Granny Dee goes into action, hobbling around the kitchen while I keep the soggy and bloodstained shirt pressed up against LaoLao’s arm.
“Wing, call an ambulance,” Granny Dee says. She’s got the first-aid kit tucked under one arm and an armful of clean dish towels.
She takes my place next to LaoLao and I rush to the phone. Of course. An ambulance. I should have called an ambulance instead of shouting for Granny Dee. But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t leave LaoLao on the floor by herself, bleeding all over the place.
The 911 operator has a calm voice. She asks me a few questions and says an ambulance will be here shortly.
Then I call the restaurant. Lisa, the girl who works at the hostess stand, answers. She’s cheerful and says she doesn’t know where my mom is but can she take a message?
“Just tell her to come home as soon as possible. Tell her LaoLao cut herself real bad and we had to call 911.”
“Oh my goodness!” squeaks Lisa. “Is she OK?”
I can smell the blood now.
“I don’t know. Just tell my mom to hurry,” I say, and slam the phone back in its cradle.
Granny Dee is holding a bloodstained dish towel against LaoLao’s arm, but the blood just keeps coming. LaoLao is getting paler and paler and she has her eyes tightly closed.
“Come on, Mei! Keep those eyes open and that head up. Can’t have you dying on me now. Not after all we been through together. Not after Marcus has just woke up! Don’t you leave me to look after this family all by myself.”
LaoLao doesn’t even smile. Granny Dee’s voice is shaking but she keeps shouting. “Wing! Get more towels! I’ll stay with LaoLao.”
I run, really run, down the hall and into the bathroom, grabbing as many towels as I can, and sprint back to the kitchen.
There’s more blood pooling on the linoleum floor. So much blood. I start to feel dizzy and I slump against the kitchen table. I don’t want to look away from LaoLao, but I can’t stand to watch all that blood draining out of her. How can my LaoLao be losing so much blood? She moans and her head lolls over on Granny Dee.
“Hold on, Mei, an ambulance is coming! You’re gonna be all right.”
The ambulance is taking too long. I should have driven them. Marcus should have been here. Where is he? Then I remember, it’s Tuesday. He’s at physiotherapy. He won’t know what’s happened till my mom goes to pick him up tonight.
Marcus would have known what to do. Or at least, the old Marcus would have known. I don’t know what this new Marcus would have done. Still, a useless Marcus is better than no Marcus.
Where are my dragon and my lioness now? I need them. I need them.
LaoLao isn’t responding to Granny Dee. Granny Dee is trying to support her, but she’s so small and frail and LaoLao’s so much heavier than her. I go behind LaoLao – at first I try to avoid stepping in the blood but it’s impossible – and try to support her.
She’s deadweight.
Granny Dee is crying but I don’t thinks she knows it. She keeps crooning to LaoLao as she swaps out one blood-soaked dish towel for another.
Finally the ambulance arrives. The paramedics don’t knock, they come straight in. They’ve got a stretcher. They get down low next to LaoLao and quickly tie a tourniquet above her elbow before carefully putting her on the stretcher.
“You did a good job,” he says. “Keeping pressure on it like that.”
“Is she going to be OK?” I ask. She looks so fragile lying on the stretcher.
“She’s lost a lot of blood.” he says. I already know that. That isn’t answering my question. “Looks like she caught an artery. You two did the right thing.”
That isn’t exactly the reassuring answer I was hoping for, but I know he can’t make any promises.
The paramedics hoist up the stretcher and carry LaoLao out on it and into the ambulance.
“I’ll go with her,” I say, even though I can’t imagine anything worse than going to the hospital and not knowing if LaoLao will be all right, but Granny Dee steps in front of me and hugs me tight.
“You stay here. You gotta tell your mama and Marcus what happened. I’ll go. LaoLao will be all right.” But she won’t look at me when she says that.
I watch the ambulance drive away.
The kitchen is a disaster.
There are bloody footprints everywhere. Bloody sneaker footprints. I look down at my shoes, my prized Riveos.
There’s blood caked on the sole. I’ve been tracking it around the kitchen without realizing it. I don’t want my mom to come home and see this. I can’t run away from this. I take off my shoes and reach under the sink, where we keep the bleach and the cleaning supplies, and get out everything I need to clean. I fill a bucket with scalding hot water.