Chapter 6: The Tin in His Pocket

Elias was beside my father before I'd finished screaming.

He turned Dad onto his back and loosened his collar.

"Call an ambulance," he said, and his voice was steady. "Now, Diana."

I dialed with hands I couldn't feel.

Dad's eyes were open, and gray, and frightened.

"Don't fuss," he whispered. "Just indigestion."

"Be quiet, Dad."

"Diana, the pill."

"What pill?"

"Marcy gave me my evening one." He swallowed. "You had the organizer. She had a tin."

Elias looked up at me over my father's chest.

I knew what he was asking, and I pulled open my father's cardigan pocket.

A flat silver tin sat in it, the kind that holds mints.

Inside lay three small white capsules.

"They match," I said slowly. "They match the ones in my coat."

"Keep them," Elias said. "Don't let anyone touch them."

The ambulance came fast.

I rode in the back with my father's hand in mine, and Elias followed in his own car.

I didn't ask him to.

By midnight we were in a waiting room with bad coffee and one flickering light.

Elias sat across from me with his elbows on his knees.

He hadn't taken off the black suit.

I held the tin in one fist and the envelope with the morning's capsules in the other.

I couldn't stop shaking.

"He'll be all right," Elias said.

"You don't know that."

"No."

He said it flatly, and for some reason that helped more than a promise would have.

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