Chapter 13: Visiting Hours

I jumped off the pallet before anyone could catch me.

The applause broke apart into shouting.

Nonna lay on her side by the dock door, her cane a yard away, one hand still reaching for me.

"Nonna. Nonna, look at me."

Her eyes found mine.

Her mouth tried to say something and only the left half of it moved.

Pina was already on her knees beside me, her phone at her ear, yelling our address at a 911 operator in two languages.

Tommaso slid his jacket under Nonna's head.

The foreman sent two drivers to the street to wave down the ambulance.

Forty people stood between the racks, completely silent.

"Don't you dare," I told my grandmother in Italian. "Don't you dare do this in a warehouse in Queens."

Her left hand squeezed mine.

Hard.

The ambulance took ten agonizing minutes.

The doctors on York Avenue called it a small stroke.

By evening she could move her right hand again, a little, and say most words, slowly.

The first word she said clearly was "lipstick."

I found it in her handbag and put it on her myself.

My hands shook so badly she ended up with a red smudge on her chin.

"Bellissima," Pina said from the doorway, and wiped it off with her thumb.

At eight the nurses threw Pina out.

At nine they tried to throw Tommaso out.

He looked at the nurse.

The nurse looked at him.

"Family only," she said.

"I'm her chief executive."

"That's not family."

"Tell her that," he said, and nodded at the bed.

Nonna lifted her good hand and waved the nurse away.

The nurse gave up.

At midnight Nonna woke and called me close.

Her voice came out thick, every word walked carefully to the front of her mouth.

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