Page 81 of Refuge for Flora

“Then run and unlock it, and come right back.”

“Okay.”

In seconds, two EMTs powered through the front door. “Miss, we’ll take over now. Just have a seat.”

“But she’s my?”

“Yes, ma’am. Just let us work. Mercy Regional, this is McCrackenCounty EMT five nineteen, over.”

“EMT five nineteen, this is Mercy Regional. Go ahead.”

“We’ve got a female, approximately?”

“Ninety,” Flora answered.

“Ninety years old. Pulse is…”

A buzzing had started in Flora’s head and she felt weak as she watched the two men working over Mrs.Murphy. In a few minutes, they were joined by a couple of volunteer firefighters who helped them with equipment. One of them grabbed a gurney from the ambulance and rolled it in. They loaded up Mrs.Murphy, and Flora shook with fear. “Is she…”

“No, but she’s very weak. We’re taking her to Mercy. Want to follow us?”

“Yes, please. I don’t know where that is.”

“Okay. Hey, Rubble, can you drive to the hospital and let her follow you? She doesn’t know her way there,” one of the EMTs yelled to a firefighter.

“Sure. Just follow us, ma’am. We’ll get you there.”

The ambulance screamed out the drive and Flora was left to grab her phone and bag and follow the fire truck to the hospital. Once they reached the emergency department doors, the truck honked and went on, leaving Flora to park and go inside.

After the darkness of the highway, the lights inside the hospital seemed blinding. “Where’s my friend, the lady with the heart attack? Mrs.Murphy?”

“They’ve got her back there now, working with her. Can you fill out some paperwork for her?”

“I really don’t know enough to be able to do that. Just the simplest of information.”

The lady at the desk shrugged. “That’s something. Maybe we can find her in the system with whatever you can give us.”

Flora sat and filled out the paperwork, but there wasn’t much she could write in. All she knew was Mrs.Murphy’s name and the address. Even though she knew the woman’s age, she didn’t know a birthdate. It occurred to her that she should probably call Barrett and tell him where she was, so she reached into her bag, but her phone wasn’t there. She was sure she’d slipped it in there. Where was it? She remembered her bag falling onto the floorboard when she went around a corner, so the phone probably fell and was still in the car. There was no way for her to call Barrett?his number was in the phone, so she hadn’t memorized it. All she could do was sit down in the waiting area and hope someone would come out to talk to her.

More and more time passed, and she was growing more afraid by the minute. Would she even have a place to live the next day? Was Mrs.Murphy going to be okay? When she’d waited as long as she could, she told the lady at the admissions desk that she was going to the restroom and would be right back if they came out to talk to her. The more she walked, the farther away the sign for the ladies’ room looked and by the time she got there, she was afraid she wouldn’t make it.

After she was finished and had washed her hands, she headed back out to the waiting area. From somewhere up ahead, there was a lot of commotion and someone was yelling and making a fuss. There were several little rooms off the waiting area where walk-ins were evaluated, and when she got nearer, she could hear the person yelling.

“I don’t need no damn stitches! I need to go! We got business to take care of, damn it!”

“Calm down. Just let ‘em stitch it up and it’ll be okay.”

“Fuck, no, it ain’t gonna be okay!”

“You want your damn arm to fall off? That’s what’ll happen if’n that gets infected. Let ‘em look at it.”

Something about the voices made Flora feel a little light-headed, and when she rounded the corner of the hallway, one of the men turned toward her movement.

It was Bradley.

Every nerve in her body lit up, and Flora sprinted down the hallway. From somewhere behind her she could hear yelling. “Hey! Stop! Damn it! Is that you, Flora? Stop, god damn it!” But she just kept running. There were double doors at the end of one hallway, and she burst through them and kept going, through a maze of tables and cabinets, then flew through another set of double doors. The stairwell was right in front of her, and she darted through that door and ran up the stairs as fast as she could go. She opened the door on the first landing, but she didn’t go through?she kept going up instead, hoping that if he was following her, he’d think she’d ducked into the hallway of the second floor. At the second landing, she opened the third-floor doorway, but she stood just inside it, the door barely cracked open, and listened. There was no sound. Nothing. She’d been standing there, listening closely, for about five minutes when a voice said, “Miss? Is something wrong?”

“Uh, yeah. Someone was chasing me.”

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