“I’m in the middle of the stupidest case in the history of lawsuits,” she mutters. “It’s a losing battle. I can’t possibly win, and just by representing this guy, I’m risking my reputation. But I have no choice. This guy got drunk at a dorm party—which he provided the alcohol for—and then he crashed into a Burger King. He’s suing the college and the Burger King. Two separate cases.”
“No way.”
“Yes.”
“And you agreed to take that case?”
“I wasn’t given a choice. He’s the son of one of our biggest clients. If I win, I’ll be a hero.”
“But it can’t be won.”
“Not if the jury’s sober. And when this case is over, if I don’t get laid off, I’ll have to do the second case—against Burger King.”
“That’s insane. Why would a judge even allow this case?”
“I was hoping he wouldn’t. See what a terrible lawyer I am? I was hoping my case would be dropped. But this case is the only reason I wasn’t laid off with the others. Sometimes I feel like I’m in the middle of a mudslide.”
“How’s that?”
“I feel like I’m hanging on to a stump for dear life as the mud just slimes down around me. Uprooted trees are drifting down in all that mud, hitting me in the head and knocking me black and blue, and I’m still hanging on, covered with mud and slime . . .”
“This is some analogy.”
“And any minute the ground below my stump is going to turn to mud and my stump will go under, and I’ll go down with it into a pile of mud.”
“Probably wouldn’t be a pile. More like a swamp or lake. Maybe a pond.”
“It’s my metaphor. Do you even hear anything I’m saying? Do you understand it?”
“Of course I do. I used to be in the restaurant business.”
“How does that have anything to do with this?”
“I understand the desperation of feeling like everything is crumbling. Or sliding . . . as it were.”
I turn onto another residential street about three blocks from Callie’s house. Still no sign of her. “That’s the reason I’m driving a cab now. All that stress and craziness. It was killing me. Owning a restaurant—”
“You owned a restaurant?” She looks shocked.
“Yeah. I was St. Louis’s Chef of the Year for three years in a row. Success went to my head. I decided I had to have my own restaurant, so I opened one, hired a new chef, and suddenly I’m working eighteen-hour days and juggling bills and staff and customers, instead of cooking. Did all right for several years, but then the economy tanked, and people preferred burgers to haute cuisine.”
She pulls her chin back and frowns at me. “You cook haute cuisine?”
“Did. If I’d been cooking all the time, I might have been happier. But I was doing things I hated. Got to the point that I wanted to run away. Somebody offered to buy it, and the price was enough to pay my debts. And I never want to go back into that business. After all the training, all the experience, all the passion. I put my life and relationships on hold, and in the end, the business failed me.”
“But . . . you could have just gone back to being a chef. Worked for someone else.”
“Burnout is a real thing. You should take my advice. Get out while you still like your profession. Don’t let yourself be stuck with something you hate.”
“I can’t quit, and I don’t want to be fired. I have goals. There’s a lot at stake. You don’t understand.” She gets her phone out of her purse and tries Callie’s phone again. “Still voice mail!”
I hear a thud—a sound no driver wants to hear— from my right front tire. “What now?” I get out of the car. Leaving my door open, I go around to that tire and stoop down. It’s flat. There’s a brick a few feet behind it.
Sydney gets out of the car.
“A brick,” I say. “Who leaves a brick out in the street like this?” I stand up and look around for the culprit. Maybe he’s hiding in the bushes, laughing his head off. Probably some sadistic kid.
“We don’t have time for this,” she says.
“Ya think?” I fling back. I go to my trunk and yank up the rug over the spare. “Just shoot me. The spare is flat.” I slam my hand against the fender. “I’m gonna have to call a tire service.”
“We can’t wait for that! Finn, I have to find her! I need to call the police.”
“Just hold on,” I say. “Let me call dispatch, see how long it’ll take for them to get someone to help me.”
