Mr. Terupt Falls Again (27 page)

“Evelyn, can you hear me?” Mr. T called over her.

No response.

“Evelyn, are you okay?”

Still no response.

Then I saw Luke doing his thing. He held his ear close to her chest and pressed two fingers against her neck. Our Boy Scout with his First Aid Badge wasn’t such a dork anymore.

“There’s no pulse,” Luke said. “We need to start CPR.”

Mr. T opened Grandma Evelyn’s mouth and made sure her airway was clear. Then he started pushing on her chest.

“Grandma! No!” Danielle cried. “Fight! Fight!”

Mr. T kept going until Jeffrey showed up. “Excuse us. Watch out, please. We’re here to help,” Jeffrey called out. The crowd parted so Jeffrey could easily get through, along with the two EMTs he’d found at the first-aid station.

There was always a first-aid station at the carnival. Usually, the responders dealt with a few little kids getting skinned knees, nothing more. One year, when it was unusually hot, they helped someone who got dehydrated, but that was the most challenging situation the carnival had ever needed to handle. The EMTs weren’t paramedics, just regular citizens, a man and a woman who volunteered.

Jeffrey stepped aside when he reached Grandma Evelyn so the EMTs had room. The guy carried this black case. Luke told me later on that it was an AED, which stands for Automated External Defibrillator. It’s like a computer device that tells what to do to an unconscious person and it has those pads that can shock you. The woman carried your classic orange first-aid kit. This was where it got interesting.

“Grandma! No!” the man cried. He dropped the black case and fell to his knees.

“Charlie!” Danielle sobbed.

The man twisted around. “What happened?” He looked at Danielle, desperate for an answer.

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s Grandpa and Mom and Dad?” Charlie said.

“I don’t know.”

“Mom!” Anna called out. She rushed over to the woman.

“It’s okay, honey. We’re going to help. Stay back.”

I couldn’t believe it, what were the chances—the man EMT was Danielle’s brother and the woman EMT was Anna’s mom. Charlie didn’t handle finding his grandmother on the ground any better than Danielle. I couldn’t blame him. So Anna’s mom took over. She never lost focus.

“Do you have a pulse?” she asked Mr. T.

“Not yet.” He kept pushing.

“Open the AED,” Luke said, pointing to the black case. “It’ll tell us what to do. I’ve used one at Boy Scouts before.”

Anna’s mom opened the case.

“APPLY PADS,” the robot voice from the case instructed.

Anna’s mom pulled these sticky pads out of the case. Mr. T stopped CPR and ripped Grandma Evelyn’s shirt open. At least she had a bra on! At least it was plain white and nothing crazy like Mrs. Williams’s underwear. But then Anna’s mom cut the bra right in half. I thought they were going to need to hook the AED to me next. I almost passed out.

They attached the sticky pads to Grandma Evelyn’s skin.

“ANALYZING HEART RHYTHM. DO NOT TOUCH THE PATIENT.”

The crowd grew very still, all of us waiting to hear what the robot voice would say next.

“SHOCK ADVISED.”

The crowd gasped.

“STAY CLEAR.”

A surge of electricity was sent to Grandma Evelyn’s body, causing her to jump and twitch.

“Grandma!” Danielle yelled.

“ANALYZING HEART RHYTHM.”

We were back to holding our breaths and each other.
I
held Lexie, but not in one of those boyfriend-girlfriend embraces. Any romance we had that night was long gone. This was a hug between two scared friends—nothing more. Then I felt someone else’s touch on the back of my shoulder. It was my dad.

“PULSE REESTABLISHED.”

Suddenly there were small smiles and sighs of relief. I could tell that everyone felt hopeful. I did. And I felt it in Dad’s squeeze too.

Seconds later the ambulance arrived. It tore across the field, throwing mud everywhere. Real paramedics quickly loaded Danielle’s grandma into the back, the black case still attached to her. Then the ambulance threw more mud from its tires as it sped away.

The gathered crowd started moving in all different directions again. Lexie spotted her mother and ran to her, leaving me with my father. Everyone else was gone. Dad wrapped his arm around me as we walked to the car. Would he have put his arm around me last year if he’d been with me on that snowy day? I could have used him then. But he was with me now. Things had changed. This was the first time I could ever remember my father showing me any kind of affection. I wouldn’t forget it.

S
ometimes when you look back on things it all makes sense. I remember the night before the carnival started. My family gathered in Grandma’s kitchen sipping tea and drinking coffee. We had just come home from the carnival site after making sure everything was ready to go.

Grandpa sat in his chair, stressing. I figured he was tired and worried about the carnival, but after listening to those men under the burger tent, I realized he was agonizing over the Indians as much as anything else. Grandma did her best to take care of Grandpa by waiting on him hand and foot—all the while stressing more than he was. And she tended to Charlie and Dad. Like Grandma, we all worried about Grandpa. We should have noticed that all of Grandma’s fretting was wearing her down. It was the reason she had a heart attack on opening night.

I’m still not ready to talk about what happened at the carnival. I just can’t. Maybe someday I’ll be able to, but not yet. I can tell you about what happened after the ambulance left, though.

I rode to the hospital with Dad and Grandpa while Mom rode with Grandma. Anna rode with Charlie and Terri. I remember Dad driving faster than usual on the back roads, and I remember Grandpa staring out his window. I try to imagine how Grandpa must have felt, but I’m not sure I can. I had only known Grandma for a small amount of time compared to Grandpa, and I felt like my world was falling apart.

