Lying on the tile, with a halo of blood around her head, is Jessamyn.
I fall to my knees, grasping her shoulders and shouting in her face. “Jessamyn!” I cry. “Jessamyn!?”
Her eyes flutter open, and she winces. “Edgar . . . call nine-one-one.”
I jump to my feet, shaking all over. Her blood is on my hands, and unlike the blood I’ve encountered in the fairy tale, it doesn’t disappear when I close my eyes. I look down at her still body. “NINE-ONE-ONE!” I yell, fists balled at my sides. “NINE-ONE-ONE!”
But nothing happens.
“Edgar,” she whispers. “With the phone.”
I grab the phone from its cradle and press the corresponding buttons. Almost immediately a voice fills my ear. “Nine-one-one, what’s the emergency?”
“My mother,” I say. “She’s bleeding.”
“Where are you?”
“At home. Thirty-Nine Oak Hill Road.”
“Is your mother responsive?” the woman asks.
“She’s lying on the floor. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t see.”
“Is she conscious?”
I glance at Jessamyn, whose eyes are closed again. “I don’t know. She was talking and now she isn’t.”
My heart is pounding so hard I can barely hear the woman’s response. “Okay, listen, I’m going to put you on hold for one second. I’m going to get an ambulance on its way to you, and then I’m going to come back and stay on the line with you until they get there.”
I kneel down, afraid to touch Jessamyn, equally afraid to leave her alone. I wish Delilah were here; she would know what to do. I wish Edgar were here.
I wish it were anyone but just me.
“Sir, are you still there?” the woman says. “The ambulance is on its way. What’s your name?”
“Oliver,” I answer, realizing too late that in my panic, I’ve given the wrong answer. “Edgar.”
“Oliver Edgar, do you hear any sirens yet?”
As if she has willed them, there is a wailing outside the door, and a firm, pounding knock. “They’re here.”
“Go answer the door,” the woman tells me. “They’ll take care of your mom.”
But isn’t that my job? Isn’t that what I promised Edgar I’d do?
Within seconds, two uniformed men have Jessamyn liftedonto a rolling bed and wheeled it into the back of a tremendous van. “Can you follow us to the hospital in your car?” one of them asks.
“I—I don’t know how to drive,” I stammer.
“You can ride up front,” he says, and he hops into the rear with Jessamyn.
There are flashing red lights as the van zooms and whines down back roads to a building I’ve never seen before:ST. BRIGID MEMORIAL HOSPITAL.
The men rush Jessamyn, still strapped to the bed, into the building. I run behind them, but as they are about to go through a set of double doors, a woman dressed in blue pajamas pulls me aside. “Are you her son?”
“Yes.” I try to see through the glass as Jessamyn grows farther and farther away.
“You can’t go in there,” she tells me. “The doctors will help your mom. I’m going to bring you to the waiting room, and someone will come get you as soon as we know more about her condition.” She looks at me kindly. “Is there anyone you’d like me to call?”
