by Penny Reid
“That was weird,” I say to Shannon.
She looks around the bed furtively, then motions to me, pretending to write.
Ah. Pen and paper. I reach for my phone, open a notes app, and hand it to her.
What are those two doing? she types.
“Hell if I know.”
Follow them.
“I’d rather drink battery acid than see what they’re about to do, Shannon.”
Don’t make jokes about burning throats, she writes.
Damn.
Does he like her? she types.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Why doesn’t he ask her out? she writes.
I take the phone from her, read the question, and then look at her. She’s so pale, her face covered with an oxygen mask. She’s hissing like Darth Vader and wearing a pulse ox monitor.
“Honey. Shannon,” I say, sitting on the bed next to her, careful not to disturb the tubes. “Andrew and Amanda’s screwed up relationship really, really shouldn’t be the center of your attention right now.”
Tears fill her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I am so, so sorry,” I say, finally able to give her the quiet devotion she deserves. “I am an idiot.”
She just nods assent.
“A fool.”
She agrees.
“A lovesick dumbass.”
She purses her lips and tries to sigh. It sounds like a car backfiring.
A commotion in the hallway is punctuated by a shrill woman’s voice that says, “I don’t care that she’s an adult and has privacy protections, I’m her mother and I demand to know where she is!”
Marie.
“Shannon!” she shouts. “Shannon, where are you?”
Fuck, Shannon mouths.
Heard that. Loud and clear.
“We’re in here, Marie,” I say calmly, pulling the curtain aside.
“My baby!” she gasps, rushing to Shannon, who is wheezing again. “Did you get stung again?”
“Not exactly,” I mumble.
Someone in scrubs, wearing a clipboard, comes up behind Marie and—of course—Jason. “You can’t just barge in here like this.” The hospital official looks at Shannon, who gasps, “S’okay.”
“This is her mother,” I tell the worker.
“And you are?”
“Her husband.”
Marie comes to a dead halt. She could be in a wax museum. “Husband?”
The worker wanders off. Marie gawks at me, then looks at Shannon, who is bent over and focused on getting more oxygen into her. I’d imagine that the stress is going to make breathing that much harder, and start to analyze at what point I need to become a giant asshole in an effort to protect Shannon.
“You got married without me?”
Sooner rather than later, apparently.
Amanda appears from behind the curtain, her hair ruffled and lipstick smeared. “Marie?” she says, clearly relieved. “You got my text?”
“We did,” Jason says. He’s wearing cutoff jeans, flip-flops, and a Jimmy Buffet t-shirt. His knees have actual dirt on them. “Marie came out of the house screaming that Shannon was in the ER again and we jumped in the car as fast as we could.”
I take a second look at Marie. She looks like Two-Face, from Batman.
“I was in the middle of my beauty regimen! Jason was about to shower and we were going to see Blue Man Group, when Amanda texted me and I’d only put on one set of eyelashes—”
That explains it.
Marie gives Amanda the once-over. “Why do you have your shirt on inside out?”
Andrew appears at the door and catches my eye. “You need me? Because I’m getting calls from Singapore about the—”
“You would seriously abandon your brother at a time like this?” Amanda snaps at him. “What kind of person are you? Who does that? Shows up for a brief and shining moment and then just bails when it’s most important?”
Is Andrew’s shirt on backwards?
Wait a minute. What’s going on with them?
Before Andrew can answer, in walks a tall, vaguely Slavic-looking guy a few inches taller than me and built like a Russian hockey player, but without the broken cheekbones. And he has all his teeth.
All the women in the room make a sickly sucking sound just like Shannon’s breathing.
“Hi, everyone,” he announces. He’s wearing a white physician’s coat and a hospital badge. “I’m Dr. Derjian, and I’ll assess—” he looks at the clipboard at the end of the bed “—Shannon’s case.”
Jason sticks out his hand to introduce himself. “Jason Jacoby. I’m her father.” They shake hands and I realize I need to engage in this masculine ritual that is akin to the female air kiss.
