Welcome to the Slipstream

by Natalka Burian

  “No,” I almost laughed. “I don’t need anything. Mom just wants me to stay close, I guess.”

  “Okay, well if you get bored up there, let me know.”

  “Thanks, Alex.”

  I knew one thing—I sure wasn’t going to get bored.

  • • •

  The rest of the day, Ida was on the phone or on Mom’s computer. I tried to clean up a little since Ida wasn’t letting anyone in—not even housekeeping.

  “I’m sorry Rosalba, honey,” she whispered to the apron-clad woman at the door. “Senora Lowell has a migraine, and we’re trying to keep it quiet in here.”

  We ate the three breakfasts all day long. I made my bed and picked up the relatively clean clothes off of the floor and folded them. I gathered the dirty ones and threw them in the laundry bag.

  “Hey, you putting that out?” Ida asked from where she hovered over Mom’s computer.

  “I was going to.”

  “Go get something from your mother’s room for the bag, too.”

  “This is ridiculous. Chantal’s not going through our laundry. She’s not Columbo!”

  “Wanna bet? Just do it. An extra wash never hurt anything. Would your mom sign an e-mail, sincerely, or thanks, comma?”

  “What?”

  “Best! Never mind, she uses best.” She snapped her fingers a few times and kept working.

  I dragged the laundry bag down the hall to Mom’s room and opened the door. When I walked inside, I realized that I hadn’t been in her room once since the night we arrived. Mom’s smell hit me before anything else. That smell of Mom’s—verdant, straight from the outdoors—concentrated in that small room, took me straight back to my very earliest memories. Memories where I was hungry or afraid. My whole self transformed into a hollow, growling stomach, just burrowing into that smell to feel better.

  I looked around, not surprised that clothes and shoes were strewn all over the floor. When Mom cycled into one of her wild—or even her flat—periods, disarray followed her. The floor and the bed were covered in a colorful, glinting landscape of scarves and jewelry. Mounds of silk were piled around mismatched boots. An open compact shone like a landscaped pond under the afternoon sunlight flooding the room. I closed the drapes and shoved a few clumps of fabric into the laundry bag behind me.

  I sat on the floor and wrapped my arms around the bulging bag. I breathed in Mom’s smell.

  And then I heard the crash.

  “Ida?” I shouted.

  I leapt up and the bag fell to the floor with a thud. I knew it was bad before I saw anything. A sound like that—heavy—a sound of breaking things, of reckless, rolling smashing—that’s a sound that can only mean the worst. I ran toward Ida, who was face-down on the floor. She’d fallen onto the coffee table, and it had partly overturned on top of her. Blood welled up by her face and spread out in a dark, silky patch. I stared as it grew and couldn’t move or speak. I didn’t want to touch her—I didn’t want to hurt her.

  I felt my mouth opening. I called her name, louder and louder. My throat was open. Sounds were still coming out, but I had no idea what they were. I just stared at the blood, growing and growing out across the floor.

  I was vaguely aware of a smattering of knocks on the door, knocks that built in intensity until they were banging. There was so much banging—I could tell, I noticed it, noted that it seemed important at the time—that more than one person was banging.

  Good, I thought, I’m going to need a lot of help.

  The door popped open with an electronic click. I didn’t realize it, but my body was covering Ida’s. It was like my arms and legs had curled into a giant talon and had just clamped on. I felt people prying me loose. I heard them yelling, a phone call in rapid Spanish. I couldn’t pick out a single word. The room, the sounds, everything outside of Ida and me, was a wash of white noise.

  “Is she alive? Is she alive?” was what I said, when I could hear myself making sense again. There were people all around me, holding me by the shoulders. The door banged open again and more figures poured inside. Alex was there, and Chantal, too.

  Alex came over by me and put his arm around my shoulders, dispelling the pocket of soft, fragrant women who’d surrounded me.

  “Did you call an ambulance?” I asked Alex, trying to calm the vicious breaths I was pulling into my lungs.

  “They’re coming. It’s okay. She’s going to be okay.”

