I'm Done Being the Family Joke novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Rubbing Alcohol

Cal drove, and I held the phone to my ear the whole way, listening to my mother breathe.

We were at the store in six minutes.

The lot had half emptied, and an ambulance stood by the loading door with its lights off.

My father was sitting on a feed pallet behind the register with a blood pressure cuff on his arm.

The paramedics, a man and a woman, were reading the numbers to each other.

"It's indigestion," my father was saying. "I told Carol not to call."

His face was the color of dishwater.

"Your pressure is very high, sir," the woman said. "We'd like to take you in."

"I'm not going anywhere."

Daisy knelt at his side with a hand on his back.

She looked up at me, and there was nothing sweet in her face at all.

"Look what you did," she said.

I stood in the doorway with my coat over my arm.

"Is he all right?" I asked the paramedic.

"His heart sounds fine. It's probably stress." She stood and snapped her kit shut. "If it happens again, he goes to the hospital. I mean it."

"Get her out," my father said, without looking at me. "I don't want her here."

My mother had her fingers pressed to her mouth.

I looked at her for a moment, to see if she would say something.

She didn't.

Cal put a hand lightly at my elbow, and I went with him.

That night the loft was cold and smelled of cedar, and I sat on the stool by the window with the dress unzipped to my waist and my arms crossed over the front.

I had been scrubbing my back in the shower for ten minutes, and my shoulder blade still said what it said.

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