Formalities dispensed with, Dr. Derjian examines Shannon’s file while Amanda and Marie examine him.
Marie lasers in on him, eyes flitting from his left hand to his face. “You ever see a case like this before, Dr. Derjian? A swallowed engagement ring is pretty out there, isn’t it?”
He smiles, a broad, white grin that makes Marie look like she’s about to hump his leg. “Oh, this is pretty par for the course when you work in the emergency room. I’ve seen some pretty strange items in some really weird places.”
Marie leans in, grabs his arm and says, “I really need to get to know you better.”
“Marie,” Jason says with an undertone of warning. “Leave the doctor alone so he can help Shannon.”
“Is it true people come into the ER with live animals up their buttholes?” Marie asks.
Dr. Derjian looks at Marie with the same expression I’ve directed at her hundreds of times over these past eighteen months. I feel you, bro. Bet your mother-in-law is a lot saner than mine.
“Marie,” Jason says again, this time gently taking her elbow and turning her toward the door. “We’ve talked about this. Looked it up on Snopes. It doesn’t happen. Let’s go get some coffee.”
“But you’re already holding a coffee cup in your other hand,” she protests. “Wait!”
Shuffling back into the room and giving Shannon a Mother of the Year sympathy smile designed to look good for an audience, she fishes through her purse and hands the doctor a business card.
At this point, it’s clear to me that he’s decided she’s a garden-variety loon. Which makes him right.
“Please. I run a yoga class and we would love to have a fit, eligible bachelor doctor come and visit.”
“But I’m not—”
“You don’t do yoga? That’s okay. That’s why it’s called a class—you’re a student, there to learn.” She pats him gently on the cheek, moving her hand down to his arm, testing his biceps with little squeezes followed by satisfied little breaths. “I’ll save you a special spot in the front row.”
“Watch out for Agnes,” I warn him. “She pinches.”
“No, I do yoga,” he replies as Marie’s eyes light up like a set of fireworks in the hands of unsupervised twelve year old boys. He shoots me a very confused look. “But I’m not an eligible bachelor.”
“Married?” Marie squeaks, horrified, the light dimming like an imploding dwarf star.
“Engaged,” he says.
I’ll bet his fiancée didn’t swallow her ring.
Amy’s red, bouncing curls make an appearance. “What’s going on? Amanda texted me. Is Shannon all right?” Marie waves her in. The little ER space assigned to Shannon is beginning to feel like a clown car.
Shannon waves her hands like she’s trapped on a desert island and we’re all search planes. She points to her throat, then the doctor.
He opens her throat and peers in with a flashlight. “Oh, wow.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s in there tight, isn’t it?” I say.
“That’s what she said,” Marie mutters under her breath. Andrew looks murderous. Amy kicks her in the ankle. Beat me to it.
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something stuffed down your future mother-in-law’s throat to shut her up..
.those are the rituals, right?
“Marie,” I grunt. She doesn’t look at me, but she bites her lips as Jason drags her out of the room, muttering about that coffee.
“Oh.” The doctor takes another look. “Yes, it is. I was reacting to the size of that rock.” He sizes me up. “Good for you. Makes the ring I proposed with look like a salt crystal.”
Shannon starts to say something but the doctor touches her hand and shakes his head. “You can’t talk at all. Right now, you’re breathing through the ring itself, but any vibration or sudden movement could dislodge it in the worst way possible. You need to stay calm and focused. We’re getting equipment right now that will help us to extract the ring.”
Equipment? Extract? Panic blooms in Shannon’s eyes. My own throat spasms in sympathy. He spends the next minute peering into her throat with the flashlight, hands steady.
“What have we here?” says a clipped women’s voice, her British accent as condescending as it was eighteen months ago.
You have got to be kidding me.
Evaluative eyes take in the scene, with Amanda, Amy, me and Shannon all a familiar set of characters to her. “Dr. Porter.” She frowns at Shannon, then looks at me. “You two? I remember you.” She points to Shannon. “Bee sting.” Then to me. “EpiPen to the groin.” She pauses, the incredulity rising in her voice like a tidal wave. “Again? Did she actually touch your penis this time, or was it a false alarm?”