She gets back into the car and texts frantically, tapping her foot on the floorboard as I call LuAnn. “I’m sitting here on Cooper Road, and my tire is flat,” I tell her. “And guess what? The spare is flat, too. Who was responsible for getting it fixed?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I’ll have to look back through my records.”
“No, don’t bother, LuAnn. I don’t have time. Callie is missing. I have to find her.”
“Callie, the old woman? Where did you lose her?”
I exhale heavily and look at Sydney. “I didn’t lose her. She’s just lost.”
“I can get a service to you in about an hour.”
I groan. “LuAnn, her life could be at stake. Please, can you send me a cab to take us back home so we can get another car?”
Sydney’s poking at her phone. What’s she doing? Checking Facebook?
“I’ll send you a cab,” LuAnn says. “But the closest one I have is about twenty minutes away.”
“What? Twenty minutes? No! You don’t have anybody in this part of town?”
“I had you there,” she says.
“Well, I would pick myself up, except I have a freakin’ flat tire!” I yell.
“Finn, you don’t have to get huffy.”
Sydney holds up her phone for me to see a map with a little dot moving. “Don’t worry about it,” she whispers. “I got an Uber. He’ll be here in three minutes.”
She might as well have slapped me. I gape at her.
“I’m not waiting twenty minutes,” she says. “You don’t have to come with me, but I’m taking an Uber back to my car.”
I’m livid now. “This, LuAnn, is why people use an app to get a ride. Send someone to change my tire. He’ll have to bring a spare. I’m not going to be here. I have to go help find her.”
“Will do, Finn,” she says. “I’ll forgive you for your tone because you’re the only one I have who works the geriatric crowd.”
“There it is now,” Sydney says, pointing as the car pulls up.
I set my chin and click off the phone, and stare at the tiny ten-year-old Civic that idles in front of us.
“His name is Jeff,” she says.
Something about that makes me even madder. I lock my car and stroll toward the Civic. I open the front door as she gets into the back. “Hello, Jeff.”
“How ya doing?” he asks.
“Not great.”
“This is really funny,” he says as I buckle myself in the passenger seat, in case this kid runs off the road. “An Uber driver picking up a cab driver.” He leans into me and lifts his phone for a selfie. “Can I take a picture to post on Instagram?”
I push his hand away. “No, Jeff, you cannot. Now, do you want to know where we’re going?”
“No, I already know. It’s in the app.” He snaps a pic of my debilitated cab anyway, still chuckling. “This is classic.”
Sydney isn’t bothered by this at all, and why would she be? She clearly doesn’t know the difference between a cab and an Uber. Try getting Callie into the back seat of one of these.
She calls the police as we’re driving, reports Callie missing, and asks them to meet us at her house.
“They should be there shortly,” she says when she hangs up. “I have to send someone to court to tell the judge I have an emergency. Who’s at the courthouse?” She apparently comes up with someone and gets them on the phone.
I check out Jeff’s phone as he follows its GPS to Callie’s street, and I watch the l
ittle dot of our Civic crawling through the map. I hate this guy and everything he stands for as we turn into her driveway.
I reach for my wallet.
“Don’t,” Sydney says. “I already paid him on the app.”
“I can at least tip him,” I mutter.
“I did that, too.”
I frown back at her. Seriously? She can do all that on her phone? I look at Jeff, who’s smiling with oblivious naiveté. How many people are actually going to tip if they don’t have to look a driver in the face as they hand it to him? How many will even remember to do it?
“We’re way more convenient than cabs,” he says, chuckling. “No offense. You should get the app.”
“No thanks.” I get out and open the door for Sydney. She’s enjoying this. I’m glad my discomfort has given her a distraction from her mudslide.
“Don’t even,” I say as we go to her car.
“I won’t,” she says. “But oh, I want to.”
Thankfully, a police car pulls up as Jeff backs out of the driveway. Sydney tells them her grandmother has vanished. The cop goes back to his car and radios something in. As we wait, she takes off her jacket. She looks more relaxed, even though I know she isn’t.
