Wing Jones(82)

Finally the ambulance arrives. The paramedics don’t knock, they come straight in. They’ve got a stretcher. They get down low next to LaoLao and quickly tie a tourniquet above her elbow before carefully putting her on the stretcher.

“You did a good job,” he says. “Keeping pressure on it like that.”

“Is she going to be OK?” I ask. She looks so fragile lying on the stretcher.

“She’s lost a lot of blood.” he says. I already know that. That isn’t answering my question. “Looks like she caught an artery. You two did the right thing.”

That isn’t exactly the reassuring answer I was hoping for, but I know he can’t make any promises.

The paramedics hoist up the stretcher and carry LaoLao out on it and into the ambulance.

“I’ll go with her,” I say, even though I can’t imagine anything worse than going to the hospital and not knowing if LaoLao will be all right, but Granny Dee steps in front of me and hugs me tight.

“You stay here. You gotta tell your mama and Marcus what happened. I’ll go. LaoLao will be all right.” But she won’t look at me when she says that.

I watch the ambulance drive away.

The kitchen is a disaster.

There are bloody footprints everywhere. Bloody sneaker footprints. I look down at my shoes, my prized Riveos.

There’s blood caked on the sole. I’ve been tracking it around the kitchen without realizing it. I don’t want my mom to come home and see this. I can’t run away from this. I take off my shoes and reach under the sink, where we keep the bleach and the cleaning supplies, and get out everything I need to clean. I fill a bucket with scalding hot water.

And I start to clean. I clean until the blood is gone, but even then I keep scrubbing. I scrub until my arms ache, and when my mom comes in the door I’m still on my hands and knees, scrubbing the floor like it’ll never be clean again. I’m shaking so bad I can’t even stand.

I don’t know how I’m going to run on Saturday. Running, the thing that has been everything, more than everything, doesn’t feel so important anymore.





CHAPTER 58


The hospital patched up LaoLao, gave her a blood transfusion and sent her home with a stern lecture about being careful with knives. She won’t be able to go back to the restaurant for a while. She’s spent the past two days tucked up in bed with Granny Dee fussing over her. Even Marcus has been trying to take care of her, when he isn’t in any kind of shape to be taking care of anyone but himself.

Last night I went into my grannies’ room. Marcus was in there; his room and their room are both on the ground floor, so he can wheel himself back and forth pretty easily. LaoLao was propped up by so many pillows she looked like she was sitting on a pillow throne. Granny Dee was sat on her bed.

“I’m sorry I can’t come see you run tomorrow,” she said. Because even though she’s not bleeding anymore, she’s weak, and the heat and the crowds wouldn’t be good for her.

“It’s all right,” said Granny Dee, patting LaoLao’s wrinkled hand with her own gnarled one. “I’ll stay home with you tomorrow. Wouldn’t be fair for me to go without you.”

“I don’t know if I want to go,” I whispered.

“Not go? But, Wing, this is what you’ve been working so hard for. You’ve got to go.” Granny Dee nodded so emphatically her glasses nearly bounced off her nose.

“I don’t know if I can win. I’m scared I won’t win and it will have all been for nothing.”

“That’s not true. Look at you! You’re the fastest girl in your school. My goodness, you’re the fastest girl in all of Atlanta!” Granny Dee said.

Marcus cleared his throat. “You know what, Wing? Remember all that crap I used to say about how I played football for the crowds? And because I wanted to go pro?”

I nodded.

“I’d give just about anything to be able to go out and throw a ball around with Aaron. I know I don’t have any right to miss anything, but I can’t help it. I miss playing football so much. Just football. Not the winning. The game.”

He looked at me. “Wing, just do what you do. Run.”

Granny Dee took my hand. “You don’t have to win, Wing. We’re so proud of you. And if you don’t win, we’ll figure it out. You can’t run with all this pressure weighing you down. Tomorrow, you run the way you did when you first showed me what you could do. Go on out there and be a show-off.”

“I want to see you run like that,” said Marcus. “I want to see you running for you.”

And now it’s finally here. The Riveo Running Girl Race.

The cheers are deafening.

The whole state has gone crazy for track and field with the Atlanta Olympics only weeks away, and it looks like all of Georgia has turned out for the Riveo Running Girl Race. Even Claire Gordon – Claire Gordon, a Georgia native and the fastest woman on the U.S. Olympic Team – is supposedly here. She said she wants to see “the next generation of great Georgia talent.”

I’m stretching at the starting line when someone comes up behind me and wraps their arms around me tightly, fiercely. “You fly today, you hear me? You fly.” It’s Eliza. I hug her back and then she lets me go, turns to the crowd, and holds up my hand, like she did at the pep rally, and the crowd goes crazy.