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Tammy and I whipped our heads up as Drake came barreling up the driveway. I broke away from Tammy’s grasp as I started running for the ambulance. I yelled for the paramedics, waking them up and sending them running toward Drake. Elsie was limp in his arms, barely breathing, and as pale as freshly-churned butter.
“Where was she?” the paramedic asked.
“On the other side of the fence in the gully. The water washed her into the drain pipe,” Drake said.
“She’s barely breathing. Get her in the ambulance. We can clean her up on the way to the hospital.”
“Elsie!”
Tammy was shrieking as she ran toward the ambulance.
“Elsie! Wake up!”
“Tammy. Tammy. Look at me,” I said.
The panicked woman turned her gaze toward me as I grabbed her upper arms.
“Get in the ambulance and go with her. Drake, you too. They gotta get her out of here now. Now go. Come on. Get on with it.”
I helped her onto the ambulance as Drake
’s arm wrapped around me. The paramedics were working on Elsie, hooking her up to I.V.’s and getting an oxygen mask on her. Tammy was a mess of tears and snot as she held the girl’s hand, her skin covered in mud and soaked to the bone. I turned around in Drake’s arms, taking stock of how muddy and cold he was himself as his eyes stayed hooked on his sister.
“Drake, look at me,” I said.
His worried stare dropped down to mine as I lifted my hand to cup his cheek.
“Go,” I said. “I’ll make sure everyone gets off your property before you guys are back.”
“Stay here,” Drake said. “Be here when I get back. Please.”
He dropped his lips to mine and he held me tightly against him.
I stepped back from Drake, breaking the kiss before I swatted at him.
“Get on the ambulance. Go. I’ve got all this back here,” I said.
CHAPTER 37
Drake
Elsie’s temperature had dropped drastically, and she’d swallowed a lot of muddy water. Antibiotics and fluids were being run through her body as the doctors tried to get her temperature to come up. I was scared. The needles she was being poked with threw her into a fit and the random people surrounding her were raising her heart rate to dangerous levels. Against my insistence, they had to sedate her just to run the tests they needed to run.
When Elsie came to, waking from the drugs they used to knock her out, I tried to make the room better for her. I turned the sound down on all the machines, turned them away from her, and shut the lights off in the room. I tucked her in with blankets to try and warm her and made sure there were no wrinkles in the fuzzy socks I’d bought to slip on her feet. Tammy was smoothing her hair back, trying to get her to focus as tears poured down her cheeks.
“Elsie, honey. Why in the world did you wander off?” Tammy asked.
“The birds outside wouldn’t stop chirping. I went onto the porch to shoo them off,” Elsie said.
“Then how did you end up getting all the way across the yard?” Tammy asked.
“There were people standing at the edge of the fence asking about Drake. I figured I could answer their questions,” Elsie said.
“There were what?” I asked.
“People. At the fence. They kept asking about you,” Elsie said.
“Elsie, how many times have I told you stay away from the people who gather at the damn fence?” I asked.
