Folly Beach Part 22

"Come on now," I heard Ella saying. "Let's just sit still."

I went to the door and without looking inside I said, "Ella? It's me, Cate. Y'all okay?"

"I'm just trying to give Daisy a sponge bath to cool her down."

"Who? Who's there?" Aunt Daisy said.

Let me tell you, her voice did not sound right. Not one bit. I felt my chest tighten with panic. She wasn't gasping for breath but she sounded congested and out of it.

"Can I help you in any way?" I said.

"Maybe you can help me get her out of the tub. I got her in here but I can't . . ."

"No!" Aunt Daisy said. "I'm naked!"

I was going in and I didn't care if the whole world was naked.

"Please!" I said and swooped right into the bathroom. "Where's her robe?"

"In the wash," Ella said. "There's a big towel on that rack."

"Get out of here!" Aunt Daisy said.

She yelled so loudly that John came to the door immediately.

"What's going on in there?" he said.

"We're trying to get Aunt Daisy out of the tub and she's fighting us," I said.

The next thing I knew John was in the bathroom, pus.h.i.+ng us aside and lifting Aunt Daisy out of the tub in one swift move. I put the towel over her for the sake of her modesty and she started to cry.

"I don't feel good," she said.

The sound of my sweet Aunt Daisy crying like a baby broke my heart. It made me want to cry with her.

"Something's terribly wrong," Ella said.

John laid Aunt Daisy on her bed, pulled her comforter over her, and felt her pulse. Then he felt her head.

"I'm calling 911," he said.

"NO!" Aunt Daisy said.

I had never seen her so agitated. Maybe she was afraid of the hospital?

"Ella? Let's you and I pack her a little overnight bag. Do you know where her medicines are? And her health insurance cards?"

"Yes, yes!" Ella said and began rus.h.i.+ng around, getting what she needed.

"It's going to be all right, Aunt Daisy. I promise it's going to be all right."

"NO! NO! NO!"

She screamed NO! over and over again for the next five minutes or so until finally her yelling became a whispered but still desperate protest and then at last, she rested, falling asleep. Even in her resting state, I saw that she was drooling and her hands were shaking and I was afraid for her. Ella was nearly panic-stricken. I put my arm around her shoulder and tried to console her.

"She's going to be fine," I said.

"Dear Jesus, please save her! Please Lord! Don't take my Daisy away from me now!" she said, and began to weep. "Oh, Lord, Cate. What's happening here?"

I felt absolutely terrible for both of them and I was just as frightened as anyone else in the room.

"Come on, Ella. Don't worry yourself so. We're going to get her to the hospital and they will give her what she needs."

"I'll be right back," John said.

John ran downstairs to turn on the porch lights and to unlock the doors. We could hear the sirens approaching and, in minutes, Aunt Daisy was on a gurney and on her way to the capable hands of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

"You ride with us," John said to Ella and she nodded her head, grabbed Aunt Daisy's little overnight bag, and hurried out to the car with us.

It seemed like an eternity pa.s.sed in the blink of an eye. We raced down Folly Road behind the screaming sirens and flas.h.i.+ng lights, and yet another eternity pa.s.sed until we reached the emergency room entrance, but we got there at last and stayed with her in a curtained-off area until a doctor came to examine her, minutes later. She was still asleep. John went to the desk with her health cards to fill out the forms and tell them what they needed to know.

At last a doctor pulled back the curtain and looked at Aunt Daisy and then to us. I was busy thanking G.o.d he wasn't just some medical student. He was a real adult. He asked us who we were.

Ella said, "I'm her best friend, Ella Johnson."

"She's way more than that," I said, completely unsolicited, and added, "and I'm her niece, Cate Cooper. My aunt is Daisy McInerny."

"I'm Doctor Ragone," he said and nodded to us.

I didn't know if the doctor understood what I meant but I wasn't going to let them shuttle Ella out of there just because they weren't related by blood or marriage. The doctor did not care one iota about any of that or that the woman in that bed was one of the most important people in my life. I started getting upset and bit my lip to hold back the tears I could feel getting ready to rise up and fall. John stepped back inside the curtain and put his arm around my shoulder, giving me a solidarity squeeze.

"Shhh!" he said to me. "It's all right. We got her here and she's going to be fine."

"She has to be fine. I can't stand it if she's not."

"Shhh," he said again.

I sighed so hard then. It had been a rough month for me, but this wasn't about me. It was my momma in that bed, not my birth mother, but the momma that had loved me all my life. I wanted her well and out of that bed as fast as possible.

Dr. Ragone began to examine her by taking her pulse.

"Ms. McInerny, can you hear me?"

"She's been really out of it," Ella said.

Inside of fifteen seconds, he slapped a pressure cuff around her arm and began pumping it up. Then he made a note on her chart, put his stethoscope in his ears, and listened to her heart. He made another note and looked up at us.

"Do either of you know what kind of medicines she takes?"

"Everything's in this bag," Ella said and handed the doctor a Ziploc filled with vials.

"What other kind of symptoms is she showing?"

Ella described all of Aunt Daisy's behaviors and her fever and spasms and everything she could think of to the doctor and he listened carefully, taking more notes.

"Do you know where she got that nasty gash on her arm? It's infected."

