by Amy Brent
“So, can I start you off with an appetizer today?”
I looked to Rafael for help and he seemed to understand. “We’ll take that specialty whisky you mentioned and a glass of merlot. We’ll start with the fresh oysters and then move on to two of those porterhouse specials you mentioned.”
“Perfect! It sounds like a plan.” She quickly strode away, and I let out a tiny sigh of relief. It made me feel like less of an outsider, and I appreciated his thoughtfulness.
“So, how has work been?”
I shrugged, reaching over the table and taking his hand in mine. It felt like electricity rushed along my skin, almost making me giggle like a school girl. Was this what it felt like to be a normal woman, without a storm cloud constantly hanging over my head? If so, I liked it. I liked it a lot.
“Oh, you know, workish. Lots of cleaning, lots of walking. Missing a certain CEO who I met once on the top floor.”
“A certain CEO, huh? He sounds interesting.”
“He is,” I said, smiling cheekily at him. “He’s tall, and gruff, and has this intense sort of gaze that turns your knees into rubber.”
“Rubber, huh?” He leaned forward, his bright eyes staring right through me. “That doesn’t sound very healthy.”
“It’s not,” I retorted, leaning right back until our faces were only a breath away from each other. “It’s unhealthy, and dangerous, just like him.”
“Doesn’t sound like a very good guy. Maybe you should avoid him.”
“But that’s the thing, he is good. The most good person I’ve ever met. The way he treats his son, and the way he treats me, I… I never knew that dating could be like this.”
He didn’t have a quippy sort of comeback for that. Instead, he moved ever so slightly forward and gently pressed his warm lips to mine.
It wasn’t a long kiss, and it was chaste, but it still filled me with a sort of warmth that I could hardly describe. “McKenna, I know that we haven’t been together very long, but-” He was interrupted by a shrill shriek and my head snapped in the direction of the sound. A woman was kneeling over her husband, who had collapsed out of the booth that they were sitting in and was twitching on the floor.
Several servers came rushing over, asking what was wrong, and the woman made breathless, squawking sounds at them while rapidly moving her hands. The servers had no idea what she was saying, of course, but I recognized it instantly.
“Hold on,” I said to Rafael, pulling my hands from his grip and rushing over.
“Excuse me ma’am,” One of the servers said, standing in my way. “But we need some space while the paramedics arrive.”
“That woman is communicating to you in ASL. Do any of you understand her?”
The man’s eyes went wide, and he stepped aside, allowing me to kneel in front of the woman. Although I was rusty, the skills that I had worked so hard for started coming back to me, and I rapidly signed to her.
What’s wrong? Can I help you?
She looked so relieved to see me that tears sprung into her eyes. I couldn’t blame her. Being hard or hearing or deaf could be hard enough in the hearing world, and it was even worse in an emergency.
My husband! He’s allergic to nuts. I wrote it down for the waitress, but I don’t think she saw it!
Do you have an epi-pen? I asked, quickly realizing the gravity of the situation.
Yes! I tried it but it wouldn’t deploy! It must have been damaged somehow!
I looked to the closest server. “He has a nut allergy, and something got into his food. We need an epi-pen, now. Do you guys have one?”
She nodded and ran off. I didn’t realize it for a beat or two, but Rafael replaced her, his face quite serious.
“Did I hear you say allergic reaction?”
I nodded, wondering just how loud I had been talking. “Do you know how to treat it?”
“It’s not about treatment. It’s about buying time.” He leaned over the gasping gentleman and his face grew much softer. “Sir, I know that what you’re going through is both painful, and scary, but I need you to try to slow your breathing while they bring you that pen. The calmer you are, the more we can slow the histamine flowing through your body. Okay? So, try to breathe with me now.”
Rafael demonstrated several long, slow breaths and the man tried to imitate them as best he could. His face was still going red while his lips tinged blue, but Rafael kept on. “I’m gonna remove some of your tighter clothing now, okay? Belts, shoes, socks. I know it’s awkward but try to just go with it.”
It was then I realized that the man might not go what was going on. Turning back to the wife, I signed to her, Is he deaf or HOH?
HOH, but he reads lips and has hearing aids. I think… I think he knows what you’re saying.
Good, good.
“I have the epi-pen!”
The server practically dove through the crowd that had gathered and shoved it into my hand. I quickly handed it to the wife and she uncapped it then jabbed it into his leg without a second’s hesitation.
The man’s gasping, rattling breaths faded into reedy wheezes and some of the violent color faded from his face. I sat back, sighing in relief, but Rafael continue to remove the man’s tighter clothing.
“We need a blanket, or if you don’t have blankets, a bunch of coats. Everyone needs to clear a space while the EMTs arrive. And if anyone has a second epi-pen they’re willing to spare, we’d be more than grateful.”
