“Evie, I am sorry to do this,” he says, his voice strained. “I can’t come.”
Can’t come? At ten to eight he tells me this?
“Why can’t you?” I say, trying not to sound as angry as I’m starting to feel.
“I really can’t explain it,” he says. It’s totally insufficient. He owes me a proper explanation. Is he on drugs? What could possibly have come up in the hour since he put a smile on my face telling me he’d bring the carriage around?
“Is it your mum?”
“Sorry, I can’t tell you.”
I don’t have time for this. I hang up on him. Furious.
He’s not coming, I text Oliver.
I’m on my way, he types back.
I have a flash of the expression on his face when he first saw me in this dress. And I walk upstairs and change.
43
Drew
Evie ends the call abruptly and I turn back to the paramedic. He’s got Mum sitting up on the sunken couch now, her hand gripping the worn wooden armrest, and he’s given her something to calm her down. I wish he’d givemesomething. I’ve never been so scared in my life. And I should never have been so reckless as to ask her about that photo when I was meant to be heading out to the formal.
All I wanted to know was who it was. It has to be Oliver’s dad; they’re practically identical. Though I need to stop jumping to conclusions. Just because it’s a photo of Mum with Oliver’s father doesn’t mean … God, I can’t even say what it doesn’t mean.
But I didn’t expect her to react quite as badly as she did.
“Where did you get this?” she said, collapsing into one of the kitchen chairs as she held the photo in her hand.
“It was inside a book in a box in the garage,” I explained. “I was looking for that old army belt to wear tonight. Mum, who is this?”
The color drained from her face and her breathing seemed to constrict. Within seconds, she was physically shaking. “I … can’t,” she said.
Can’t what?“Mum, is this my father?”
The woman staring at me wasn’t my mum. She was the ghost of a person. Was she having a heart attack? She just froze. I couldn’t shake her out of it, and in the end I called the paramedics—I didn’t know what else to do. By the time they arrived, she was a mess.
“Your mum’s heart rate is starting to slow down now,” the paramedic explains kindly. “That’s good.”
I’m used to seeing her in medical settings, just not inside our own little house. Having paramedics walk through your own kitchen, past unwashed dishes still stacked in the sink, recycling piling up next to the bin, while they set their equipment down on top of your history essay is a whole other thing. Home is meant to be where we’re safe. An escape from all of this. They’re like intruders here. This feels all wrong.
“Given your mum’s medical history, we’re going to take her to the hospital,” the paramedic explains after they’ve made their initial assessment. “They’re well equipped to handle a mental health crisis.”
Mental health?I thought it was her heart.
“Did something trigger this panic attack?” he asks, as I follow him back down the hall to get the paperwork he needs. “It’s pretty severe.”
Itriggered this by showing her that photo. She’s still agitated, though not as much with the Valium they’ve given her, and I’m racked with guilt.
We get to the hospital, Mum in the ambulance, me racing behind in her car. Everyone stares when I walk through the ER waiting room. Maybe I should have changed after all.
I tell the nurse behind the registration desk that I’m Annie Kennedy’s son, and she presses a button for the automatic door and directs me to the critical care ward.Aren’t we just here for a panic attack? Why critical?
Mum is parked on the bed in the corridor. She’s even more washed-out and fragile than normal, hair stuck to her forehead from where she’s sweated through the anxiety, brown eyes dulled from the sedation.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I mean that I’m sorry for showing her the photo and upsetting her. But even mentioning it stresses her out again and I decide just to shut up about it altogether. I hold her hand and tell her it will be all right. I have no idea if it will be or not—probably not, the way things have been going. But I say it anyway.