"I do and I told her that thing looked bad but she don't listen to n.o.body!"

"How did it happen?" Dr. Ragone asked again.

"Oh! She caught her arm on a splintered board under the house where she had no business being in the first place. It was raining and she wanted some paper towels from the storage room. I said I'd go for 'em 'cause her foot's in a cast . . . oh, Jesus! We forgot to bring her cast!"

"Don't worry," the doctor said, "we've got a few of those around here. But she won't need it tonight. I'm going to admit her to intensive care and run some tests."

"Intensive care! Oh Lord!" Ella said.

"Don't worry. I'm putting her there because she'll get the best care there. Her blood pressure is dangerously high and her breathing is very labored. She's definitely got some kind of an infection. I'm going to give her a breathing tube to help her get the oxygen she needs until we can get her fever down. You folks can go on home if you want or you can wait until we get her in a room."

"I'm staying," I said.

"I ain't moving from her side," Ella said.

"I'll go get us some coffee," John said. "If you leave here just send me a text where to find you, okay?"

"Sure," I said and took a deep breath, starting to relax somewhat.

It was going to be a very long night.

Chapter Twenty-one.

Setting: The top of a sand dune near the front door of the Porgy House.

Director's Note: Photos of the sunset on Folly, sand dunes, Romeo's Streetcar, George Gershwin, an alligator, Gertrude Stein, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Amy Lowell on the backstage scrim. Voice of DuBose comes from off-stage.

Act III.

Scene 1.

Dorothy: I remember one night, when the waiting for Gershwin was coming to a head, and after a quick dinner of leftover baked chicken and potatoes that was boring enough to peel the paint from the walls, DuBose and I were enjoying another spectacular winter sunset from the top of a sand dune no more than twenty yards from our front door. I surely did love the late of day after supper when it seemed like the world quieted down. I considered it my great reward for being industrious in the kitchen and tenacious in my dealings with Gershwin.

We were reluctant to venture too far from the house, because I had just tucked in Jenifer for the night and she wasn't always perfectly compliant with her bedtime. If she thought she had been left home alone she would be hysterical for weeks. That said, I calculated the odds and decided that the advent of the purple and red streaks that slashed the horizon . . . ? Well, were they worth risking the wrath of our high-spirited child with her tall tales? Neither DuBose nor I ever imagined the energy it would take to be parents. I was beginning to think she was too vague and forgetful for her own good and had no idea how to deal with that. I usually did a lot of sighing when the day was done.

"Look at this sky! I've never seen such colors!" I said.

DuBose laughed a little, charmed I hoped, that I was always so taken by the majesty of the sunsets. He took them all for granted I suppose, but now that he was seeing the Lowcountry anew through my eyes I thought well, maybe this part of the world seemed like a slightly different place.

"Mr. Heyward! Are you laughing at me?"

"Absolutely not! I am thinking that being here and in this moment, I am a very rich man." He smiled and dropped his chin in a manner that suggested knowing all the intimate details about me and stared at me lovingly with his enormous brown eyes.

"Oh, DuBose, you could coax the birds from the trees. You really could. Say, have you heard from George lately?"

"Yes, my little Dorothy. In fact, I got a letter from him today. How did you know?"

"I could feel the literal heaviness of its arrival in the air," I said and rolled my eyes toward the sky. "The importance of it, the vibration of his words on paper . . ."

"Oh, come on now . . ."

"Oh, all right. I saw the envelope under the egg carton from Romeo's. But before we get to King George, how is old Romeo? What did he have to say for himself? What's he up to?"

"Still living in his streetcar and still selling eggs. I was on my way to see Mrs. Rabon to collect the mail when I heard him calling out his song. Romeo's got fresh eggs! I thought, now, who could resist that?" He took my hand in his and kissed the back of it.

"Oh, DuBose. Hmmm. You're right. You know, Folly has such wonderful characters, doesn't it? So much color! Maybe we should write a play about it."

"Let's."

He took my other hand and kissed the back of that one, too. I thought well, someone has ooh la la on his mind!

"What's gotten into you tonight?"

"Moonlight." He raised his eyebrows and wiggled them like the evil landlord. "I am bewitched by you again!"

"It's not even dark yet, DuBose. And so, darling, there is no moonlight."

"A minor and very unimportant detail."

"Hmmm. Yes." Sometimes my husband was a romantic rascal. "Maybe I'll make egg salad for tomorrow's lunch. Jenifer loves egg salad."

"So do I. Even though it's probably good for my health."

"Oh, not after I'm finished with it." Somehow I could rarely get the right amount of mayonnaise in it.

Soon, the sun slipped away and the sky was still streaked with scarlet, mango, and another shade of red that was the color of a gla.s.s of old port wine. I leaned into DuBose and put my arm around his waist. "Glory, I could stay here all night but let's start back. This is so beautiful but I want to be able to hear Jen."

"All right," he said. We turned and began to climb down the dune. "You know, I love the beach here but we're going to have to be very careful about Jenifer playing in the ocean this summer."

"Well, of course we will but why in the world are you bringing this up now? It's the dead of February."

"Well, when I was over in Mazo's buying bread, I heard these two fellows talking about sharks."

"Sharks!" I stopped dead in my tracks.