Emergency Contact(26)

“Sam, are you alive? It’s Penny.” She sounded far away.

Sam felt another kick on his foot, and he groaned.

“I’m Jude’s friend,” said the shiny face with the bright red lips.

“Who’s Jude?” he croaked.

“Your cousin.”

“Niece,” he corrected.

“Are you dying?”

He nodded and tried to slide his phone out of his pocket without passing out.

“Is Jude coming?” He didn’t want her to see him like this. He hated the thought of anyone seeing him like this.

“No.”

Thank God.

A Biggie lyric teased the corners of his brain.

Something about heartbeats and Sasquatch feet.

“Sam, WHAT’S happening? YOU look HORRIBLE.”

His hearing kept coming and going.

His heart was fit to burst.

Thudthudthud.

I’m dying, dead.

Deaddeaddead.

“I think I’m having a heart attack.” He closed his eyes.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she said. “Shit.”

And then.

“Hello? 911?”

Sam thought it was funny how everybody greeted the three-digit number they’d called. As if they had to ask.

“My friend’s sick. I don’t know. Yeah, I’m here with him.”

Sam felt a wave of nausea. He hoped he wouldn’t have to puke in public.

“Sam . . . um.”

“Becker,” he told her.

“Becker,” she said. “Twenty-one I think.”

Sam nodded.

“No,” she said. “I don’t know. At least I don’t think so . . .”

He felt her cold hand on his arm. He opened his eyes.

“Sam, are you on drugs?”

I wish.

He shook his head.

“No, no drugs. Um . . . shortness of breath, cold sweats . . .”

“Stabbing pain in my chest,” he said.

“Stabbing pain in his chest,” she repeated.

“Like a knitting needle,” he said.

“Like a knitting needle,” she repeated.

“Mm-hmm,” he heard her say. Followed by, “Yeah, I guess the knitting needle is going through his chest.”

Exactly.

Sam nodded again.

“Okay, thank you. Bye.”

Sam thought about how people on TV never said good-bye. And then he wondered why people only thought about the dumbest things as they lay dying.

Sam felt Penny sit down next to him.

“Sam, wake up.”

“I am up,” he whispered.

She was staring at him intently.

“Are you sure you’re not on drugs?”

He glared at her before realizing—inappropriately—that she was kind of cute when she made eye contact. Cute enough that he was bummed out that she was watching him die on the street.

“Positive,” he said.

She wiped his wet brow with her T-shirt sleeve, which was already damp. He saw a flash of bra and glanced away.

“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why I did that. I’m supposed to keep talking to you until they get here.”

The cogs in his mind picked up steam.

“Wait, shit. Did you call an ambulance?”

She nodded. “Knitting needle?” she reminded him. As if 100 percent of knitting-needle-related incidents (imagined and otherwise) justified an emergency vehicle.

“Call them back!” he ordered. His heart hammered harder. “Call them back!” he repeated. “I can’t afford an ambulance.”

She stared at him for a beat, grabbed her phone, and marched away. A thousand years later, she returned.

“I called them.” She crouched in front of him with her hands on his shoulders. “Though yours is an incorrect response.”

Despite his stupor, Sam bristled at her word choice. “Incorrect”? Was it “incorrect” to be broke?

“Wait, can you do this?” She stuck her tongue straight out.

He stuck his tongue out.

“What’s the thing with the tongue and heart attacks?” she yelled impatiently, as if he were deliberately keeping diagnostic information from her. “Shit, I think that’s for a stroke.” She pulled out her phone and searched helplessly.

He drew his tongue back into his mouth.

“Okay,” she said, breathing deep. “Don’t die, okay?”

He nodded.

“Promise me,” she said.

He nodded again.

“You know what? Try to slow your breathing . . . one Mississippi . . . two Mississippi . . . Say it in your head.”

He focused on breathing.

“Did you eat today?”

He shook his head.

A Styrofoam drink container was thrust into his face. The straw smelled cinnamony and was covered in red lipstick.

“It’s not very good,” she told him.

He took a sip.

Horchata. Cold. Sweet. And she was right—this one was kind of gross.

“Did you drink a lot of coffee today?”

He nodded. Same as every day.

“Do you have radiating pain?”

He shook his head. She read off her phone.