Chapter Two

By the time I huff and puff my way down the driveway, the bus driver has already called 911 and is alternately kneeling by Ashley like he might CPR her and trying to keep the other kids from getting off the bus. Some pull the windows down and lean out, their faces mostly pinched up and worried, although some look just curious.

I kneel down and pat her face. It's purplish and pale at the same time. "Ashley, darling. Wake up. It's Mama, now. If you're that tired you can stay home." I know this is stupid. It isn't as if she just decided to lie down and take a nap in the dirt.

"I don't know what happened, Mrs. Babcock. She was fine, then she fell over."

"I know. I saw."

"The ambulance is coming." He looks awkward, glancing back and forth between Ashley and all her friends, trying not to look at his watch; I know he's worried he'll be late to school. I want to tell him to go on, get the other kids out of here, but Travis is already at work and Logan left for school a half hour earlier, and I don't know what to do. I silently curse Travis for talking me out of that nice suburban house and into this ranch-in-a-hay-field.

I slip the straps of her backpack off her shoulders and push it aside. The Sunny D and the bagel are tucked under her body, and I roll her on her back away from them. "Can you get the water bottle I dropped by the porch?" He nods and scoots off to find it.

When Gus the driver gets back from the house, I'm sitting in the dirt with Ashley's head on my lap, stroking her long hair out of her face and wondering if maybe God is punishing me for the cigarettes I hide in my sock drawer. He hands me the water, and I wiggle her head a bit trying to get her to open her eyes.

"Ashley, now, wake up." I dribble the water over her lips a little and watch it run down her chin. I think I see her eyes flutter as a Buick pulls up behind the bus.

A lady I recognize from the beauty parlor gets out, looking like she's going off to a high-society social. A surly girl slithers out after her.

"Thank goodness. I thought we'd missed the bus this morning. I was afraid I'd have to take Chelsea in myself, and I just don't have time for that today. Are we having mechanical problems?" She comes around enough to see me sitting on the ground with my baby in my arms, and she stops suddenly, throwing out her arm and blocking her daughter from getting closer, too, as if we have some disease.

"What's wrong with her? Is she having a fit?"

"Of course not!" I have no idea what's wrong with Ashley, but I'm sure it isn't whatever this lady would like to think she has. I focus on Ashley and hold her tighter. "Come on Baby, take a little drink." I dribble more water, hoping I'm not drowning her. Her eyelids flutter and beneath them, I see her eyes rolled back.

"Go," I say to everyone. "The medics will be here. You ain't doing nothing anyway. Just get on to school so the kids don't miss nothing, and you tell them Ashley'll be on in later."

I don't see the expressions passed between them, but I know they're there. They're weighing moral obligation with the strong desire to leave. Their selfish side wins out. The surly kid climbs on the bus, and they all drive away. In the back window of the bus I see a couple kids with their noses pressed against the glass, unable to take their eyes off us.

I hear the ambulance, the siren wailing like my heart feels. I hear it far away and then getting closer until I see the lights red on the horizon. Ashley hears it too. Her eyes flutter open again, and this time she strains to focus on me, the pupils floating in and out, smaller and bigger, until she gives up and closes them again. She sighs a shallow breath, then again.

She begins to shake, small shivers turning into bigger ones, 'til I can barely hold her. Then, quick as they come, they leave, and she's still again. A tiny sigh again.

Three men are suddenly beside me, a stretcher on the ground and a heavy metal box I assume is the equivalent of the doctor's little black bag. I seen stuff like this in movies, where paramedics do all sorts of operations and life-saving stuff with the tools in the box. One man is kneeling, offering to take Ashley's head from me, but I hold on tighter.

"What happened, ma'am?" Ma'am is one of the most common words in the Texas language, a reflection of a good southern upbringing; but when he says it, it sounds condescending.

"She fell over on her way to catch the bus." I see them look around for the nonexistent bus. "It was here, but I told them to go on to school."

"Did she hit her head when she fell?" He has his fingers on her neck, feeling for the same pulse I first heard twelve years ago in the OB's office, all static-y and beautiful, beating loud through a microphone the doctor moved over my belly.

