I wondered if it had been the same woman we almost hit when we left their house and saw that Lana was thinking the same thing. If we’d stopped, maybe April would be okay. Of course, the bite didn’t explain the sickness. No way a bite could have affected her that fast, not a human bite. I knew human bites were hellacious and often caused infections, but that took time, didn’t it? “Let’s get her to the car. She needs medical attention now.”
“If I move her, it hurts her. I don’t know how we’ll get her out there without hurting her.” This Rod I almost felt sorry for because it appeared he genuinely cared about April. I’d believe it, too, if I didn’t know him as well as I did.
“Let’s get her bite cleaned and give her some pain meds.” At his distressed look, I said, “Tylenol and ibuprofen work wonders together. No opioids needed. Can you go grab some?”
He stood there for a moment, still looking shell-shocked and then nodded, rushing from the room.
I sat beside April and took her hand gently. “Can you hear me?”
She moaned and her lids fluttered open. “What are you doing here?”
“Rod called us to get you to the hospital.”
Her face grew more distressed. “No. The hospital will cost us a fortune and we don’t have insurance. I’ll be fine,” she said, though her voice trailed off as a wave of pain hit her. I could see the way it moved in a wave as first her hand clenched, then her whole arm, the tendons standing out in harsh relief against her pale skin. Her fingernails dug into me but I didn’t pull away, merely waiting until the spasm or cramp or whatever it was passed. When it finally let go of her, she sobbed and turned her head into her pillow. “Just let me die.”
Lana and I looked at each other and then she leaned over. “Honey? Can you walk to the car? You need a doctor now. Please don’t worry about the money. We’ll all figure that out together later.” Her expression told me to shut the hell up and I said nothing, though I really didn’t want to be financially responsible for my wife’s ex-husband’s girlfriend’s medical bills. And I certainly didn’t want to deal with it together like we were some sort of weird family unit, but I understood where she was coming from. Get her to the hospital, the rest would sort itself out. Lana was a doer, sometimes to everyone’s detriment.
“No,” April moaned, but didn’t fight us when we eased her to her feet. She hung limply between us as we walked her down the hallway past more glassed display shelves full of dolls. We got her almost to the porch steps when Rod came out, pills in one hand and glass in the other. “I thought we were doing her bandage first.”
“We knew it was hard for you to see her in pain, so we decided to move her while you weren’t in the room,” Lana said. We continued down the dark sidewalk and I cursed softly when my shoe sank into a puddle and cold water soaked through to my socks. Lana unlocked the car door with the fob and April scream-cried as we eased her into the backseat. “Rod, get your shoes on and lock up the house. Bring the water and pills. You can give them to her as we drive.”
He nodded and charged back up the walk. I started the car and turned on the heater since April was shivering hard enough to knock her teeth together. I thought I heard a scream, so I turned down the fans to listen. The same damn dog was still barking up a storm, but the scream didn’t come again. “I’ll be glad to get home,” I said, tamping down the sudden feeling that I was in the start of a horror movie and the first death by monster was about to happen.
Lana smiled but said nothing else as Rod eased into the back, putting April’s head onto his lap. His greyish brown hair looked like he had been running his fingers through it and his shirt was askew. He was whispering to her as he tried to convince her to take the pills and drink the water. She choked as she drank, turning him a paler shade of pale, but she finally managed to get the pills and at least part of the water down. “Ready?” I asked. When he nodded, I pulled away. “What’s the nearest hospital?”
“Um.” He thought for a bit, then said, “Methodist.”
Lana plugged it into Google Maps, and we followed the voice navigation onto 90th. The roads were even more congested than when we drove to Rod’s house and I wondered out loud at the traffic.
“It’s not normal. I mean. We have a lot of cars but not this many.” Rod craned his head through the seats to stare down the road. “This is like rush hour.”
“Omaha’s smaller than Seattle, right?” I asked, feeling stupid for the question but this was ridiculous. It was past midnight. It wasn’t a Friday or Saturday.
“Definitely,” Lana said, wincing when April cried out from the back. Her whole body seized up and she stayed that way, rigid and moaning for too long. When her muscles finally relaxed, her head lolled—I could see her staring eyes and Rod’s panic in the rearview.
“Oh my God, April? April?” He patted her cheek more and more forcefully until he was slapping her. “Wake up! No, no, no, no.”
“Pull over,” Lana said.
