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“Why would he just leave me? What is this?”
“Your last chance,” she said through tight lips. “Go on,” she urged, her hand now on my shoulder. She pushed me a few steps toward the ambulance.
I turned out of her grasp sharply and then heard the ambulance door open and close. The driver came walking toward us. He was wearing what looked like a pair of construction man’s overalls with deep pockets and a T-shirt that his firm and thick muscularity was stretching to the limits of its seams. He had’a shock of black hair and sleepy brown eyes.
“Trouble?” he asked.
“No, not yet,” the woman said. “She’s just a bit tired. You’re tired, aren’t you, Phoebe?”
“I’m not tired. I want to see my uncle,” I said, sounding a lot more frightened than I had wanted to sound. It was just hard to put up a brave front under such weird circumstances.
“We don’t have time for this,” the man said to the woman.
“I know what time it is and what we have and have not time for,” she told him irritably.
He lifted his hands as if he was going to have nothing to do with any of it anymore and stepped back.
I turned in a circle. Where was Uncle Buster? How could he just leave me? Why would I be going anywhere in an ambulance? And how could they call that an escort service?
“I gotta get out of here,” I moaned.
“Now you just relax,” the woman said, and before I could take another step, she put her arm around my shoulders. I tried to pull away, but she was amazingly strong and had my arms pinned against my sides.
“Let go!” I screamed. An elderly couple who had just pulled up and parked looked at us, but the sight of the woman holding me just made them walk away faster.
“Okay,” she told the driver. “You’d better give her the first-class ticket.”
“Glad to be of service,” he said, smiling. He stepped up and pulled a syringe out of his deep pocket. I felt the needle go into my arm, and again I tried to pull free, even kick her. Then he stepped back and walked quickly to the rear of the ambulance. She held on to me as I continued to squirm and cry out.
Suddenly, though, I felt so numb. I wasn’t even sure I was making any sound even though my mouth was opening and closing. The whole parking lot went into a spin.
“Hurry up, will you!” I heard her shout at the driver.
“I’m coming, I’m coming. Man, you’re getting to be a slave driver.”
A stretcher was wheeled toward me, and I felt myself being lowered to it. First, I sat and then, despite willing myself to put up resistance, I was easily made to lie back. Straps were pulled over my legs and across my chest under my breasts. A pillow was shoved down beneath my head.
I heard someone ask what happened and the woman say, “Epileptic fit.”
“Oh, poor thing.”
“She’ll be all right,” the woman said.
I vaguely felt myself being lifted. I had no pain. It was actually a pleasant sort of feeling that came over me. I wasn’t exactly asleep either, but I wasn’t fully awake. I was caught somewhere in between and I was drifting. I heard the door shut after I was moved farther into the ambulance.
Then another door opened and shut. The woman was beside me. I sensed her, but I didn’t see her. My eyes were closing.
“I never like it like this,” the driver said.
“Shut up and drive,” the woman told him.
I was sinking farther down now. I thought I was falling through the stretcher. It was like my whole body was melting, too, and seeping into it. Was this death?
I began to hear music. The driver started to sing along with a song.
And then I heard other music, a tune coming from a black marble pedestal upon which two ballerinas twirled. I remembered it well. It was at my bedside, a birthday present. I was hypnotized with it, with their graceful movements as the male dancer twirled and swung the female.
How wonderful it must be to dance like that, I thought, to be airy and unafraid of your body failing you. How I wished I could be a dancer.
