Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [95]
“I don’t feel good,” she said.
The sound of my sweet Aunt Daisy crying like a baby broke my heart. It made me want to cry with her.
“Something’s terribly wrong,” Ella said.
John laid Aunt Daisy on her bed, pulled her comforter over her, and felt her pulse. Then he felt her head.
“I’m calling 911,” he said.
“NO!” Aunt Daisy said.
I had never seen her so agitated. Maybe she was afraid of the hospital?
“Ella? Let’s you and I pack her a little overnight bag. Do you know where her medicines are? And her health insurance cards?”
“Yes, yes!” Ella said and began rushing around, getting what she needed.
“It’s going to be all right, Aunt Daisy. I promise it’s going to be all right.”
“NO! NO! NO!”
She screamed NO! over and over again for the next five minutes or so until finally her yelling became a whispered but still desperate protest and then at last, she rested, falling asleep. Even in her resting state, I saw that she was drooling and her hands were shaking and I was afraid for her. Ella was nearly panic-stricken. I put my arm around her shoulder and tried to console her.
“She’s going to be fine,” I said.
“Dear Jesus, please save her! Please Lord! Don’t take my Daisy away from me now!” she said, and began to weep. “Oh, Lord, Cate. What’s happening here?”
I felt absolutely terrible for both of them and I was just as frightened as anyone else in the room.
“Come on, Ella. Don’t worry yourself so. We’re going to get her to the hospital and they will give her what she needs.”
“I’ll be right back,” John said.
John ran downstairs to turn on the porch lights and to unlock the doors. We could hear the sirens approaching and, in minutes, Aunt Daisy was on a gurney and on her way to the capable hands of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
“You ride with us,” John said to Ella and she nodded her head, grabbed Aunt Daisy’s little overnight bag, and hurried out to the car with us.
It seemed like an eternity passed in the blink of an eye. We raced down Folly Road behind the screaming sirens and flashing lights, and yet another eternity passed until we reached the emergency room entrance, but we got there at last and stayed with her in a curtained-off area until a doctor came to examine her, minutes later. She was still asleep. John went to the desk with her health cards to fill out the forms and tell them what they needed to know.
At last a doctor pulled back the curtain and looked at Aunt Daisy and then to us. I was busy thanking God he wasn’t just some medical student. He was a real adult. He asked us who we were.
Ella said, “I’m her best friend, Ella Johnson.”
“She’s way more than that,” I said, completely unsolicited, and added, “and I’m her niece, Cate Cooper. My aunt is Daisy McInerny.”
“I’m Doctor Ragone,” he said and nodded to us.
I didn’t know if the doctor understood what I meant but I wasn’t going to let them shuttle Ella out of there just because they weren’t related by blood or marriage. The doctor did not care one iota about any of that or that the woman in that bed was one of the most important people in my life. I started getting upset and bit my lip to hold back the tears I could feel getting ready to rise up and fall. John stepped back inside the curtain and put his arm around my shoulder, giving me a solidarity squeeze.
“Shhh!” he said to me. “It’s all right. We got her here and she’s going to be fine.”
“She has to be fine. I can’t stand it if she’s not.”
“Shhh,” he said again.
I sighed so hard then. It had been a rough month for me, but this wasn’t about me. It was my momma in that bed, not my birth mother, but the momma that had loved me all my life. I wanted her well and out of that bed as fast as possible.
Dr. Ragone began to examine her by taking her pulse.
“Ms. McInerny, can you hear me?”
“She’s been really out of it,” Ella said.
Inside of fifteen seconds, he slapped a pressure cuff around her arm and