“You should lose those jackets for good,” I say. “You look better without them.”
“It’s not a beauty contest,” she shoots back. “I have to look professional.”
“You’re not going to look like a man no matter how hard you try. You can be a professional woman without following the male dress code.”
“So I’m supposed to take fashion advice from a guy in a backward baseball cap?”
I grin.
The cop gets out of his car and walks back up the driveway. “I found her.”
“What?” Sydney says. “Where?”
“At Missouri Baptist Medical Center. She collapsed on Torrence Drive and someone called the hospital.”
“Torrence?” I ask. “How did she get that far?”
“Is she all right?” Sydney asks.
“She was taken by ambulance. I can put you in touch with the EMTs who transported her.”
Sydney is about to collapse herself as I usher her into her car. As we head to the hospital, she calls one of the EMTs and puts it on speakerphone. “Hi,” she says when he answers. “I was told you transported my grandmother to the hospital this morning? Callie Beecher?”
“Yes, I transported her a couple of hours ago,” he says.
“Is she all right? Is she alive?”
“She was stable when we got her there.”
“What happened?”
“It looked like her battery died on the scooter, and she was trying to walk away from it. The lady who saw her fall said she was very unsteady. She saw her faint.”
“She’s too weak to be walking,” Sydney cries. “She’s been really sick.”
“She was still on the ground when we got there,” the EMT says. “I don’t think she’d hit her head, but she was in and out of consciousness.”
Sydney is quiet as she gets off the phone and stares through the window as she drives to the hospital. I take a stab at making her feel better. “The other day, when she was locked out, I took her to eat lunch at Lulu’s. We sat down and she said, ‘Thank you, Jesus.’ I thought she was confused about who I was.”
She smiles a little. “She loves Jesus. She talks to him a lot, right out loud. She did that even before she had this . . . confusion.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t one of the first signs of it?”
“Yeah. It was just her way of praying. Jesus was . . . is . . . very real to her.”
I get quiet, not wanting to make a joke of that. I’m not sure why.
We’re silent as we get to the hospital, and she pulls into a space near the front door. I get out when Sydney does.
“You don’t have to come,” she says. “I know you have to get back to work.”
“I want to make sure she’s all right,” I say. “I’m coming in.”
I follow her to the information desk in the emergency room, and she gets Callie’s exam room number. “Only two family members can go back at a time,” the nurse says.
“It’s just the two of us,” Sydney says without telling her I’m the cab driver.
We walk up the hall to Callie’s room. Sydney opens the door, and we step inside. Callie is in a hospital bed, looking very small. Her eyes are closed, and she doesn’t stir at the sound of the door.
“Grammy?” Sydney says, shaking her.
Callie doesn’t wake.
“Maybe she’s on medication,” I say.
Sydney goes back to the door. “I want to talk to the doctor.”
I stand at the door as Sydney goes up the hall to the nurses’ desk. “Who is Callie Beecher’s doctor? I need to see him.”
“He’s on the floor,” I hear the nurse say. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”
Sydney comes back to the exam room. “She looks like she’s dying,” she whispers.
Her phone rings before I can answer, and she pulls it out of her purse. “Oh no. It’s my boss.” She swipes it on. “Mr. Southerby, I’m so sorry I had to ask for a continuance, but I’ve had a family emergency. My grandmother vanished, and then I found out she was taken by ambulance to Missouri Baptist. I’m here now, waiting to talk to the—”
The boss cuts her off, yelling so loudly I can hear it from across the room. It’s almost enough to wake Callie, but she still doesn’t stir.
“I know, sir,” Sydney sputters. “No, I do want this job. I know they wanted it over by Christmas, but I’m the only one my grandmother has . . . I will, sir . . . No, I have every intention—”
The doctor steps into the room, and Sydney swings toward him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Southerby, but I have to go.” She hangs up on him, though he’s still talking. I want to cheer.
