Don't Fail Me Now(58)

Michelle. MICHELLE! Denny wrestling away from the elderly woman who’s been comforting him—not me, of course not me, I wasn’t there, I was with Tim—and throwing himself on me, his voice shrill and scared.

What’s happening? Why is she moving like that? Is she okay?

I’m a doctor, the man in madras says. She’s having a seizure. Does she have any preexisting . . . And then the siren drowns him out. I fumble for her backpack, splayed half-open at her feet, with hands that feel like lead pellets in rubber gloves. The front zipper won’t open. It’s stuck on something. I pull and pull until it rips apart. A truck parts the crowd. Two men in black jackets jump out as my fingers close on the bracelet.

The man in madras talking to the paramedics as they hold her down and check her vitals. Could tell something was wrong . . . hard fall . . . don’t think she’s breathing.

She’s diabetic, I say—scream, really—holding the bracelet out like it’s some kind of magic wand and not just a crappy scrap of titanium. Like it can do anything at this point.

I need an Accu-Chek and D50 NOW! The guys in black are all over her, and the only thing I can do is hold on to the toe of her sneaker, and not even that once they lift her onto the stretcher.

We need to intubate, one says. Within seconds, they’re fastening a plastic collar around Cass’s neck, and one of the paramedics holds her head steady while the other feeds a clear plastic tube into her throat. I cover Denny’s eyes.

A burst of static from a walkie-talkie. I’ve got an unresponsive teenage female who needs immediate transport to Flagstaff! We’re intubating in the field. Have an airlift meet us at the clinic.

Denny’s eyes, looking up at me, terrified. This can’t be happening.

Where is she going? I’m her sister. A voice behind me: Leah. I didn’t even see her.

Flagstaff Medical Center, the other paramedic shouts, lifting Cass onto a stretcher. She’s moving less, just twitching now. I need you to move back, ma’am.

Someone’s arms lift me up, dragging me back. Tim? A stranger? Does it even matter? Nothing else matters. Then doors slamming. The taillights of the ambulance. The earsplitting scream of the siren.

Denny, clinging to my waist. Is she gonna be okay?

Waiting for a sign. Waiting for the three squeezes I can’t give.

I don’t know.

(Take care of them, okay?)

I don’t know.

(I know you will. You always have.)

I DON’T KNOW.

(You’re all they got right now.)

And then I’m gone.

? ? ?

This time, though, it doesn’t pass after a few seconds. I feel dizzy and numb. Somehow I make it to the car and sit down in the passenger seat, still clutching my sister’s backpack.

“Can you buckle yourself in?” Tim asks gently, and I nod only so that he leaves me alone. But the truth is I don’t want the buckle. If we hit something, I want to fly through the windshield, and I want to feel it. I want to get what I deserve.

I know the symptoms of hypoglycemia like I know my times tables. Pale skin. Sweat. Hunger. Confusion. Agitation. Hadn’t she looked pale to me for days now? Hadn’t I seen her vibrate like a live wire in the backseat all afternoon? Saw her wipe sweat from her eyes even with the windows rolled down, doing sixty on the highway? Watched her wander over to the visitor’s center like she didn’t know where she was? The seizure might have been sudden, but the warning signs were all there, and I noticed them. I just didn’t see them.

“It’ll take us about an hour,” Tim says, pulling onto the highway entrance ramp. “I’ll go as fast as I can.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Denny asks, his voice uncharacteristically quiet.

“You saw it, Lee,” Tim says. “What happened?”

“I didn’t, actually.” Leah’s face is still paper white. “I was inside with Denny. Then I heard . . . screaming.”

I close my eyes. I should have been there, and not just today. I should have been there all week. Cass has barely spoken in days, and I chalked it up to moodiness. I saw her get bullied, and I let it go after one half-assed attempt at a talk. I thought running away would just fix her problems (well, my problems, anyway), like on one of those makeover shows when some formerly frumpy lady walks out from behind a curtain wearing fitted jeans and a blazer and her whole family cries. They don’t show you what happens after that, though, because it probably just goes back to how it was. People don’t change from the outside in.

“She seemed okay earlier,” Tim says, glancing at me. “Right? I mean, she seemed normal.”

“Well.” I stare at the floor mat, a faded maroon the color of dried blood. “Normal for Cass isn’t really normal.”

“But, I mean, this must have been sudden. Some kind of accident.”

“She gets mad when she doesn’t eat enough,” Denny says.

That’s true. If Cass doesn’t time her shots to her meals right, she can dip below the blood sugar threshold. But that doesn’t happen often. She’s been diabetic since she’s been alive, so she knows how to handle it—I know she knows. So I never pay that much attention to what she eats.

But this week has been different. I’ve been with her twenty-four hours a day, so I know what she’s had: not much. Cass, who needs to eat well to live, survived on crumbs and scraps while I hoarded my money for gas, spent it on a totally unnecessary tent, and paid for parking at a tourist trap so I could explore second base in the open air.