t her

father come?

The doctor nodded as if his worst suspi-

cions had been confirmed.“Just as I thought,”

he said, pulling out his prescription pad.

Medicine, ugh. Ramona’s twitching

stopped. Her nose and throat felt fine.“I feel much better,” she assured the doctor as she eyed that prescription pad with distrust.

“An acute case of siblingitis. Not at all

unusual around here, but it shouldn’t last long.” He tore off the prescription he had written, instructed Ramona to give it to her 182

father, and hurried on down the hall.

Ramona could not remember the name

of her illness. She tried to read the doctor’s scribbly cursive writing, but she could not.

She could only read neat cursive, the sort her teacher wrote on the blackboard.

Itching again, she was still staring at the slip of paper when Mr. Quimby and Beezus

stepped out of the elevator. “Roberta is so tiny.” Beezus was radiant with joy.“And she is perfectly darling. She has a little round nose and—oh, when you see her, you’ll love her.”

“I’m sick.” Ramona tried to sound pitiful.

“I’ve got something awful.A doctor said so.”

Beezus paid no attention. “And Roberta

has brown hair—”

Mr. Quimby interrupted. “What’s this all

about, Ramona?”

“A doctor said I had something, some kind

of itis, and I have to have this right away.”

She handed her father her prescription and 183

scratched one shoulder. “If I don’t, I might get sicker.”

Mr. Quimby read the scribbly cursive,

and then he did a strange thing. He lifted Ramona and gave her a big hug and a kiss,

right there in the lobby.The itching stopped.

Ramona felt much better. “You have acute

siblingitis,” explained her father. “Itis means inflammation.”

Ramona already knew the meaning of

sibling. Since her father had studied to be a teacher, brothers and sisters had become siblings to him.

“He understood you were worried and

angry because you weren’t allowed to see

your new sibling, and prescribed attention,”

explained Mr. Quimby. “Now let’s all go

buy ice-cream cones before I fall asleep

standing up.”

Beezus said Roberta was too darling to

be called a dumb word like sibling. Ramona 184

felt silly, but she also felt better.

For the next three nights, Ramona took

a book to the hospital and sat in the lobby, not reading, but sulking about the injustice of having to wait to see the strange new

Roberta.

On the fourth day, Mr. Quimby took an

hour off from the ShopRite Market, picked

up Beezus and Ramona, who were waiting

in clean clothes, and drove to the hospital to bring home his wife and new daughter.

Ramona moved closer to Beezus when

she saw her mother, holding a pink bundle, emerge from the elevator in a wheelchair

pushed by a nurse and followed by Mr.