I’d never ridden in an ambulance before, and if you want to know the truth, I don’t ever need to again. At the hospital, they placed my grandfather in a small room with a curtain surrounding the bed, even though there was no other bed in the room. He seemed to relax a bit, and then within an hour it was basically as if nothing had happened.
My grandfather had apparently suffered something called a TIA, a transient ischemic attack—kind of a “ministroke.” The doctor at the tiny medical center where they had taken us reminded me of the young guy who had X-rayed my ankle. He was very sincere; he looked directly into my eyes whenever he spoke to me. They couldn’t be sure it was this ministroke thing, he said, but all signs pointed that way. They decided to keep my grandfather overnight for observation. Grandpa gave me a number and I called Davis to come and get me.
“He’s had two TIAs before,” Davis told them when he arrived.
The doctor and nurses nodded their heads and seemed pleased with themselves over this latest news.
“Unconfirmed,” my grandfather barked from his hospital bed. “Unconfirmed.” We were all standing around him staring down, like he was a fish in a bowl.
“It’s okay, Grandpa,” I said to him. “They’re here to help you.”
“Don’t believe it,” my grandfather said. He was definitely getting grumpier.
Later, after he came back from some other test, when I went to say goodbye, I swung the curtain open and he popped up in the bed. He had his big half-toothless grin back on his face, like a crazy carved pumpkin. I almost burst into tears when I saw him smile like that. I hugged him around the neck and told him I’d see him the next day.
Davis and I didn’t speak in the car. The house felt super quiet. When I walked into the kitchen, I realized I was about to pass out from hunger. We’d been at the hospital for hours, and it was past dinnertime.
“I’ll order a pizza, okay?” Davis said.
Davis said he had some things to do, so he went back to his room above the garage while we waited for the food. I sat on the front steps so I didn’t have to be in the house alone.
The pizza delivery guy was young, with a lot of acne. He was kind of awkward, but his pizza was super cheesy with a nice spicy sauce. Delish. I felt a lot better as I ate. Davis said he had to work in the morning but would take me to the medical center when he got off after lunch and we’d bring Grandpa home.
After I tossed the last crust into the box, I wanted nothing more than to just head upstairs. I wasn’t tired at all but it was dark, and enough was enough for one day. If I got into bed, then nothing else could happen. But first there was one more thing that had to be done.
I was surprised that my parents hadn’t called, but there was no blinking light on Grandpa’s answering machine when I picked up the phone to call my house back in New Jersey.
My mother answered. “How’s everything there today?” she asked. Her voice was calm, so I couldn’t really tell how mad she was at me at this point.
I didn’t especially want to launch right in with the bad news, but I figured if I waited, when I finally did tell them, they would wonder why I had been holding back.
“Oh, my God, Lucy. Is he okay? Are you okay, sweetheart?” All of a sudden, my mother was a super sweet, loving, concerned parent again.
My father was not so gentle. It’s not that he sounded angry at me so much as he was trying to get a handle on what was going on. I described twice what had happened and what the doctor had said. Then I told him that Davis had driven me home. Then I had to explain who Davis was. I could hear my father breathing hard on the phone.
“Who is at the house with you now?”
“No one. Davis is in his apartment over the garage, but that’s all.”
The only thing he said was my name—“Lucy”—but I could tell he was now extremely stressed.
“Dad,” I said, trying to sound very nonchalant, “I’m totally fine.” I think that made it even worse.
Now my father had made me nervous about being in the house alone—and about Davis. Davis hadn’t seemed like a psycho rapist or murderer, but now I wasn’t so sure. After my father said they’d call in the morning and we hung up, I locked the front door, went upstairs, and climbed into bed. I didn’t think I would get any sleep, but I must have passed out in self-defense. The next thing I knew it was another bright morning, and the birds were singing again. I wondered about that cardinal, if he was out there again, if that was his spot. Did birds even have spots?
While I was considering this, I heard someone moving around downstairs. That must have been what had woken me. I figured it was Davis; he must have had a key. If it had still been dark I would have assumed he had come to kill me, but if he hadn’t done it during the night, it didn’t make much sense that he’d decide to attack in the cold light of day.
Then I heard footsteps on the creaky stairs. I sat up fast and looked around for something to defend myself with. The old telescope stood on its tripod by the window. It was better than nothing. I leapt up and grabbed it.
The footsteps outside my room were coming closer. The bedroom door began to slowly swing open, creaking as it went. I pulled back the telescope and was about to throw it full force at Davis’s head when my dad stepped in from the hallway.
“Lucy,” he said.
“Dad!” I nearly dropped the telescope. “You scared me to death.”
My father walked across the room, took the telescope out of my hands, and set it back on the ground. He just looked at me.
“Are you all right? What are you doing?”
“I’m totally fine. You just freaked me out, sneaking up on me like that.”
“I didn’t sneak up on you. I drove all night to get up here.”
My dad had apparently hung up the phone last night and then gotten in his car and driven eight hours while I was asleep, just to see if I was still alive. I suppose that should have touched me. Now that I got a good look at him, he did look pretty tired. We went down to the kitchen where he started to make coffee.
“How did you get in?” I asked him after I had taken a seat on one of the counter stools.
