Save Me - Lisa Scottoline [7]
Mommy!
Rose wanted to scream at herself. If she had run to the handicapped bathroom first, Melly would be fine now. It was a matter of time, of minutes and seconds. Of oxygen deprivation to the brain. Of points on the Glasgow Coma Scale. Why had she spent those minutes on Amanda, and not on her own daughter? Why had she chosen to save Amanda over Melly?
She held tight to Melly’s stretcher. Any mother would have saved her own child. So what if Amanda was standing closer? What difference did that make? What was she thinking?
Rose wiped her eyes. She’d thought she hadn’t chosen, but she had, and she’d chosen wrong. She loved Melly more than life. If Melly didn’t come through this, she would never forgive herself. She could never justify it to herself or Leo. He was Melly’s stepfather, but he loved her like his own. He’d been her only father since she was four, when her father died. A wave of guilt washed over Rose, and she felt as if she were drowning in it, going under.
The ambulance raced down Allen Road. The hospital was only twenty minutes away. She tried not to count the seconds. The male paramedic finished treating the cut on her cheek. Her chest felt tight. She wasn’t even sure she was breathing. She could only pray.
“Here we are, good luck!” The male paramedic hurried to the door, the ambulance lurched to a stop, and everything else happened in a blur. The back doors of the ambulance opened into the blinding sun, and the paramedics hurried Melly’s stretcher out of the back, with Rose right behind, with portable oxygen. The legs on the stretcher snapped down, and they were all running to the entrance of the emergency department, where the doors slid open and a crowd of medical personnel fluttered to them like angels, bearing Melly away.
Rose didn’t let go of her until the very last minute.
Chapter Six
Rose slumped in a cushioned seat, alone in the empty waiting room. Smoke clung to her damp clothes and hair. Her throat felt dry, and her eyes smarted despite the drops they’d given her. Melly had been in one of the ER examination rooms for half an hour, and still no word. The doctors hadn’t wanted to discuss Melly’s condition until they’d examined her thoroughly, and Rose had been sent to the waiting room after the nurses had cleaned her up and given her a tetanus shot. She’d left her purse and cell phone in the car, so she’d used the hospital phone to call the sitter, who’d said she could stay with John until tonight, if needed.
Rose sighed, telling herself to stay calm. Framed prints of generic pastures covered the pastel blue walls, and the sun streamed through the windows, whiting out the screen of the muted TV. She didn’t bother picking up the wrinkled copies of People, Time, or the other magazines on the coffee table. She watched idly as dust motes floated through a shaft of sunlight, rudderless. A pot of stale decaf sat in a Bunn coffeemaker on a side table.
Her gaze fell to her lap. Her right hand was freshly bandaged, and the left had residual soot etched into the back of her hand, black and thick as ground peppercorns. She flashed on Melly, covered with the same grime, and imagined her beating on the bathroom door, calling out, like Amanda.
Mommy!
Rose got up and crossed to the bathroom, walking gingerly because of the bandage on her ankle. She closed the door behind her, using her good hand to flick on the light. A mirror hung over the sink, and in her reflection, she looked like a cleaned-up coal miner. Soot underlined her crow’s feet, the wrinkles under her eyes, and each nostril, like parentheses. A small cut on her left cheek glistened with Neosporin, and her forehead was as gray as a stormcloud. Her long, dark hair was a dirty mop, weighed down by dust, water, and filth.
She didn’t want to miss the doctor, so she opened the bathroom door in case he came back. She twisted on the faucets,