Penny got up to toss her soggy paper plate in the garbage. There were an unseemly number of bars on either side of her—a Disneyland Main Street for day drinkers. The snack had been a bust, but the people watching was stellar.
A scrawny kid peeled off from the masses and almost ate it. Penny reached for her phone but was too slow on the uptake. She could never grab it in time for good snaps. Sweat ran down her back and seeped into her underwear elastic. The kid staggered over to the sidewalk and planted himself under a tree. He was gulping for air, a marooned fish on dry land, and his face was blinding white. Maybe it was heroin. Penny rubbed the inside of her elbow where she thought her heroin vein would be and then poked her forearm, leaving red circles. She should have worn sunblock. She watched the boy, slumped against the trunk, pull up his black T-shirt sleeves to fashion a sort of tank top. Man, he was skinny enough to be a junkie, and his arms were covered in tattoos.
The kid shoved back his hair, revealing his face. Except it wasn’t a kid. It was Jude’s uncle. Uncle Sam. Hot Uncle Sam. Hot Uncle Sam who was possibly OD’ing on opioids right in front of her. She had to do something! Oh God, she was in no state for altruism. Penny quickly pulled her hair into a bun and grabbed a mint from her go bag.
Priorities, Penny. Save the man from dying. Nobody cares about your breath.
She glanced back at Sam to see if he had stirred. He was probably in the throes of brain death now, drawing his final breaths while she was faffing.
What do I do? What do I do?
How to save a dying man:
1. Call the Texas Hammer. What? How was her only readily available resource an outdated local ad for a personal injury attorney?
2. Ignore him. Christ, he’s not your uncle! Ugh. But he was Jude’s. And Penny liked Jude even if she talked way too much.
3. Go see if he’s dead already.
Penny ran across the street to his lifeless body and peered into his face.
She hoped she wouldn’t drip sweat on him.
He certainly seemed dead.
And, for the record, the tattoo on his bicep wasn’t a chess piece. It was the head of a stallion with its eyes covered in a piece of fabric. What did it mean?
Focus, Penny. Shit.
“Sam?” She kicked his heel gently. They both still had on the same shoes.
SAM.
It was a face he knew and couldn’t place. He stared and tried to focus.
Friend or foe? Friend or foe? Do I owe you money? Are you friends with Lorraine? Please don’t be friends with Lorraine.
Sam closed his eyes again, embarrassed. Her voice was gentle. It was a nice voice.
“Sam, are you alive? It’s Penny.” She sounded far away.
Sam felt another kick on his foot, and he groaned.
“I’m Jude’s friend,” said the shiny face with the bright red lips.
“Who’s Jude?” he croaked.
“Your cousin.”
“Niece,” he corrected.
“Are you dying?”
He nodded and tried to slide his phone out of his pocket without passing out.
“Is Jude coming?” He didn’t want her to see him like this. He hated the thought of anyone seeing him like this.
“No.”
Thank God.
A Biggie lyric teased the corners of his brain.
Something about heartbeats and Sasquatch feet.
“Sam, WHAT’S happening? YOU look HORRIBLE.”
His hearing kept coming and going.
His heart was fit to burst.
Thudthudthud.
I’m dying, dead.
Deaddeaddead.
“I think I’m having a heart attack.” He closed his eyes.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she said. “Shit.”
And then.
“Hello? 911?”
Sam thought it was funny how everybody greeted the three-digit number they’d called. As if they had to ask.
“My friend’s sick. I don’t know. Yeah, I’m here with him.”
Sam felt a wave of nausea. He hoped he wouldn’t have to puke in public.
“Sam . . . um.”
“Becker,” he told her.
“Becker,” she said. “Twenty-one I think.”
Sam nodded.
“No,” she said. “I don’t know. At least I don’t think so . . .”
He felt her cold hand on his arm. He opened his eyes.
“Sam, are you on drugs?”
I wish.
He shook his head.
“No, no drugs. Um . . . shortness of breath, cold sweats . . .”
“Stabbing pain in my chest,” he said.
“Stabbing pain in his chest,” she repeated.
“Like a knitting needle,” he said.
“Like a knitting needle,” she repeated.
“Mm-hmm,” he heard her say. Followed by, “Yeah, I guess the knitting needle is going through his chest.”