At the hospital, Grandma was rushed into emergency surgery and I found the waiting room—again. Of course the rest of my family was with me. Grandpa sat staring at the wall, while Dad and Charlie stood off to the side talking in hushed voices. I heard Charlie say something to Dad about the other farmers. Mom joined them, whispering about how it would surely take a toll on Grandpa next.

“I know the Indians want our land,” I exploded.

Everyone turned to look at me.

“I said I know those Indians want our land. You don’t need to be so secretive around me.”

Then the one thing I didn’t want to happen did. I started bawling like a baby. I’d been crying over Grandma already, but now I really lost it.

“Get ahold of yourself, Danielle,” Grandpa said. Anna put her arm around me. “Your crying won’t help anything,” he went on. “And it just shows why we didn’t tell you.”

That made me mad and got me to stop carrying on. I could handle it.

“Those greedy self-entitlin’ Indians are after all our lands,” Grandpa said to whoever was listening. “They’ve been walkin’ in other fields and devilin’ up who knows what sorts of plans. They can’t be trusted, that’s for sure.”

“Grandpa, you shouldn’t let the other farmers get you so riled up,” Charlie said. “It doesn’t do you any good. The courts will handle it.”

“You’re probably right,” Grandpa said, “but if somebody doesn’t get riled up, then I fear nobody’s gonna stop them Indians.”

I woke with a start several hours later. The doctor tending to Grandma entered the waiting room. We all took deep breaths and held them, bracing ourselves for the news he had come to deliver. The doctor pulled the mask off his face and walked over to our family. I kept waiting for one of those big sighs from him, but it never came.

“I think she’s going to make it,” he said.

We let out huge sighs of relief.

“She’s in intensive care and will need about another week in the hospital for us to monitor her progress, but then I expect she’ll be ready to go home.”

“Oh, thank you, Doctor …?” Mom said.

“Dr. Takoda,” he said.

Mom’s face twisted at the funny name.

“It’s Native American and means ‘friend to everyone,’ ” the doctor said, explaining his name. “That seems like a good thing for any doctor,” he added with a laugh.

“Yes. Yes, it does,” Mom said. The rest of us were as quiet as when Dr. Takoda first walked in. He was Native American.
Didn’t that just complicate our feelings. Was that the trade? Give me my grandma and we’ll give you our land?

Dear God
,

Thank you for not taking Grandma. We need her. I wonder, did she meet you up there and tell you she wasn’t ready? It’s wise of you to listen to her. You better just wait till she tells you it’s time—that’s my advice
.

Now I need to ask you something. Sometimes I feel like I ask for a lot, and that’s probably because I do, but I don’t ask for things that aren’t needed. If I forgot to say thank you for helping me figure out the land war, I’m sorry. Thank you. But the truth is, it hasn’t helped much. I know you know what’s going on, but I don’t know what you’re trying to do. We need your help. I think a lot of families do. I pray that you help us find a solution. I’m afraid of what might happen if the wrong man tries to solve it himself. Please help us. Amen
.

I
can’t believe I ever thought Danielle wanted to leave the carnival early because of her period. She can get grouchy when she has it, but it did seem like a ridiculous reason to leave. Turns out she had a lot on her mind.

I didn’t get all the details, and I didn’t understand everything, but I learned real quick in that waiting room that her family was in jeopardy of losing all their land to Native Americans. Of course we were also barely breathing because Danielle’s grandma was in emergency surgery.

Her grandma had a heart attack. All the stress from worrying about her husband and their land mess caused a piece of plaque to break free and travel to her heart, where it got stuck. Plaque is made of cholesterol, which in an older person like Danielle’s grandma could have been in her arteries for many years. Her grandma was okay with just the
cholesterol, but all the stress was giving her high blood pressure, and that’s what no one knew about. It was the high blood pressure and increased stress that made some of the plaque break free. When it got stuck, blood couldn’t keep circulating to that area of her heart. Then she collapsed with a heart attack. I learned about all this stuff with Nurse Rose at the center. Mom and I had helped with several patients who were recovering from heart attacks.

The doctors had to cut Danielle’s grandmother open to fix her heart so that the blood could circulate. That’s called a bypass. Her grandmother made it—but she still had a long road to recovery. That was where I came in.

Mom and I were the in-home care people for Danielle’s grandma. We helped her do rehab exercises, keeping a careful eye on how she handled walking around. Did she get short of breath? How did her breathing sound and how well did she recover from any exercise? Of course there were also some trained nurses (Nurse Rose and others) who came once or twice a week to check her blood pressure and to clean her incision. Danielle’s grandma also had to go to the doctor every so often to get checked. But on a daily basis, it was Mom and I who helped the most. We even kept her house in order by doing the laundry and the cleaning.

Danielle and her mother took care of the meals. Danielle checked in on her grandma a lot (everyone did), but she also did her share of farmwork by carrying out her grandma’s jobs. She tended to the garden and mowed the lawns, and like I already mentioned, she had a lot to do with preparing the meals.

Her grandpa, on the other hand, still walked around with a heavy heart, if not a sick one. His wife’s close call had taken a toll on him. And then to have a Native American doctor to thank for saving her in the midst of a messy land ordeal—which didn’t seem to be getting figured out any time soon—that ate at him too.

Well, Danielle’s grandpa came into the house for a drink one afternoon, and it was her grandma who set him straight. “Alfred,” she said. “You need to stop this moping around if you expect me to get any better. I can’t keep worrying about you while I’m trying to make my heart strong again.”