• • • • •
When the two ambulance guys arrive, they stare at Geoffrey in shock. I don’t think they were expecting such a big guy. “Can you walk?” asks one of them. “Our gurney isn’t large enough.”
Geoffrey nods, but his face expresses doubt.
The stockier of the two guys says, “Let’s call for help. Just in case.”
Geoffrey coughs and coughs and coughs as the two ambulance guys go outside. One stands near the ambulance with a phone up to his ear. He turns and looks at the house.
After another thirty minutes—good thing no one is dying—an emergency unit truck from the fire department arrives. Two guys jump out, and all four men huddle together outside. It looks like they’re talking logistics.
Geoffrey asks me what’s happening. “Uh. I think they’re trying to figure out what to do.”
“How to get me out?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
I’m standing back, out of the way, as all four men—wearing gloves—pull Geoffrey up to his feet on a count of three.
Once up, his legs wobble. The fat deposits on his stomach and legs make him look off-kilter and asymmetrical. After he stands, that sour odor I’ve been smelling erupts into the room, and it is then that I realize something: Geoffrey stopped getting up to go to the bathroom.
As he stands there, one ambulance man on each side holding him up, he looks so sad. He looks small, and I don’t mean his body but something about him. His essence or being. His head lowers in shame, and his legs continue to tremble. “Let’s walk,” says the same ambulance guy who called for help. I follow a few steps behind, with Tickles on a leash. The back door is open, but I notice that Geoffrey looks wider than the width of the door. The younger ambulance guy glances behind Geoffrey to the older guy.
“We measured. You can make it, but you’re going to have to squeeze,” says the older one to Geoffrey.
Geoffrey doesn’t respond.
After they load him into the ambulance, I have to pick Tickles up because he keeps trying to jump into the ambulance. I hold him as he shivers in my arms.
“Take good care of him,” says Geoffrey, covered in sweat.
“I promise,” I say. “We’ll come visit you.”
Geoffrey smiles weakly as they close the back doors to the ambulance. I hear coughing before the ambulance starts and drives off. Tickles still shivers in my arms. “It’s okay. It’ll all be okay,” I whisper to him. And I hope I’m right.