By Margi Washburn
Usually I can describe a shopping trip with the girls from when I get The Phone Call, until we pull into our respective driveways, but this trip was different.
You know how it is. In each of our lives, there are big moments that change the landscape of our memories. Often those occasions are happy, like when we met our spouse for the first time, or our wedding, first home, first child. Memories up to that point become a bit faded or out of context because of a life-changing event.
So, I’m using that excuse to explain why I don’t remember what happened before one of our little group ended up on the floor of the restaurant after eating a loaded baked potato and a piece of pie. Plus, she kept nibbling on her sister’s lemon square, but maybe that had nothing to do with it.
A couple of hours before the floor incident, we’d gone our separate ways in the mall. I perused the bookstore, found a Dairy Queen next to an Orange Julius (now there’s a hard choice to make), and too soon it was time to meet for a snack at a restaurant inside the mall.
One of us was on a special diet, so the choice was fish and veggies. The rest of us chose the baked potato and dessert, along with coffee.
We had conversation, some laughs, and good food. It was mid-afternoon, and our part of the restaurant had about two dozen diners enjoying themselves. Then things changed.
I remember looking over and seeing her hand rubbing the side of her head. Eyes closed, she murmured something about feeling light-headed and she felt her heart beating too fast. It was kind of hard to hear her because of the noise level of the conversations around us, plus her voice was barely a whisper.
We asked if she’d like to leave, or have us get help, but she only wanted to be put on the floor so she could rest. We were in a very nice place, but the floor? What woman wants her hair to touch a floor where hundreds of shoes have been?
One would have to feel pretty awful to do such a thing, so after placing her carefully on the floor, we waved our arms to get attention. Soon, mall security was on the scene and they alerted the paramedics. Before long, our four-person shopping party was joined by about half a dozen men in uniform. It didn’t escape our notice that not only were these guys terrific at their job, they were cute, too.
While one of us was whisked away to a nearby hospital, the rest of us gathered our purchases and got ready to follow the ambulance. It took off ahead of us while we paid the restaurant bill and headed for the car. Since it was our driver that had gone on ahead with the cute guys in uniform, the new driver led us through a department store on the way to the car. That’s when things got fun.
We had to stop and pick up purchases that had been left there for pick-up on our way home. We found out that the original driver had some things at the checkout desk, but she hadn’t paid for them. None of us volunteered to do that for her, so off we went to find out how things were going.
The hospital was easy to find and the three of us were allowed inside the emergency room. Someone was looking quite a bit better, and before long she wanted to know if we’d picked up her purchases at the store. We admitted we hadn’t, she told us that was all right, and then we all had a nice, long wait for tests results to come back.
During this time, one of us made the phone calls home to let everyone know what was happening. It was our good luck that a couple of friends from Kewanee were nearby, so they offered to take me home, and as soon as the doctors released the patient, the rest would come back to town. Sounded good to me.
However, my two new car mates are the adventurous kind. They like to find a new way home every time they travel. We barreled along back roads through cornfields and around farms and for a very long time I didn’t know where I was. Thing is, the two in the front seat were having a conversation straight out of a Stephen King novel, and they were so matter-of-fact about the subject matter that it started to freak me out. One of them must have sensed something, because the wife turned around and asked if I was OK and I told her of course I was. What was I going to say?
The patient turned out to be fine; in fact, they stopped and had a sandwich on the way home. When they called from the restaurant to tell me the good news, I could hear laughter in the background. It was kind of late when the call came, so I just had to ask one question.
“Tell me you guys didn’t go all the way back and pick up her clothes,” I said.
The silence coming through the phone line said it all.
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