Chapter 8: Medic 7

The granddaughter was nineteen and still had her work apron on.

She'd come by on her lunch break with a sack of burgers and found him.

I got there as they were bringing him out the front door.

Wiley was at the head of the stretcher, packing ice into the old man's armpits and his neck.

He didn't look at me. He didn't look at anything but the man.

"Ride with her," he said to me, and nodded at the granddaughter. "Follow us in. Don't let her drive."

So I drove her car.

"He's on the list," she kept saying. "He's been on the list since February. They said July."

"I know."

"How do you know?"

"I wrote it down. He told me Thursday."

He'd told me more than that.

He'd told me he drove a bread truck for thirty years.

He'd told me the bedroom was too hot to sleep in, so he slept in the bathtub.

That's where she'd found him.

Half in, half out.

The ER was a different place on the first day of the heat dome.

Every chair was full. People sat on the floor along the walls.

We waited three hours.

At four thirty, a doctor came out and said the granddaughter's name.

He was alive.

His kidneys had taken a hit. He'd be in for a week.

But he was alive, and he'd asked for his teeth.

The granddaughter sat down on the floor right there and laughed and cried at the same time.

At six, I went outside to call Missy.

The ambulance bay was around the side of the building, in the shade.

Medic 7 was parked there with its back doors open.

Wiley was sitting on the rear bumper.

His partner had gone inside.

He was alone, with his elbows on his knees and his head down, and his hands were shaking.

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