Andrew gives me one of those looks that means I’ll never hear the end of this. Ever.
Marie and Jason walk back in as the doctor asks us, “What is it with you two? Do you have some sort of dating fetish that involves coming to the ER?” The words feel harsher in that British accent of hers, and women with grey hair and glasses always have the upper hand when it comes to judgmental comments. If my mother were still alive, I wonder what she would think of this mess.
If Mom were alive, her ring wouldn’t be caught in Shannon’s throat right now.
“Is that a real thing? An ER fetish?” Marie asks, breathless with possibilities. “I’m kind of an expert on fetishes.”
Dr. Porter gives her a withering look and turns to Shannon. “Your mother, right?”
Shannon nods.
“The fetish thing makes more sense.” Dr. Porter’s eyebrows are doing a judgmental dance but she stops talking to us and reads the chart.
“Seriously? I’d love to know. I work in the sex industry.” Marie announces this with a series of nods designed, I think, to convey her professional status as...a what?
Jason begins sputtering. “You do not work in the sex industry, Marie! Why on earth would you say such a thing?”
“I mystery shop sex toy stores!” Marie declares. “I’m a professional!”
“So not the same thing, Mom,” Amy says with a sigh. “We’ve been trying to explain this to her,” she says to the room in a resigned voice. “She doesn’t get it. She’s been telling everyone around town, at church, at the library, you name it, that she works in the sex industry.”
“Now everyone in town thinks my wife is a hooker!” Jason declares, looking angrier than I’ve ever seen him. Even angrier than the time he confronted me after I dumped Shannon. While I like Jason and we bond over good beer in his little shack in the backyard, he’s a beta. The kind of guy, like Greg, who lets women drag them around by the nose.
Shannon will never do that to me. There are other body parts I’ll let her drag me around by, but—
“Only when we role-play, Jason,” Marie says with a sigh.
“How did the ring get in there?” Dr. Porter asks the question with a suggestive tone that I don’t like.
Marie, Jason, Amy, Andrew and Amanda all turn to me with looks of expectation on their face. “Good question,” Andrew says slowly. “You haven’t told us that part yet.”
Shannon starts to make gagging noises and points to her throat.
Marie’s eyes fly wide open. “Oh. Oh, honey,” she says, patting Shannon’s hand. “You know they make special sex toys just for that. You don’t have to put that kind of ring around a man and then put your mouth, you know...”
The meaning of her words hits me like a two-by-four. Both doctors are looking at us like this is a plausible explanation for how Shannon came to have the ring stuck in her throat. From the look on Shannon’s face, she’s as horrified as I am.
For a completely different reason.
“Let me set the record straight!” I say with an angry hiss. “We did not put my mother’s engagement ring over my...” I gesture toward my groin, “and then have her...” I gesture toward Shannon’s mouth.
Andrew turns beet red. “Hold on! That’s Mom’s ring?”
Shit. Caught.
“It’s okay, Declan,” Marie says softly. “People experiment.”
“The ring would never fit,” I snap.
Dr. Porter cocks a skeptical eyebrow. Dr. Derjian, good man that he is, stays silent and his face is as neutral as a football ref’s. “Flaccid, yes,” Dr. Porter explains. “The ring could slide down and—”
“You would need a bracelet,” I explain, standing as tall as possible, “not a piddly little engagement ring.”
Marie looks at Shannon. “You lucky girl.”
“You lucky bastard,” Jason mutters.
“Who said you could have Mom’s ring?” Andrew bellows.
“Anyhow, that’s not how Shannon ate the ring,” I continue, completely ignoring him. “She took a bite of tiramisu and swallowed it.”
“Who puts a three carat diamond ring in tiramisu?” Andrew asks.
“Yeah?” Marie demands. “Why ruin good tiramisu like that?”
I really don’t get the female obsession with this dessert.