People began to scatter, and the workers went about fulfilling Rafael’s orders. It was only now, with the man seeming to be out of the woods and the immediate danger of him suffocating had passed, that I realized exactly what had happened. A man had almost died in front of us… and we had saved his life.
I was still reeling from that revelation when the EMTs finally arrived. However, I got over it real quick when they tried to ask her questions that she couldn’t answer, and their reaction to that was just to ask the same questions louder.
Can I help? I asked the woman, not wanting to intercede if I wasn’t needed. After all, deaf people were not children who needed to be coddled, but it never hurt to have an interpreter on hand in a situation like this.
God, yes. Please! I can see from his neck muscles that he’s shouting at me, isn’t he?
Uh, yeah.
I’m deaf! Does he really think saying the same thing but louder works?
“What’s going on here?”
“She’s deaf and her husband is hard of hearing but has implants in. He had a nut allergy, but the waitress didn’t catch it. We’re not sure exactly what he ingested yet, but he had a severe reaction. His epi-pen malfunctioned, but we were able to find one in the restaurant and administer it within three minutes of the attack.”
“Alright. Thanks ma’am. Let’s get these two in the ambulance.”
One of the EMTs went to the wife, gently escorting her out, but she caught my wrist.
Please, come with us. She signed with her spare hand. They rarely ever have a translator in the ER and it’s so hard to get them to slow down and communicate with me in a way that I understand.
Oh, I don’t think I can-
Please! I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t worry that not being able to understand them could hurt my husband.
She looked at me with such fear in her eyes, such uncertainty. How could I refuse that? I looked to Rafael and gave him a sheepish sort of shrug. “Hey, I’m gonna go with them to the hospital.”
“Really? Why?”
“She needs someone to communicate for her and she’s worried they won’t have anyone at the hospital.” For a moment I was sure that he was going to refuse, or fight me on it, but instead he just nodded.
“Go with her in the ambulance. I’ll follow along behind.”
“Thank you.” I reached out to squeeze his hand, and he returned the gesture. With only one more glance behind me, I left with the EMT, wondering how I got myself into these kinds of situations.
Chapter Twenty-Six
~Rafael~
I sped along in my car, the GPS reading off directions to the hospital that the EMTs had told me that they were going to. This was supposed to have been just a lovely night with McKenna, the first we had in ages, and then it had suddenly gone to shit without warning. I hoped that wasn’t an indicator of the universe being against us. I had finally found a woman that I truly got along with and it was going to take a whole lot worse than a sudden emergency to stop me from wanting her.
But the scene replayed in my head. She had been on top of that situation so fast while I was still trying to puzzle together what exactly was going on. By the time I made it over, her hands were moving rapidly, and it was only then that I realized they must have been communicating.
I knew there was a word for the hand movements they were doing, but I couldn’t remember it. I could only watch, more than a little impressed, until she told me what had happened.
Then I was finally useful. It was strange to think that if I hadn’t had a friend at summer camp who was terribly allergic to bees that I probably wouldn’t have an idea of what to do. Thankfully, after three different years to hanging out, I had learned a trick or two for when someone’s allergies were literally killing them.
I had hoped that would be the end of it, but then McKenna had to go and get caught up with helping them even more.
I couldn’t blame her, however. Her kindness, her compassion was one of the reasons I liked her so much, and I’m sure it was also why Dom had been so drawn to her. For someone who had basically been hunted her whole life, she certain had an open heart.
“Incredible,” I said, shaking my head as I made the final turn into the hospital visitor’s parking. McKenna was a much stronger person than I, but with me, she didn’t have to be strong all on her own anymore.
I found a reasonable spot and rushed into the emergency room, looking this way and that for her. Surprisingly, they weren’t in the waiting area, which meant they had already been processed and admitted. That was impressive, from what I heard of hospitals.
“Can I help you, sir?” The receptionist asked, looking up at me with a polite yet bored expression.
“Yes, I’m looking for McKenna O’Grady? She came in with a deaf couple, anaphylaxis reaction that was bought in on ambulance.”
“Are you kin?”
“Well, no, but-”
“If you don’t mind having a seat, I will page her, but we don’t allow friends or significant others of translators in the back.”
“But she’s not even an official translator here! She’s my girlfriend and she just happens to know ASL!” The words were so strange out of my mouth. Even though we had agreed to start dating a month ago, we had yet to call ourselves significant others. But the words were out now, so there was no use denying them.
“I apologize, and I thank her for helping. But policy is policy. I will page her, however, and she will be back with you as soon as she can.”
I wanted to argue with her, to ask what one more person beyond the double doors could possibly hurt, but I realized that she couldn’t break the rules anymore than one of my employees could, and I was wasting time where she could be helping someone else. With a terse nod, I turned around and sat down.
I tried to keep my distance from all of those that were coughing and hacking, but there was only so much space. I just hoped I didn’t catch anything and tried to be as patient as I could.
