Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [91]
Knowing that can only mean one thing, I scramble out of the teepee as fast as I can and shout, “Ethel! I’m comin’.”
Because of my fly-like-the-wind speed, I beat out Dave, Mother, Troo and all the other neighbors who heard the siren and have come to see what the ruckus is about. The flashing light on the ambulance parked in front of Mrs. Galecki’s house is making our faces go red, then black, red, black, while we watch the men who’ve come to do their job. They hurry up the steps with a stretcher to hunch over Mrs. Galecki, whose head is slumped down to her baggy chest. The porch light is shining down on her face, which matches her gray hair. Ethel is swaying next to her patient and friend, wringing her hands and asking for Jesus’s help.
I want to go to her, but the porch is small and there’s no room for me. All I can do is call to Ethel from the bottom of the steps in my most soothing voice that I learned from her, “Everything’s gonna be fine, sugar,” but she either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t believe me because she’s pleading to the heavens even louder.
The ambulance guys are the same two that always come when Mrs. Galecki’s heart acts up. Like Laurel and Hardy, one of them is fat and one is skinny. When they get done poking around, they heave Mrs. Galecki onto the stretcher with “A one and a two and a three a,” and struggle down the steps with her in their hands. She looks even worse close-up. Her toothless mouth is hanging open and she’s only got on one of the pretty pink slippers that Ethel knit her.
Ethel is scurrying after them with the other slipper in her hand, whimpering out, “Don’t you fret, Bertha, don’t you fret. Ya gonna be back home eatin’ berry cake in no time.”
Ethel doesn’t notice me when she rushes past me in the dark. I don’t think she knows if she is coming or going. When I chase after her and tap her on the shoulder, she turns with a start, brings both of her hands to her chest and says, “Oh, Miss Sally. Bertha . . . she’s real bad!”
“Is it her . . . ?” I place my hand across my heart the way you do for the Pledge of Allegiance.
“I . . . don’t know . . . we was just sittin’ there on the porch talkin’ about Mr. Gary’s visit and then all of a sudden . . .” Ethel goes back to taking giant steps toward where the ambulance is parked and I’m working hard to keep up. “Bertha give out a shout and went limp and . . . she didn’t come back ’round the way she does mosta the time with a little jostle and the smellin’ salts so I called the operator.”
Down at the curb, the men slide Mrs. Galecki through the open doors of the ambulance like she’s a refrigerator shelf. She clanks, and that sound . . . it gives me the shivers in the hot night.
Ethel wants to get in, too, so she can comfort Mrs. Galecki on the way to the hospital, but the skinny man with Augie embroidered on his white shirt puts a hand on her arm to stop her. “Family only. You know the rules.”
Of course she does. This has happened so many times before. She’s just not thinking straight.
“Rest easy, Bertha,” Ethel calls through the door. “Your boy . . . he’ll be here right quick and—”
Augie slams one door shut and then the other. “Give the hospital a buzz later on,” he tells Ethel on the way to his shotgun seat beside his partner, who cranks the siren back up and off they go ripping down 52nd Street to St. Joe’s.
Somebody laughs and the crowd of neighbors breaks up to go back to whatever they were doing before all the excitement except for Troo, who is hanging back, and Mother and Dave, who’ve come to Ethel’s other side.
Dave puts his arm around Ethel’s shoulders and she leans against him and for just a second I think she is gonna faint right there in the street and Mother must think that, too, because she says to her, “You look like you could use a stiff drink.