“What’s wrong with her?” she asks the man in scrubs.
He’s carrying a laptop, which he sets on the table and opens. “I’m glad to finally meet you. We’ve been playing telephone tag.”
“Did she hurt herself when she fell?”
“No,” he says. “Yesterday we had her come back in because our test results were worrisome. We did an MRI and PET scan. Today we did X-rays, and there are no fractures. We understand she fell onto grass, so there don’t seem to be any injuries from the fall. We think her condition precipitated her fainting.”
“What condition?” Sydney asks. “A UTI would cause unconsciousness?”
“Her condition, and her collapse, are caused by late-stage cancer,” he says.
I catch my breath. Sydney reaches for the footboard of Callie’s bed to steady herself. “Late stage . . . ?”
“Yes.”
“Wait.” She shakes her head, as if trying to clear it. “Are you sure you don’t have her mixed up with someone else?”
“Callie Beecher. Trust me, this is not a woman you easily forget. You didn’t know?”
I stand rigid, staring at him, feeling as if I don’t belong here. But I can’t make myself walk out.
“No! Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Sydney asks.
“I tried to call multiple times,” the doctor says.
“I tried to call you back last night. I was in court all day.”
“I can’t leave a message like this on voice mail,” he says. “Your grandmother has liver cancer that has metastasized all over her body. She has masses in her lungs, her pancreas, her stomach, and her brain.”
Sydney starts to cry again, and I step toward her but don’t touch her.
“No!” she says. “I thought the antibiotics were helping her. I thought—”
“She does have secondary pneumonia. We started IV antibiotics today. But as I said, she is in late-stage cancer.”
Sydney clutches her forehead. “So . . . we’ll do chemo, right? Radiation? We’ll fight this.”
The doctor glances at me, as if to tell me to help Sydney with this, but I just stand there, like I do.
“She’s beyond chemo. While she was still clear-headed, she opted to forgo it. It wouldn’t have offered her much more time.”
I take off my cap and ask, “How long does she have left?”
“We don’t like to put a time on these things.”
“Ballpark,” I insist.
“A year?” Sydney asks. When she sees the sympathy on the doctor’s face, she says, “Months? Weeks?”
“At this point, after this episode,” he says softly, “I think weeks would be optimistic.”
“Days?” The word cracks in her throat, and she seems to lose her legs and begins to fall. I grab her then and help her to steady herself.
She rallies her strength and looks at her grandmother. “Days,” she whispers. “She has days left, and I couldn’t even take the time to take her to the doctor or answer his call.”
She pulls away and bends over the bed, touches her grandmother’s face, strokes the wrinkled skin. “Grammy,” she whispers, and tears assault her again.
I look awkwardly at the doctor. “Is she . . . is she going to recover . . . from this episode? Or is this it?”
“She may recover some strength and be able to go home. The next few hours will tell us. We’ll do our best to get her home for Christmas if we can. I know it’s important to her. She’s told me more than once.”
I wonder if she tried to fix him up with Sydney.
“We’re going to set her up on hospice care, but since it’s so close to Christmas, we may not be able to get it started until the day after Christmas.”
“Hospice?” Sydney says as though that word rips her to shreds.
“We want to keep her comfortable.”
I can’t stand here anymore. I tell Sydney I’ll be in the waiting room, but she doesn’t seem to hear me. I go out there, get a Coke out of the machine, and look around for the least germy seat. There’s a kid sitting close to the vending machines who’s covered head to toe in a rash, so I head the other way and sit by the woman with a swollen ankle.
I try to get interested in a Dr. Phil episode on the TV in the upper corner of the room. It isn’t turned up, so I try to follow the conversation on the closed captioning, but it’s several seconds behind the voices. Soon I’m just staring at the screen, not reading lips or transcription. Just thinking about Callie lying on the ground, then being loaded into an ambulance.
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