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“What about him?”
“Think we should invite him, too? Considering?”
“Considering what?”
“Don’t be dense, Ruth. That man is head over heels in love with you. It would be a real shame for him to get hurt.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ruth
My mouth is open but I cannot force sound out of it. I try to call out for help, but a lump has formed in my throat and I cannot seem to form words around it. What comes out is raspy and hoarse. I sound like a dying animal.
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
Please, no. Please. Please don’t let this be happening.
My tongue feels like it weighs a hundred pounds. It sticks to the roof of my mouth like sandpaper. I take the steps two or three at a time, going just as fast as I can manage until I reach the last one.
Julia is lying at the bottom of the stairs, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. She isn’t moving. I’m not even sure she is breathing.
“Help!” I yell, willing someone to appear. “Hello?” I call out, hoping someone will hear me, hoping someone will come. “I need help! Now!”
No one answers. No one comes.
I have no idea where Johnny or Davis are or where Ashley or whatever the hell her name happens to be is. I only know that I’m calling for help and that it seems I’m on my own.
Kneeling beside Julia, I plead loudly, very loudly, for her not to be dead. My fingers find her neck and then her wrist and everything happens in slow motion as I check her pulse. Do I feel something? A faint rhythm beating against the pads of my fingers? I can’t tell.
I lay my head on her chest and listen for the familiar drum of a heartbeat. It’s hard to hear anything over the sound of my panicked breath. This doesn’t make any sense. I was just laughing with her. What was it? Twenty minutes ago?
Smoothing her hair, I tell her she is going to be okay, even though I’m not sure it’s true. I call out again, several times, but when no one comes, I realize I have to leave her and get help myself. I dart to the kitchen where I yank the receiver off the old corded phone attached to the wall. I dial 9-1-1 and then I stretch the cord as far as it will go, so that I round the corner just enough so that I can see her. I don’t know why this matters, only that I’m panicking, and that it does.
As I wait for the dispatcher to pick up, I’m pretty sure I hear movement coming from upstairs. Footsteps or some sort of shuffling. Hairs stand on the back of my neck. I sense someone watching me, but when I look around, no one is there. Then, there’s more shuffling. It’s lighter this time. It could be a guest or it could be an ax murderer. Nothing in this house feels normal anymore. Friend or foe, surely whoever is up there would have come when they heard me screaming for help. Unless…
I give the dispatcher our address. I request an ambulance. Then I lay the phone down, leaving it dangling from the cord. Our insurance company made me take a training class once in exchange for a discount on our policy. They taught me a lot o
f things, one of them being that in the event of an emergency or an accident on the premises, to say as little as possible. Nothing other than pertinent medical information should be conveyed without an attorney present.
The ambulance arrives within four minutes. I listen to the paramedics as they work. They suspect cardiac arrest. Julia’s breathing is shallow. She has a pulse. She is not dead. But she does not regain consciousness. As the paramedics wheel her out on a stretcher, and I am questioned, it occurs to me that I am going to have to call her family. I don’t want to have to be the one, but who else is there?
As they load her in the ambulance, I stand at the curb holding her rosary beads. The man who lives next door comes over to ask if there’s anything he can do to help. When I tell him there isn’t, he says, “I hope you have good worker’s comp.”
It feels like such an odd thing to say, but then I realize that I don’t know what our insurance coverage is, and anyway, that’s the last thing I should be thinking about at a time like this.
But he goes on. “I see this all the time. People trying to get out of a hard day’s work.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh.” He shifts on his feet and extends his hand. “I’m sorry. How rude of me. I’ve forgotten to introduce myself, I’m Zach.”
“Ruth.”
“Yes,” he smiles. “Lily told me all about you.”
The police briefly speak to the paramedics. I try to make out what they are saying, but the man, Zach, he won’t stop talking. “You wouldn’t believe the things people do. Anything to keep from getting their hands dirty.”
I want to throat punch him. He doesn’t know it, but he is literally talking about a woman who is a second mother to me. I lost the first one, and while it seems preposterous now, it never occurred to me that this one wouldn’t live forever.