  I leaned in and squashed my face into his chest. I didn’t care about the snot and tear prints I left on his clothes. I just leaned in. It felt better to have someone, another body, right there when something this terrible was happening. I heard the scrapes and beeps of the EMTs who worked over Ida, but it wasn’t until I heard someone repeating my name that I looked up, unfastened from the temporary shelter of Alex’s shirt.

  “Van, can you hear me?” It was Chantal.

  I looked out at her, and all of the sounds and the heat from all of the bodies blared into my face.

  “They’re asking if you want to go with her to the hospital,” she said.

  I nodded and looked for Ida. She was strapped to a stretcher and covered in a blanket. The EMTs were heaving her toward the door. I held my hand out for Alex. He took it, but turned back to where Chantal’s strong, clear voice floated in the air.

  “Sofia isn’t in here. I’ll try to track her down,” she said. “Call me when you have some news.”

  I let go of Alex’s hand then. A very small part of me remembered that I was still angry about something, still torn, not sure what Alex was to me.

  We spilled out of the emergency exit to the parking lot, where the uniformed men loaded the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. The lights flashed silently against the darkening sky. I jumped into the back of the ambulance when one of the EMTs reached a hand out to me. Alex followed. The young EMT—the one with a full, soft baby face—helped me buckle the strange seatbelt across my Silver Saddle robe.

  “She’s a tough lady. I can tell,” the other EMT said. He was older and dark-skinned. He was tall, taller than Alex, and sinewy. He stooped over inside of the belly of the ambulance, even while sitting down.

  The young one nodded.

  “Will she be all right?” Alex asked. I could feel the sweat in my clasped hands.

  “We’re going to get her the help she needs, don’t worry,” the older EMT said.

  The sirens crooned around us as we sped into the night.

  Chapter Fourteen

  At the hospital, no one talked to Alex or me for a long time. I wasn’t sure how long we waited there, but it was long enough for other people waiting to ask us where the vending machines were. The sky had been completely black for a while—I’d been watching the night through the window across from the vinyl seat adhered to my terry cloth–covered butt.

  “Should we call Ida’s family?” Alex asked.

  “I think maybe there’s a cousin in Canada. I don’t know. I’m sure Mom does.”

  “Do you want to call her?”

  I had nothing. No money, no cell phone, no Ida, and no Mom.

  I massaged my cheeks and forehead, trying to loosen the layers of tension. “Why haven’t they told us anything? I’m just going to go back there,” I said as I stood.

  “No, no,” Alex said. “I’ll go ask.” He turned away and walked toward the ultrafluorescently lit reception area.

  I stared at a couple sitting across from me. The woman looked like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. Her skin was mottled with abscesses. The man hunched over in her lap had a towel pressed against his mouth and nose that was half drenched with blood. The woman patted his arm and bit down on her lips a little. I was so lost, I seriously contemplated asking that hard-faced woman what to do.

  Thank God Alex came back before I could. He carried a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand and a gold-wrapped Twix in the other. A can of Coke was clamped under his armpit. He sat down next to me and shuffled around the things he brought, handing me the Twix.

&
nbsp; I took the coffee from him, too, worried when he didn’t start talking right away. I could almost hear his brain working to fit together what to say, and I could tell by how long that was taking that it probably wasn’t anything good.

  “She’s in serious condition. That’s all they would tell me.”

  “Can we see her?”

  “I don’t know,” Alex said. “I called Chantal,” he said quietly, into the thumbprint opening of his soda can.

  “What?” My voice was louder than was appropriate in a place like this. An orderly pushing a groaning man in a wheelchair looked over sharply. The man in the wheelchair turned his open-mouthed roar on me, displaying a mouthful of missing teeth.

  “Please don’t be mad. I’m just not sure what to do. I mean, your mom is the one who should be here, getting Ida’s people on a plane.”

  “I am Ida’s people!”

  “I know, I know. You definitely are. I’m sorry.” He looked down again.

  “What did Chantal say?”

