Done in Fifteen Years novel · Chapter 22 of 32
Chapter 22: Vernie
Nobody moved for one long second.
Then Deke was across the floor on his knees beside her.
"Vernie. Vernie, look at me."
Her eyes were open.
Her lips were gray.
"Don't," she said, very small. "Don't make a fuss."
"Call it," Deke said to me without looking up. "Leakey. Tell them heart."
I was already at the wall phone.
The fiddler stopped playing.
The tube man was on his knees on her other side, holding her hand.
"I'm sorry, Vernie," he kept saying. "I thought you were faking."
Macey stood in the middle of the floor in her wet cutoffs with her new cash box still under one arm.
She didn't cry.
She went and picked up Vernie's glasses off the boards and held them.
The ambulance took twenty-six minutes on the river road.
It felt like a year.
Deke rode in the back with her.
I drove Macey in his truck behind them, all the way to the hospital in Uvalde, with the hazards on.
They took Vernie straight through a set of double doors.
We sat in the waiting room in our swimsuits and party clothes until midnight.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of Done in Fifteen Years are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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