Cannot Wait to Get to Heaven - Fannie Flagg [17]
Elner was now standing by the bed, but the room was so dark that she could not see a thing and had to feel her way around the room. She headed in the direction of the voices, and located the door, groped around, found the handle, opened it, and walked out into the bright light of the hall. She looked up and down, but she didn’t see a single person anywhere.
She walked down the corridor past a lot of empty rooms. “Yoo hoo!” she called out, but not too loudly because she didn’t want to disturb any sick people trying to sleep. She had wandered all the way down to one end and then down to the other end when she saw the elevator. There wasn’t a soul on this floor, as far as she could tell, so she guessed she’d better go to another one and try to find somebody. She pushed the button, and after a moment the elevator stopped with a jerk and the doors opened. She stepped inside and turned around, but before she could push another button, the doors closed, and up she went.
The Doctor’s Report
10:20 AM
Norma and Macky had been in the hospital waiting room for over twenty minutes, and they had been told nothing yet. Three other people, two women and a man, were there in the waiting room as well, waiting to hear news of their mother’s hip replacement. Norma informed them in great detail who she and Macky were, where they were from, why they were there, and how she had warned her aunt over and over again to be careful on that ladder, a fact Macky was sure the hip-replacement family couldn’t have cared less about. And that may have been the reason all three decided to go to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee. After another anxious ten minutes a young doctor walked in with a chart and looked around the room. “Is there a Mrs. Norma Warren here?” Norma jumped up. “Yes, that’s me.”
“Are you Mrs. Shimfissle’s next of kin?”
Norma was a complete wreck by this time and began to babble uncontrollably. “Yes…she’s my aunt, my mother’s sister, is she badly hurt, Doctor? I’ve told her a hundred times not to get on that ladder, but she won’t listen to me, I said, ‘Aunt Elner, wait until Macky gets off from work.’”
Macky knew she was never going to shut up, and cut her off. “How is she, Doctor? Is she conscious yet?”
Norma, who still didn’t know that Aunt Elner had been knocked out cold, turned and looked at Macky. “What do you mean, is she conscious yet?”
The young doctor sized up the situation and said, “Let’s go sit down.”
“What do you mean, is she conscious yet?” asked Norma again.
When they were seated, the doctor looked first at Macky, then at Norma. “Mrs. Warren, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your aunt”—he glanced down at his chart—“uh, Mrs. Shimfissle, died at 9:47 AM. We tried our best to revive her, but by the time she got here, she was already in bad shape, and considering her age and the circumstances, there was nothing we could do. I’m sorry.”
Norma collapsed and slowly slid off the chair, and Macky and the doctor were just barely able to catch her, a second before the back of her head hit the floor.
Bad News Travels Fast
9:59 AM
Back in Elmwood Springs, Elner’s neighbors Ruby Robinson and Tot Whooten had received the news about Elner, even before Norma and Macky. Earlier that morning, after the ambulance left with Elner, Ruby and Tot had gone inside and Ruby had called her nurse friend, Boots Carroll, who worked at Caraway Hospital, and told her that her neighbor Mrs. Shimfissle was on the way and to be on the lookout for her. As a professional courtesy, Boots had called her back and informed her that the word had just come out of ER that her Mrs. Shimfissle had officially coded at 9:47, and Boots read her the report over the phone. When Ruby put the phone down, she turned to Tot, who was sitting at the kitchen table, and shook her head. “She didn’t make it.”
“Oh, no…. What happened?”
“Anaphylactic shock. That many