Exactly.
Sam nodded again.
“Okay, thank you. Bye.”
Sam thought about how people on TV never said good-bye. And then he wondered why people only thought about the dumbest things as they lay dying.
Sam felt Penny sit down next to him.
“Sam, wake up.”
“I am up,” he whispered.
She was staring at him intently.
“Are you sure you’re not on drugs?”
He glared at her before realizing—inappropriately—that she was kind of cute when she made eye contact. Cute enough that he was bummed out that she was watching him die on the street.
“Positive,” he said.
She wiped his wet brow with her T-shirt sleeve, which was already damp. He saw a flash of bra and glanced away.
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why I did that. I’m supposed to keep talking to you until they get here.”
The cogs in his mind picked up steam.
“Wait, shit. Did you call an ambulance?”
She nodded. “Knitting needle?” she reminded him. As if 100 percent of knitting-needle-related incidents (imagined and otherwise) justified an emergency vehicle.
“Call them back!” he ordered. His heart hammered harder. “Call them back!” he repeated. “I can’t afford an ambulance.”
She stared at him for a beat, grabbed her phone, and marched away. A thousand years later, she returned.
“I called them.” She crouched in front of him with her hands on his shoulders. “Though yours is an incorrect response.”
Despite his stupor, Sam bristled at her word choice. “Incorrect”? Was it “incorrect” to be broke?
“Wait, can you do this?” She stuck her tongue straight out.
He stuck his tongue out.
“What’s the thing with the tongue and heart attacks?” she yelled impatiently, as if he were deliberately keeping diagnostic information from her. “Shit, I think that’s for a stroke.” She pulled out her phone and searched helplessly.
He drew his tongue back into his mouth.
“Okay,” she said, breathing deep. “Don’t die, okay?”
He nodded.
“Promise me,” she said.
He nodded again.
“You know what? Try to slow your breathing . . . one Mississippi . . . two Mississippi . . . Say it in your head.”
He focused on breathing.
“Did you eat today?”
He shook his head.
A Styrofoam drink container was thrust into his face. The straw smelled cinnamony and was covered in red lipstick.
“It’s not very good,” she told him.
He took a sip.
Horchata. Cold. Sweet. And she was right—this one was kind of gross.
“Did you drink a lot of coffee today?”
He nodded. Same as every day.
“Do you have radiating pain?”
He shook his head. She read off her phone.
“What about numbness?”
He shook his head.
“Sam?”
Sam nodded. He was Sam, it was true.
“We’re going to take a walk now.”
He shook his head.
He felt her grab his arm and sling it over her shoulders. She was soaking wet, and where his sweaty bare arm met her neck it was slippery. He put weight on his legs so he, a grown man, wouldn’t have to be carried by some lady again.
“I’m going to take you somewhere so someone can examine you, okay? I’m parked real, real close. Walk with me. Please?”
“Okay,” he said.
• • •
Fifteen minutes later, they were in front of a MedSpring Urgent Care.
The AC was blasting and Sam was soaked though otherwise calm. He wanted badly to go home and take a nap.
Penny was silent. Even in his peripheral vision, she seemed agitated. Her hands were clutching the steering wheel so tight her knuckles were white. He couldn’t believe that Jude’s mute, macabre roommate had saved his life. He wondered if he’d have to get her a small taxidermied spider or something for her efforts.
“I’ll be right here,” she said, staring straight ahead.
Sam didn’t want to explain to her that he couldn’t afford ambulances, hospitals, or the cheaper emergency clinics in crappy strip malls.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“No you’re not.”
“I don’t have health insurance,” he admitted.
“Oh.”
“I swear to God I’m fine now,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know what that was. Probably heat stroke.”
“Have you had heat stroke before?”
He shook his head.
“Did you know that if you’ve had heat stroke once, your brain remembers the circuitry so it’s easier for you to get heat stroke again? Maybe way easier than before?”
He shook his head and recalled Penny’s earlier jokes about apps making apps. She was apparently a huge nerd.
“So . . . ,” she said. Penny’s dark eyes were shiny, and pink bloomed on her cheeks. “Wait, did you have a panic attack?”
“What? No. I don’t have panic attacks. Never in my life.” Jesus, give a girl WebMD and she starts thinking she’s a physician.