"Best I can tell she is. You know anything about this sort of thing?"
"Not a clue," Kimberly said. She backed away. The sight of Grandmother Emma on the floor was frightening to her. "I'll go tell Christopher." She turned and hurried away.
"You stay with her," Nancy told me. "I'll go look for Felix."
I nodded and looked down at Grandmother Emma. She made a small groan and her eyelids fluttered, but they didn't open. I sat beside her on the floor and waited. It came to me to take her hand in mine and that caused her to turn her head and open her eyes.
I thought she shook her head before she closed her eyes again. She didn't say or do anything else before the ambulance arrived, and the paramedics, who just happened to be the same two who had come for Miss Harper, came up the stairs with a stretcher. I Lrot up quickly as they rushed into the bedroom and to Grandmother Emma. Then I stood back and watched them take her blood pressure and try to get her to be alert. They carefully placed her on the stretcher after they called in her condition and then started to carry her out.
Felix came rushing up the stairs and offered to help them, but they had everything under control. He followed them down to open the door. I walked slowly behind them. Daddy was outside the living room watching everything and Kimberly stood beside him, neither of them speaking. I went to the front of the house with Nancy and watched them place Grandmother Emma in the ambulance. Nancy put her hand on my shoulder. Felix came back into the house and asked Daddy if he wanted him to bring the van around.
"Yeah. I guess so," Daddy said. "Although I don't know what the hell I can do for her." He looked up at Kimberly. "I'l1 call you later."
"You want me to do anything with Jordan? Stay with her, take her to dinner?"
Daddy looked at me. "Naw. She's a big girl. She'll be fine here by herself, right, Jordan?"
I nodded. I didn't want to do anything with Kimberly anyway. She took out a piece of paper and wrote her telephone number on it for Nancy.
"Just in case you need some help," she said. "Don't hesitate to call me."
Nancy looked at it and then stuffed it into her apron with a look that told me she would never even glance at it again.
Daddy wheeled himself out and he and Kimberly went down the ramp. I watched Felix get him into the van and then I watched them drive off after the ambulance. Kimberly following in her own car. She turned in the opposite direction at the base of the driveway and drove away.
A great pall of silence suddenly fell over the house and the grounds. Everything had happened so quickly. I felt like all the air around me had been sucked up to the sky. I couldn't breathe. My heart, which had been pounding, was now so still. I wasn't sure that it hadn't evaporated in my chest.
"There's nothing more we can do," Nancy said. "I'll put out some dinner for you. Jordan, and wait for your daddy's return, okay?"
"Yes," I said.
"We'll be just fine," she told me, but I thought if I ever needed Ian, I needed him now. Why couldn't I call whoever was keeping him and be them to bring him home? Wasn't it more important for him to be here with me?
When I thought about him. I remembered I had left my last letter for him on Grandmother Emma's desk. Now she wouldn't be able to send it to him until she got better. That saddened me as much as anything else.
I went to her office to get the envelope. I didn't want Daddy or Nancy or anyone to find it and read it. I would keep it in my room until Grandmother Emma came home. I thought.
It was right where I had left it. I picked it up and then I thought maybe I could find stamps in her desk drawer and maybe Ian's address, too.
I starched the top drawer and got excited when I found a roll of stamps. I quickly put one on the envelope. Then I opened the side drawer and started to look through the papers, hoping to see something with Ian's name on it. I stopped when an envelope fell out.
It was my first letter to Ian. She had never sent it.
But she had opened and read it,
I couldn't help myself. I sat on her desk chair and just started to cry.
Nancy heard and came running to the office door. She saw me sitting behind the desk, sobbing with my head down on my arms.
"Oh. Jordan," she said, approaching, "don't worry, honey. Your grandmother will be all right. You'll see. She'll be home in no time."
I looked up at her. "I don't care," I said, flicking off the tears.
"What did you say?"
"I don't care if she ever gets better. I don't care if she ever comes home either!"
Nancy gasped. I clutched the two letters I had written and rose from Grandmother Emma's desk chair.