"No. I don't think so. She kinda fell on her knees first. I suppose she musta hit her head, though, 'cause I didn't see her break her fall with her hands. But it wasn't hard or anything. Almost like she was just lying down."

"Did she trip?"

"No. She just fell over." I see them checking for broken bones, but I know the problem isn't her falling down; it's why she fell down. "She's been tired lately. She had the flu a while back, and since then she's been hardly even eating. Drinking a lot, but not eating hardly a thing, so maybe she's needing nourishment." I see the two pass looks. "She seized too," I add, though I don't want to. "Just now."

"You know it was a seizure?"

I nod. "My cousin has epilepsy. I seen them before." My heart suddenly skips a beat. "You don't think she has that, do you?" Oh God, I pray, don't let her have that.

But he shakes his head. "She fainted first, right? How long before she had the seizure?"

"I don't know. A few minutes."

"I doubt it, but we'll run tests at the hospital." He don't look at me but clicks his pen on his clipboard and folds the top paper over to start a new one.

"How old is she?"

"Twelve."

"You say she's been drinking a lot?"

"Yes. Just water, mostly."

"Has she been urinating abnormally often?"

I give him my best peeved look. "She's drinking a gallon a day. Of course she's peeing a lot."

Two men lift her out of my arms and move her to the stretcher. I let them. One wipes the water dripping down her chin and looks at me as if expecting an answer. I hold up the bottle of water, and I kick the Sunny D behind me as I'm standing. "I tried to give her a little to wake her up."

"She can't drink if she's passed out." He rolls his eyes at the other medic the way Logan used to roll his eyes at me a few years ago before I took a switch and told him I'd beat those eyes right out of their sockets. I look this man up and down and decide he's not too old to need a beating. He's practically a kid himself, and I find myself wondering if he possibly is old enough to drive an ambulance, let alone dole out medical advice.

"How long she been breathing like this?"

I notice the heavy breathing I'd come to ignore over the last few days. "A while. Since the flu. It made her breathe real hard for awhile. Then it got better for a few days. Now I guess it's back."

A slightly older medic spreads a blanket over Ashley and buckles her onto the stretcher as if she might roll over on him and fall the two inches back into the dirt. He pries her eyelids and shines a light in them. She fights to close her eyes against the beam, and I can tell from his face this is a good sign. He opens his metal doctor bag and rummages through some packages until he pulls out a vacuum-sealed needle that he tears open and inserts in the back of her hand. They eye-roller is now writing something on a clipboard.

They seem too calm to my liking, as if girls like Ashley just keel over every day. Maybe they do. Logan never fainted on me, but maybe that's because he's a boy. Maybe girls Ashley's age do this now, some freakish pubescent result of living too near the power lines or eating vegetables with pesticides or having heavy periods. I expect the medic to tell me, "It's the most normal thing ever these days, Mrs. Babcock. In a minute she'll wake up fit as a fiddle. You just need to be sure to wash those carrots better next time."

Instead, he says, "We're going to take her to the emergency room, ma'am. Do you want to ride along?"

It's an inane question. As if I would let him take her and leave me here. I nod and follow them to the ambulance. They slide the stretcher through the back doors and hook up an IV, and I'm halfway there before I realize I might need my car. And I definitely need my cell phone to call Travis, and maybe Logan's school if it takes too long. And the women at church. I'm supposed to be there in an hour to help stuff flyers for the pro-life rally in a week or so.

"Actually, I'll drive myself. She'll be all right?"

"I don't know, ma'am." I'm sure I blanch at his bluntness. You'd a thought a mama who taught her son to say ma'am would have taught him how to use a little tact.

The driver is on a handset, talking to the hospital I assume. "We've got a twelve year old girl presenting with polyuria, polydipsia, Kussmaul's respirations and possible seizures."

Clipboard man climbs in and closes the doors, not even glancing back at me. The ambulance pulls away, the sirens screaming, leaving me still holding Ashley's water in its wake of dust.

Fire ants are already beginning to swarm over the honey slathered on the bagel. "Oh sugar," I say to no one.

It's the only swear word I can think of at the moment.

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