“The back door was open.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I left that open on purpose. I figured something like this might happen.” Granted, I might have been killed by some psycho pervert strolling by the house overnight, but I didn’t want my father to take any satisfaction in the fact that I forgot to lock up, fueling his belief that I couldn’t deal with the situation properly.
We heard the screen door slam and there was Davis. My dad introduced himself, thanked Davis, and got the name of the medical center where my grandfather was. Davis looked like he had slept in a tree, as usual. His hair was all over the place and he still hadn’t shaved, but he acted like he was dressed in a tuxedo, all calm and confident. I felt ashamed that I had suspected him of being capable of rape and murder. But I wouldn’t have thought of it if my dad hadn’t planted the seed in my mind.
I was suddenly furious that my father was even there.
“You know, I’m not some little kid who needs rescuing,” I told him once Davis had left. “I mean, I made it all the way to Maine without any help from anyone. I don’t need to be treated like I have no abilities. I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.”
My father just looked at me. “I can see that,” he said.
“Are you staying long?” I asked him.
“No. We’re not,” he said. “We’re going to go over to the hospital and see your grandfather, then we’ll head home.”
“I don’t know that I’m ready to go back just yet,” I said.
My father continued to stare at me. He kept his voice very even. “Well, you just get yourself ready, young lady.”
“I’ll have to see if that’s what Grandpa wants—” I started to say, but the phone cut me off.
My father answered it.
“Oh, hi, Angela,” he said. “This is Michael.” Then there was a short pause and he said, “Yes.” My dad was probably the last person she ever expected to answer her phone. “I came up to get Lucy.” Then he explained that my grandfather was in the hospital. He was quiet for a while, and after they went back and forth a few times, he hung up.
My father was very tense driving over to the medical center. I knew he wanted to yell at me but he didn’t say a word in the fifteen minutes it took us to get there. I didn’t, either. I might have said I was sorry that I caused them to worry, but let’s face it, he had caused me a lot of heartache the last few months.
My grandfather had spent an uneventful night, the nurse said. But his blood pressure was very high and they were “concerned.” My father didn’t seem to have any reaction to that news. I was tempted to ask what they meant by concerned, but since my father was there I didn’t. He headed down the hall in the direction the nurse pointed. He was walking faster than usual—I stayed close behind him. I wanted to see what my grandfather’s reaction would be when he saw his son.
My dad went right into Grandpa’s room without knocking. “I thought I might see you this morning,” my grandfather called out. He was sitting up in bed, finishing a breakfast of rubbery-looking scrambled eggs and mushy toast. He saw me looking over my dad’s shoulder. “Party’s over,” he said.
My father didn’t turn around to look at me.
“Hi, Dad,” was all he said. He paused for a second at the end of the bed, then he went up to hug his father. It was an awkward hug, and not just because it’s difficult to hug someone who’s sitting in bed.
It was strange to hear my father call someone “dad.” He must have done it the last time we were in Maine—I just hadn’t noticed it. It made him seem vulnerable or small or something.
“How you feeling?” my dad asked as he pulled a chair up near the bed.
“I’m great, just ask Lulu.” He smiled at me and I gave him a little wave from back by the door. With my father around, I seemed to have lost all my power, like Superman in the same room as kryptonite.
“Well,” my father said to him, “apparently your blood pressure is still very high, so they may want to keep you here for a while longer.”
“That’s nonsense. My blood pressure has been high for years. I operate hot, that’s all.”
“We can talk to the doctor.” My dad seemed to be getting more tired by the second. “Angela called. I told her what happened—”
“You told Angela? What did you do that for? Now she’ll just worry.”
“She needs to know what’s going on. She said she was going to change her plane and come—’’
“Oh, no.”
“Look, I’ve got to get Lucy back, and you should have someone with you.”
My grandfather was shaking his head, getting mad. I’m not sure if he didn’t want to disturb his wife’s trip or if it was just being near my father, but he wasn’t happy.
The doctor came in and explained that high blood pressure was a primary cause of strokes, and since my grandfather had had a few TIAs, the smart thing would be to keep him in the hospital for another day, just to make sure everything settled back down.
“I’ll go and get you some decent food.” My father finally broke the silence that had descended like a bomb on the room after the doctor left—he was itching to get out of there.
I stayed with Grandpa. Eventually he told me to get some money out of his pocket and go down to the vending machine to get myself a Coke. He only had a ten-dollar bill.
The vending machine was just outside the tiny gift shop that sold gum and candy and newspapers and small stuffed animals and a rack full of different road maps. I could understand everything else, but the maps seemed a little out of place. Is anyone going to go on a long-distance driving adventure straight from the hospital? The store also had a plastic bucket on the floor with several bouquets of flowers wrapped in that clear plastic. The arrangements weren’t really very pretty—a bunch of fairly limp carnations mixed with some purplish things I’d never seen before—but at least they were flowers. My grandfather laughed when I came back with one of the arrangements. “Thank you very much, Lulu,” he said.
My dad returned with some bagels and an egg salad sandwich and a newspaper. Then he left again to make some phone calls. “This is technically a workday for me,” he grumbled as he walked out the door.
They took my grandfather’s blood pressure every hour. “That’s just making it worse,” Grandpa complained, and I’m sure he was right. How can you relax when someone is coming in every ten seconds to check and make sure you’re relaxed?
By the time we left him it was late afternoon. Time passed much faster than I would have predicted, considering that only two of the people in the small room all day were getting along with each other.