Almost immediately, the noises stopped. Then came a loud thud that shook the house and a scream.
I jumped up and ran out the door.
Outside, Dad was lying on the ground, his face white.
“What happened?” I said.
“It’s not my fault!” Jeanine said, kneeling beside him.
I dropped to the ground on the other side. “Are you okay?”
Dad sat up slowly.
“He’s fine,” Jeanine said. “Right, Dad? You’re fine.”
“I think so?” he said, not really sounding convinced. “Just my head.”
Jeanine pulled off her ski mask and grabbed my father’s hand. “Your pulse is pretty fast.”
“I’m okay.”
“Can you get up?” I said.
“He shouldn’t move,” Jeanine said. “What if he has a spinal injury?”
“You just said he’s fine. Now he has a spinal injury?”
“You know, guys, I really think I’m okay to go inside.”
“See!” I said.
“Fine. But don’t blame me if he’s paralyzed,” Jeanine said.
We helped my father to his feet and slowly led him into the house. Jeanine made him lie on the couch, got some ice, and told him to put it on his head.
“You sure you’re okay, Dad?” I asked.
“Huh?” he said like I’d just woken him up.
“You okay?” I said again. Something about his eyes didn’t look right.
“Yeah,” he said, but he still didn’t sound sure. “Just my head.”
“Do you know what you hit it on?” I was worried that maybe he’d hit a rock, but there wasn’t any blood.
“Hit it?”
“Yeah, when you fell,” I reminded him. Now, I was beginning to worry.
“Oh.” He squinted like he was trying to see something far away.
“Yeah, you were on the roof trying to fix the leak, remember?” Jeanine said.
“Oh, yeah,” he said even though it was obvious by now that he didn’t.
“Um, Dad, why don’t you just keep that ice on your head. We’ll be right back,” I said. Then I grabbed Jeanine’s wrist and pulled her into the kitchen with me. “He must have a concussion. Should we call an ambulance?”
Jeanine nodded. For once, she didn’t seem to know what to say.
I turned to the wall behind me where a phone should have hung and would have hung if we were still at home, but this wall was blank. The landline still hadn’t been put in.
Jeanine ran out of the room. She was back a minute later with my father’s cell phone and handed it to me.
For a second, I just stared at her, blown away she didn’t want to make the call herself. Then I dialed 911 and waited for it to ring.
Nothing. No sound at all.
I looked at the screen. Not even one bar.
I showed Jeanine the phone. “No reception.”
“Is anybody there?” my father called.
I poked my head through the doorway to the living room. “Yeah, Dad, we’re here.”
He sat up. “I think I hit my head.”
“Oh, yeah? Do you remember what happened?”
Silence.
“Okay, then why don’t you just keep that ice on it.”
“Oh, okay,” he said and lay back down.
It was like talking to a little kid, a not-so-smart little kid, and that kid was my father. This was bad.
Jeanine dropped into a chair and began gnawing her fingernails. Tears were running down her cheeks. “What if he’s…he’s bleeding into his brain? He could be having a stroke.”
“He’s not having a stroke. You can’t even talk if you’re having a stroke.” At least I didn’t think you could. “It’s just a concussion. People get concussions all the time. Connor got one last summer in Little League. He was totally knocked out, and a couple of days later he was fine.”
“But this could be different. Dad could have ruptured an artery. Brain cells could be dying every second.”
“Everything okay in there?” Dad called.
“Everything’s fine,” I called back.
“Hey, do you know what this ice is for?”
“Your head!” Jeanine and I both yelled.
“Oh, yeah. Thanks.”
“See,” wept Jeanine, snot boinging from her nose. “He’s dying.”
“He has a headache! He’s not dying.”
“How do you know?”
I didn’t actually know. My best guess was that he wasn’t dying, but the problem with Jeanine always acting like she knows everything is that sometimes you believe her. “So what do you want to do?”
“There’s that clinic in town.”
“How would we get there?”
“We could take the car.”
“Dad can’t drive like that!”
“Not Dad. You! It’s not far, and it’s basically a straight line.”
“Are you crazy? I can’t drive.” Had Dad somehow also hit Jeanine’s head on his way down?
“You can’t get a license or anything, but you can drive. I’ve seen you play Speedway. You’re a great driver.”
“That’s a video game! This is a real road with real cars.”
“We’re not talking about rush hour in Times Square. How many other cars will even be on the road?”
“Hello? Anybody there?” my father called from the living room.
This time Jeanine went. “Yeah, Dad. We’re here.”
“I have a nasty headache.”
“Yeah, Dad. We know. You fell off the roof. Just keep the ice on.”
Then she went to the front door, took my father’s car keys from the hook, and put them on the table in front of me. “You really want to leave him there asking the same question every five minutes till Mom gets home?”
People get concussions all the time and don’t die, but Jeanine had really freaked me out with all that stuff about ruptured arteries and brain cells dying.
“Okay, let’s go, but I’m not taking the car.”
“So, how are we getting there?”
“I have an idea.”
10
“Ooooooh, cake!” Dad said, grabbing one as we led him through the kitchen to the front door. “Mmm.” Chocolate dribbled down his chin. “Can we take some for the road?”
I thought concussions made people sick to their stomach, but that didn’t seem true in Dad’s case. “Sure.” I grabbed three more cakes and tied them up in a dish towel.
When we’d gotten Dad down the porch steps, I told Jeanine to wait there. Then I ran around to the back of the house, got Dad’s bike, and wheeled it out front.
“What are you thinking? He can’t bike like this,” Jeanine said.
“How do you know? Let’s just see.”
Dad got
