Page 12

I jumped out of the passenger seat and ran across the narrow strip of lawn that doglegged around the house to the gate to our backyard. Ali had heard us coming and had the gate open.

“She’s right here, Dad,” he said, bursting into tears. “I’ve been right here with her.”

“Thank you,” I said, fighting my own tears when I saw her.

“Dad, I must have found her right after it happened, like maybe five minutes after,” he said as I knelt beside her. “I looked close at the blood, and it’s really fresh.”

“I see it,” I said, looking at the blood that had seeped out from under her head. And her arm was definitely broken, likely in several places.

My grandmother opened her eyes, looked at me, and made a noise in her throat.

“I’m right here, Nana,” I said. “We’re taking you to the hospital.”

She sighed and closed her eyes again.

“Go to Nana’s room and get that padded collar thing she uses when she reads. And a blanket,” I instructed Ali.

“Okay!”

Sampson came charging in with an orange plastic board about five feet long with big grooves on the surface designed for tire treads to bite.

“We still doing this?” he asked.

“Fast as we can,” I said.

John and I got the board down next to her and discussed how best to slide her onto it. Luckily, my grandmother was built like a bird. I don’t think she weighed more than a hundred pounds.

“We’ll slide her easy,” Sampson said, kneeling on the opposite side of the board and putting rachet straps under it in two places.

“Nana,” I said. “We’re going to put your reading collar on. Don’t move, okay?”

She made a whimper as Ali handed me the padded collar.

I got it under her neck without moving her head and cinched it firmly in place with the Velcro strips while Sampson laid the blanket over the board. I knew none of this was standard of care for emergency transport, but she wasn’t stable, and we couldn’t wait twenty minutes for the ambulance to show up.

“Here we go,” I said, getting into position opposite John. “Ali, you keep her head supported.”

He knelt at Nana Mama’s head, and we all slid our hands under her. When I felt Sampson’s fingertips, I said, “Nana, you let us do the work. On three.”

My grandmother gave no indication that she’d heard me, but we managed to slide her smoothly onto the board, keeping her in the same position, belly-down, head turned to the left. John gently folded the blanket up around her and then bound her in place with the straps.

I saw Ali had blood on his hands and looked over to where Nana Mama’s head had rested on the bricks. “There’s not a ton of blood there. No more than you’d get with a typical scalp wound,” I said with relief.

We picked up the board and moved quickly through the gate, across the lawn, and down to Sampson’s truck. He had the tailgate open and the cap window up.

I put her up on the tailgate, feet aiming in, then jumped up and crawled inside. Sampson pushed her to me, slammed the tailgate shut, and ran around to the driver’s seat.

I looked at Ali. “Call 911 again, cancel the ambulance, then notify Bree, Damon, and Jannie. Tell everyone that we’ll be at St. Anthony’s.”

He nodded hesitantly as we pulled away.

12

MY FIRST WIFE, MARIA, had been a social worker at St. Anthony’s, and over the years, my family and I had had our fair share of emergency department visits there.

An ambulance was coming from the south and turned into the grounds before we did. It joined another ambulance parked in the bay. Sampson pulled over in front of the ER entrance.

I raced into the waiting room and saw an old friend, a nurse named Sarah Desrochers, at the triage desk talking to a young mom carrying a coughing little girl. I ran right to her.