Marie’s face pauses as she starts to speak again. She shakes her head slightly, as if in shock. “Three carats? Three carats?”
I just smile.
“Lucky bastard,” Jason says again.
Dr. Derjian and Dr. Porter have these long devices that look like tweezers on steroids. I can see Shannon’s heart throbbing in terror against her ribcage. The room starts to spin, and I can inhale as much air as I need. She can’t.
Marie sidles her way over to Shannon and takes her hand. “He proposed?”
Shannon shakes her head.
Marie’s eyes flash like Godzilla laser eyes on me. “You made her eat a three carat engagement ring and never even bothered to ask her to marry you? Is that some ethnic ritual from your people?”
My people?
“My people are Scottish, Marie. My people don’t eat engagement rings. It’s a complicated story.”
“It better be a complicated story if it involves having a rock like that caught in her throat!”
Everyone looks at me. They all seem to be waiting for an explanation.
Time to give them one.
“I’ll say this once: I hired Greg to pretend to beg Shannon to do a mystery shop at Le Portmanteau.”
Shannon’s eyes turn Godzilla-like, too.
“I arranged with the staff to have my mom’s engagement ring put in a glass of Champagne.”
Dr. Porter and Dr. Derjian share raised eyebrows. “Classic,” he says to her.
Marie starts to say something and I hold up a finger. “The staff screwed up and put the ring in the tiramisu instead of the Champagne.”
“Who ruins tiramisu like that?” Dr. Porter muses.
All the women in the room nod.
“Shannon took a bite and here we are.”
No one says a word. Everyone just blinks.
“That’s it?” Marie finally pipes up, indignant. “Oh, please.” She pulls back from Shannon, leans her forward a bit, and hauls off and whacks her so hard it sounds like a loud clap.
“NO!” the doctors shout in unison.
A weird gagging noise comes out of Shannon, then a great big whoop of breath.
“MOM!”
“MARIE!”
“HOLY SHIT!”
�
�I swallowed it,” Shannon says in a tinny voice. A round of coughing makes her bark like a seal, then sigh.
Andrew and Amanda come running back in.
“I can breathe,” Shannon explains. “But I feel like there’s a basketball caught in my chest.”
“Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?” Dr. Porter’s voice is murderous steel, her finger in Marie’s face. “What on earth were you thinking?” Dr. Derjian opens Shannon’s mouth again and looks in, examining.
Marie gives her a condescending look. “I am the mother of three girls and the grandmother to two boys. A good whack on the back is all anyone with something lodged in their throat needs.” She looks at Shannon with an exaggerated expression of patience and holds out her hand. “Spit it out.”
“I said I swallowed it, Mom.”
“No one swallows a -- what?” Marie gasps.
“Your arrogance will kill someone,” Dr. Porter shoots back, making Marie go white. Her confidence is gone.
“Mild lacerations and significant swelling,” Dr. Derjian says evenly, examining Shannon’s throat again. He’s clearly pissed at Marie, too. “What’s the metal?”
“Platinum,” I say.
“Good,” he adds, nodding. “No worries about allergies.”
“She’s allergic to bees,” Marie says in a small voice.
“I mean metal allergies,” he clarifies.
“What now?” Shannon croaks out.
“Water. Cool water,” Dr. Derjian says, turning to pour her some. “Sip slowly, through the straw. We’ll have to order X-rays now.” Dr. Porter glares at Marie but nods.
“As long as the ring doesn’t get stuck, the only way out is through,” he says with a mild smile.
“Through?” Jason asks.
Derjian cocks an eyebrow. “Through.”
Andrew chooses this moment to speak. “When you say ‘through’, you mean...”
“It has to be pooped out,” Marie whispers.
The two doctors nod.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Dr. Porter says. “We need to get visual confirmation that it’s in the esophagus, that it’s not perforating, and to make certain it continues to move through the digestive tract properly.”
“I have to poop my own engagement ring out,” Shannon says, then clutches her throat, pounding on her chest. She looks remarkably like a mama gorilla.