It wasn’t easy. Patience was not in my nature. I was a go out and conquer kind of guy and just sitting still was exceeding difficult.
It seemed to take forever before McKenna finally came out, but a quick look at my watch revealed that it had only been about twenty minutes. She looked around the moment she was out, clearly searching for me, and I stood.
Relief washed across her face and she ran to me, throwing her arms around me and pressing her face to my chest. I held her like that for several minutes, until finally she pulled away.
“You ready to leave?” I asked her, still keeping a hold of her hand.
“Yes, please.” She let out another long breath before recovering and standing up straight. “This has all been crazy.”
“Yeah, I would say that’s a fairly accurate way to describe tonight.” I lead her out of the emergency room and back to my car, finding it relatively quickly and getting us out of there. It wasn’t until we were on the road, though, that I heard McKenna’s stomach growling.
Oh, that was right. We hadn’t eaten, had we?
“You hungry?” I asked, sparing her a concerned expression while we were at a red light.
“Oh God yes. I thought my stomach was gonna eat itself.”
I laughed at that, giving her hand a squeeze. “Well, if someone hadn’t gone all heroic and saved the day, we might have had a warm meal.”
Thankfully she caught my teasing tone and shot it right back to me. “You’re right! How selfish of me. I totally should have let that guy die.”
“Exactly. Glad to see we’re on the same page.” I peered out the window to pin where we were and what in the area would still be open. Judging by how long it had to have been since McKenna had last eaten, I was guessing that she would prefer sooner rather than later.
“Want to grab a slice of gas station pizza and some soda?”
She sagged in her seat in relief. “You have no idea how good that sounds.”
Yet another thing I liked about the woman, she was always expressive and certain. None of this wishy, washy stuff, or ‘whatever you want’. If she liked something, she told me. And if she didn’t, then she definitely told me.
“Alright. You just try to survive until then.”
“I’ll do my best.”
It was only a few minutes until I found a gas station with a neon sign stating they had fresh slices, and I pulled in. McKenna and I certainly looked a little overdressed for the venue, but I was sure that she didn’t care. She hurried inside, ordering two slices of pepperoni while I came up behind her.
“And what would you like?” She was already pulling out her wallet from her purse, as if I wouldn’t notice.
“You mean one of those wasn’t for me?”
“Uh-uh, no siree. I am a hungry girl and I think I earned it.”
“You certainly did.” I looked to the cashier and slid my card right over the counter before she could object. “I’ll take a slice of cheese, a slide of pepperoni and two fountain sodas.”
“Yessir!”
McKenna gave me a sour look as the cashier slid my card and handed it back to me. “You think you’re slick, don’t you?”
“I don’t need to be slick,” I retorted.
“Oh, you don’t? What, you’re just naturally good at everything?”
“Basically.”
She laughed, the tension falling from her face. I liked seeing her like this and resolved to myself to make her laugh carefreely more often.
We took our pizza once it was ready and helped ourselves to drinks from the soda fountain. There wasn’t exactly seating in the gas station though, so we went outside and found a bench next to my car.
McKenna dug in, but I found myself watching her, thinking about everything that had happened. I realized that I actually didn’t know much about her, especially for someone who once thought they knew all of her secrets.
“So, where did you learn all that?”
“All that?” she parroted, raising her brow.
“What you were doing with your hands, with that woman. How you were talking.”
“Oh, you mean the sign language?”
“Ah, yes. Sign language. Where did you learn it?”
She seemed amused by my question and look a long sip of her drink. “That’s actually what I went to college for.”
I had to admit I was a bit surprised at that. She had told me about her boyfriend and how she pushed herself to graduate, but I had just assumed that it was some sort of liberal arts or hospitality degree. That was rude of me; I shouldn’t have done tha
t.
Now that I thought about it, she had even said that she worked for a video service, it just hadn’t clicked at the time because I had been so distracted by what her boyfriend had done to her. What else had I missed? “You have your Bachelor’s in sign language?”
“ASL, specifically. And I got my BA and several certifications for translating. I was going to change the world and make it a better place for deaf or hard of hearing people everywhere.” She chuckled at herself, but it was a dry and bitter sound.
“Then why are you working as a janitor at my building! You should be working for the hospital, or social services, or even the UN!”
“Abusive boyfriend chasing me across the country, remember? I couldn’t take a job in my relatively niche field because he would always be able to find me. So, I settled.”
“I would say,” I said, shaking my head. “Why are you still working at my company! He’s gone, you should be too!”
A strange expression crossed her face. “I… I guess you’re right. But…”
“But…?”
She took a bite of pizza, chewing as she stared at me. She seemed to think for quite a while before finally responding. “I think I’m not ready yet. I found a place that I really liked, and my coworkers are wonderful. I think I could use a little stability before going after a life I’ve already given up on.”