Chapter 8: The Run Sheet

On Saturday morning my grandmother drove us to the fire station behind the grocery store on Zarzamora Street.

She parked her Buick across two spaces and turned off the engine.

"The paramedic from Unit One works the weekend shift," she said. "I called a friend of mine on dispatch."

"You have a friend on dispatch?" Noemi asked from the back seat.

"I have a friend everywhere. I worked nights in an emergency room for thirty-four years."

The station had a garage door rolled up and a red ambulance parked inside.

A woman in a navy uniform sat on the bumper with a coffee, and she stood up the second she saw me.

She was about thirty-five, tall, with her hair in a tight knot.

"You're the girl from the lawn," she said.

"Marisol."

"I'm glad you're breathing." She looked at my grandmother. "Ma'am."

"I'm her grandmother. I used to be in the ER at Methodist."

"Then you know why I'm nervous."

"I do," my grandmother said. "That's why I'm not asking you for anything today. We came to say thank you."

The paramedic looked at her boots.

"I put that band on you myself," she said. "I told him. I said red means critical. He walked right past me."

"He told the news you waited your turn," I said.

"I heard."

"Would you say what you told him on Monday? At a hearing?"

She didn't answer right away.

A truck went by on the street behind us, and a radio crackled somewhere inside the garage.

"Your father called my captain last night," she said.

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