  “Well, yeah. She didn’t say much. Only . . .” He looked up at me then, with the full force of his perfectly symmetrical, concerned gaze. “Where is your mom, Van?”

  I looked at him through the globs of tears forming in my eyes.

  “Excuse me, you’re the nephew of Ida Bouchard?” A too-young-looking doctor asked.

  “That’s me,” Alex said, as he stood to shake hands with the doctor.

  “If you’d like to follow me, I can give you an update on your aunt’s condition.”

  Alex and I both nodded and stood to follow him.

  “Is this your sister?” the doctor asked, finally looking at me, probably noticing my state of robe-wearing dishevelment.

  “Yes,” I nodded as I spoke.

  “No,” Alex said at the same time.

  The doctor looked at us through narrowed eyes.

  “Where are your parents?” he asked.

  “Travelling,” Alex smoothly replied.

  The doctor looked over our shoulders, like he was willing someone more appropriate to materialize. When he realized he only had us, he shrugged and waved us over to a corner, where we sat down in a row: the doctor at the end, Alex in the middle, then me.

  “Your aunt is in serious but stable condition. She’s suffered a stroke.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. I tilted my face into my hands.

  “Was she experiencing any headaches or dizziness that you can recall? Any numbness or problems with her speech?”

  “Is she awake?” I asked.

  The doctor hesitated for a moment. “Well, no.”

  I felt his eyes on me—all of that silence and hesitation was focused on me. I lifted my head out of my hands and sat up as straight as I could and looked the doctor in the eye, the way Ida would have done if I were in the hospital.

  “Look, when will your parents get here, do you think?”

  “Actually,” I said, “she was having some trouble walking earlier.”

  “Hmm. Well, as I said, she’s unconscious, and she may be for quite some time.”

  “But she’ll wake up, right? She’s going to wake up.” I leaned forward to get closer to the doctor. I wanted to pitch myself straight into his eyes and swim down into his brain to see what was really going on. Just tell me! I wanted to scream.

  “If you’ll give me a few minutes, I’d like to share what you’ve told me with my colleagues.”

  “When can we see her?” Alex asked.

  “Not just yet,” the young doctor said. “Let’s wait for your parents.”

  I looked down into a dusty corner and thought about how completely screwed we were. Alex stood and watched the doctor walk away.

  “Van,” he started. “I know you don’t want to talk about this, but we kind of have to. Your mom’s not here, is she? She’s not at the Silver Saddle, and she’s probably not even in town.”

  I shook my head.

  “Van, where is she?” Alex asked with all the gentleness he could scrape up under the circumstances. I could see how hard he was trying, and, somewhere in my mind, I appreciated it.

  “I’m not really sure,” I whispered.

  “Okay, well. Okay,” Alex said and stood up again. He paced back and forth in front of our row of vinyl seats. The waiting room had filled with people while we talked to the doctor. An entire extended family had come in together, clustered around a sweating woman in labor. More bodies meant more heat. This emergency room wasn’t as lavishly air-conditioned as the city’s casinos and hotels. I swept the back of my hand across my throat to wipe away a thin film of sweat. Alex stopped in front of me.

  “I think I have to ask Chantal to come here.”

  As much as I hated to do it, I nodded.

  • • •

  Chantal swept in a half hour later, looking her poised, pulled-together self. She saw us and moved across the room with a wide, military stride.

  “What’s going on? Alex?”

  “Well, we’re not getting any real answers from the doctors here. And we don’t know where Mrs. Lowell is, either. That is, Van doesn’t exactly know.”

  “I see,” Chantal said as she began to sink into one of the seats in our row. She turned her head a little and carefully inspected the seat. When she saw how cracked and sticky the vinyl looked, she thought better of sitting and stood back up. “I take it that she doesn’t have her cell phone with her.”

  I shook my head.

  “All right,” she said. “First we see to Ida. Where’s the doctor?”

  I was surprised that Chantal gave two shits about Ida. Her concern, or maybe her natural human obligation, reached out to some important part of me.

  “Chantal,” I said.

