Cannot Wait to Get to Heaven - Fannie Flagg [4]
“Oh my God. Is she in pain?”
There was a pause, then Macky answered, “No. She’s not in pain, just get on over here as soon as you can.”
“She’s broken her hip, hasn’t she? You don’t have to tell me, I know she has. I knew it. I’ve told her a thousand times not to get on that ladder!”
Macky cut her off, saying again, “Norma, just come on over here as soon as you can.” He had not wanted to be rude to Norma, and hated to hang up on her again, but he also did not want to tell her that Aunt Elner had knocked herself out cold and was still out like a light. At this point, he really had no idea what was broken, or even how badly she was hurt. When he had arrived at her house a few minutes before, Aunt Elner had been lying on the ground under her fig tree, with Ruby Robinson sitting beside her, taking her pulse, while her other neighbor, Tot, was standing there beside them engaged in a running commentary.
The Eyewitness
8:02 AM
Earlier, at exactly 8:02 AM, Tot Whooten, a thin and wiry redhead who always wore pale blue eye shadow, even though it had been out of style since the seventies, had been on her way to work at the beauty shop because her client Beverly Cortwright was coming in for a dye job today, and she needed to get to the shop a little early and do some mixing. As she walked by Elner Shimfissle’s house, she just happened to look up, in time to see her neighbor topple backward off an eight-foot ladder, with what looked like a hundred wasps buzzing all around her and following her right down to the ground. After poor Elner landed with a thud, Tot yelled at her, “Don’t move, Elner!” and ran up her other neighbor’s front porch steps, screaming at the top of her lungs, “Ruby! Ruby! Get out here quick! Elner’s fallen out of the tree again!” Ruby Robinson, a diminutive woman of about five-foot-one, in clear bifocals that made her eyes look twice as big, was having her breakfast, but the instant she heard Tot, she jumped up, grabbed her small black leather doctor’s bag from the hall table, and ran as fast as she could. By the time the two of them reached the side yard, about twenty angry and upset wasps were still flying all around the tree, and Elner Shimfissle was lying on the ground, unconscious. Ruby immediately reached in her bag, pulled out the smelling salts, and snapped it under Elner’s nose, while Tot relayed what she had just witnessed to the other neighbors, who had started to come out of their houses and gather around the fig tree. “I was headed off to work,” she said, “when I heard this loud buzzing noise…buzz…buzz…buzzzzz, so I looked up, and saw Elner hurl herself backward off the top of the ladder, and then…Whamo! Bang! She hit the ground, and it’s a good thing she’s so bottom heavy, because when she fell, she didn’t flip or anything; just went straight down like a ton of bricks.” Ruby quickly popped another smelling salts under Elner’s nose, but still she did not come around. Never taking her eyes off of her patient for a second, Ruby suddenly started barking orders. “Somebody call an ambulance! Merle, bring me a couple of blankets. Tot, go call Norma and tell her what’s happened.” Ruby, who at one time had been head nurse at a major hospital, knew how to give orders, and everybody scattered and did exactly what she said.
Norma Hits the Road
8:33 AM
The second she hung up with Macky, Norma ran to the kitchen again and threw cold water in her face, then flew through the house frantically gathering up her purse, Aunt Elner’s insurance papers and Medicaid information, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and anything else she thought her aunt would need for the hospital. Norma had been waiting for years for something like this to happen, and now that it had, she was glad she’d had the foresight to plan for it. Ten years ago she had prepared a file marked HOSPITAL EMERGENCY, AUNT ELNER.
She also had an earthquake kit in the garage, where she kept bottled water, matches, six cans of Del Monte chili, a small supply of her hormones, thyroid medicine, aspirin, a jar of Merle