There are no windows in the stairwell, but we can still hear the storm outside. How much is on the ground now? Is it sticking, or just melting away like most Southern snow? It’s only October, surely it isn’t accumulating…. The wind howls again. Kai grows quiet—though he’d never admit it, sometimes I think he’s inherited Grandma Dalia’s fear of snow and the cold. Only fifteen more minutes till we can go downstairs, pretend as if we ran home. Seconds tick by slowly, then minutes, ten more to go—
There’s a crash downstairs, a bang. Voices shouting, someone running. We’re on Kai’s side of the building; he rises and walks down a few steps. The noise continues, muffled voices… Kai glances back at me and in a split second, we’ve decided to ignore the fact that we’re ten minutes early. We bolt down the stairs together, drowning the sound of the wind with our heavy footsteps. Down to the eighth floor: nothing but closed doors and piled-up newspapers. The seventh, all’s quiet. I swallow. The sixth. The floor Kai and I live on. Is someone being robbed? Arrested? We round the corner.
The hall is packed with people.
Doors are open, neighbors in graying robes and boxer shorts leaning out to see what’s happening. Kai speeds up, we run, which one is it—oh.
Paramedics are running in and out of Kai’s apartment; the floor is wet with snow, making their boots squeak on the dirty tile. Kai skids to a stop at his door, eyes wide; we reach for each other’s hands automatically.
Inside the apartment, it is dark. Stained-glass shades on lamps, blinds on windows, clouds outside. It smells like baking and scented candles, things that have always contributed to it feeling more like home to me than my own apartment. Perhaps that’s why it stabs at me to see the paramedics inside, bunching up rugs and knocking around furniture. They’re using flashlights, moving them so quickly that it’s almost like watching lightning flicker across the room. The paramedics surround a white thing in a sea of darkness—a gurney, with an old woman in a nightgown on it.
Grandma Dalia probably once had Kai’s olive-toned skin, but now it’s pale with age and illness. Her eyes are cloudy, her hair wispy, and an oxygen mask is pressed against her face, fogging up the tiniest bit with each exhale. They push her toward us, running over the remains of a broken mirror that’s fallen from the wall. Kai steps away from me to meet her at the door frame.
“Grandma?” he says weakly, like a child. She looks at him, stretching her fingers out like she wants to reach for him.
“You must be Kai. She was asking for you,” a thick, strong-looking paramedic says, capturing Kai’s attention. He stops in the door frame for a beat as the others move the gurney to the stairs.
Kai and the paramedic talk, but I don’t hear most of it—I’m too busy watching his grandmother’s chest rise and fall, so shaky that it looks like it might shatter on the way down.
“She was stabilizing fine, but then she got scared when the wind cracked a window. Do you have a preference where we take her?”
“A preference?”
“Which hospital?” the paramedic says.
“I…” Kai looks from his grandmother to the paramedic and back again, as if he’s being asked something in a foreign language.
“Piedmont,” I cut in. “She went to Piedmont last year when she fell, right, Kai?”
“Right,” he says, staring as the gurney disappears at the top of the stairs. The paramedic nods and jogs after his fellows.
“I’ll go get the station wagon so we can follow,” I say quickly, grabbing the keys to his grandmother’s car off the counter. Kai looks at me blankly. “Maybe you should bring her medicines, so you can show the doctors what she’s on?” I suggest. He half nods and disappears deeper into the apartment.
I’m held up by the paramedics in the hallway—they’ve made it to the third floor and are negotiating around a corner. Grandma Dalia’s eyes are open, and for a moment I don’t think she’s conscious—but then her gaze finds mine, and she stares at me so long that I feel frozen. Her lips are parting; is she speaking? Then she’s jostled, and they move again, down to the second story. The first. The double doors leading to the courtyard are ahead; it’s still snowing, with at least an inch or two built up on the ground.
The red light from the ambulance bounces off the fallen snow and off windows that are full of neighbors staring. Grandma Dalia’s bony hands form fists, and she closes her eyes. Her chest starts to rise and fall faster, and I see the paramedics glance at one another. They try to hurry, but the snow makes the ground slicker than normal, and they can’t rush without risking the gurney’s stability. A younger paramedic leaps from the ambulance and rushes to throw another blanket over Grandma Dalia.
I run across the street to the little parking lot attached to our building. The snow hides the uneven concrete underneath; I trip and fall, skin my palms, and finally make it to the station wagon. It’s burgundy, both outside and in, and it’s shiny and sleek—it was top of the line when it was new, and I don’t think Grandma Dalia has driven it much since then. I slide into the front seat and jam the key into the ignition. Breathe. Just breathe. And don’t crash.
I put the car in reverse, turn around, and look back at the building. They’re bringing Grandma Dalia around now, about to load her into the ambulance. Her eyes are still squeezed shut; the paramedics have grown almost silent. I tap the gas, ease the car back—
The tires spin. I turn back to the wheel and press down harder—nothing. The rear begins to fishtail a little, but I can’t get enough traction to back up. I curse—this isn’t working. I punch at the steering wheel, pull the key from the ignition, and get out. Solution, think, Ginny, think. We have to get there somehow.
As I jog back toward the building, Kai bursts through the doors. He holds a plastic bag full of pill bottles, rattling like maracas with each step. I pull my phone out of my pocket to look up a cab company….
“Everything okay?” a female voice calls out. I look up—it’s a girl, driving a silver Lexus. She leans across the passenger seat, platinum-blonde hair spilling over her petite shoulders.
“Yeah, yeah—” I say, waving her off. I hurry over toward the ambulance, finding Kai’s eyes in the fray.
The paramedics begin to make sounds—not really words, just sounds. “Oh, whoa, oh, oh, whoa—” all in unison. I spin to see the cause. Grandma Dalia is grasping for the oxygen mask, trying to sit up. They hold her down, but she struggles, fighting with strength I didn’t know she had yet is still nothing compared with a team of thirtysomethings. She succeeds in getting the mask off, but only for a moment. She gasps for air, inhaling flecks of snow and ice. Her lips move; she’s speaking; she’s trying to reach out to Kai as he runs to her side. His hands and knees are scraped; he must have fallen on the way—