  “Yes, Van?” she said as she set her handbag on the chair next to mine. She squeezed a glob of hand sanitizer out of the tiny bottle she pulled from the side pocket of the bag.

  “I think I may know where my mom went. I’ll go and bring her back.”

  “I don’t want you to think this is all your responsibility,” Chantal said. I could tell by the way she couldn’t look at me that it made her uncomfortable to say that. And, that she didn’t believe it.

  “No, it is. Or, it’s my mom’s. She needs to be here for Ida. We need to get in touch with Ida’s family, and only my mom knows where they are. My responsibility is only a temporary thing.”

  “I understand your meaning, but I don’t think it’s as easy as finding your mother. I mean, is she entirely well herself?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “It’s just that—if you find her or not, I’m not sure that you should go alone.”

  “It’ll be okay. Marine was taking her somewhere in Sedona. I’ll call her. Marine. And we’ll figure out how to get my mom back here. I just want to see Ida before I go.”

  Chantal sighed and cleared her throat. “I suppose you will have Marine’s help, and I can’t think of any other clear course of action here. Other than notifying the authorities.” I watched Chantal absorb my flash of panic. “But that will be a last resort.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  We walked to the reception desk together and waited while the sleepy woman behind it paged the young doctor. Chantal drummed her fingers on the desk.

  The doctor we’d seen earlier looked really terrible. He slouched, and his scrubs were suddenly filthy, but he mustered a professional smile as he approached us.

  “Ida Bouchard’s family, right?”

  The three of us nodded in unison.

  “This is your mom, guys?”

  “Yes,” Alex said, and slung an arm around Chantal’s shoulders.

  “What can you tell us about Ida?” Chantal said. I could see how hard she tried not to shake Alex off—every line of every muscle had tightened across her back.

  “Well, a little good news, I’m happy to say. Since I spoke with your kids,” he looked at Alex and me, and then back at Chantal.

  “Our stepmother,” Alex said.

  The doctor s
hrugged. “There has been some improvement.”

  I smiled so hard that my eyes watered.

  “That’s great,” Alex said.

  “Can we see her?” Chantal asked, snapping the doctor’s eyes back up to hers with that magnetic, principal-like control.

  “She isn’t conscious at the moment,” he said. “Her vitals have stabilized, and that’s really what we look for in the period directly following an event of this nature. We moved her up to the ICU on the fifth. But, please, visiting hours are over at eleven, so—”

  “Eleven?” I said. “Is it that late already?”

  The doctor didn’t hear me. He had already scurried away to some other family in some other cell of the hospital.

  • • •

  The ICU was as different from the emergency room waiting area as the Venetian had been from the Silver Saddle. As soon as the elevator doors peeled open, I breathed a little easier. Ida will be okay here, I thought. This is actually a really nice hospital.

  The floor was open; there were probably ten or fifteen little rooms that ringed the unit. A nurse’s station was settled in the middle like the center of a flower.

  “We’re here to see Ida Bouchard,” Chantal told the nurse at the desk. “They sent us up from the ER.”

  The woman leaned against the chest-high barrier. “Just a minute while I call for confirmation,” she said, fiddling with an amber button on her cardigan sweater.

  Chantal nodded and we milled around on a highly polished tiled floor as the nurse murmured into a phone. She hung it up with a clatter and turned back to us.

  “Follow me. Sorry about that. We always have to check—you wouldn’t believe the wackadoos we get in here sometimes.”

  “I’m sure,” Chantal replied, dryly.

  The nurse knocked on a door to our right. Ida’s name was scrawled on a white eraser board in nearly illegible handwriting. I only knew it was Ida’s name because I knew those letters next to each other as well as I knew my own name. I’d recognize them anywhere, no matter how misshapen they might be.

  The bed was enormous. Ida was tucked beneath a crisp white sheet. Her whole body appeared deflated—most of what made up Ida were her voice and eyes and laugh. Machines stood guard all around the room. Some of the hulking figures pumped and beeped away beside her, while others sulked in the corners.