“Mom, please.” Anxiety edged my voice. I couldn’t trust her here. What if she wandered out into the road? I let go of the man’s hand, fumbling around to face Mom, still on my knees. “Please get back to the car.” How long until we saw the ambulance? The police?
“No, I want to help.”
Movement from the man rustled from behind. He grasped the left side of my coat, his fingers plucking at my pocket.
“Mom, listen to me.”
But my mother had no intention of listening. She slipped to the man’s other side and awkwardly lowered herself to the ground. I shuffled back around to face them both. At least Mom was right in front of me.
The man’s hand fell back to his chest. His mouth trembled.
“That’s all right now, you’ll be all right.” Mom’s words crooned. She placed her hands against the man’s cheeks. “‘In God I trust; I will not fear. What can man do to me?’ That’s in the Bible, you know.”
He managed a tiny nod, his gaze latching onto my mother’s face as if it were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“My daughter works in a big, important doctor’s office. She knows what to do.” Mom leaned closer to him. “She’s a little stubborn sometimes, but you know children.”
No response. The man was struggling to breathe.
“What’s your name?” Mom asked.
“M . . . Morton.”
“Hi, Morton. I’m Carol. This is my daughter, Hannah.”
Morton’s breathing grew worse. That scared me. I snatched up my cell phone. “Hello? You still there?”
“I’m here. What’s happening?”
“It’s getting harder for him to breathe. We need help now.”
A pause. “They’re en route and should be there soon.”
I’d never gotten Morton’s coat unbuttoned. He could have a wound, maybe from hitting the steering wheel. Or what if he was bleeding internally? Having a heart attack? Not that I could stop that. I threw the phone down again. “Morton, I need to look at your chest.” I reached for the top button, but his arms were in the way.
He wound his fingers around Mom’s small wrist. “In . . . Raleigh.”
“In Raleigh?”
“Ye . . .”
She tilted her head. “What’s in Raleigh?”
“K . . .”
Mom frowned at me. “What’s he—”
A siren wailed in the distance. Thank God. I grabbed my phone again. “They’re here, I’m hanging up.” I punched off the call and dropped the cell into my deep pocket.
I smoothed Morton’s hair. “Hear that? Help’s almost here.”
His glassy eyes turned toward mine. The gray in his face drained to white. “Don’t t-t-t . . .” His jaw snapped up and down, uncontrolled, his voice sounding panicked. “Tell.”
“Don’t tell?”
His eyes closed in a yes. “Any . . . one.” He gripped Mom’s wrist harder, as if his fingers could force into her what he wanted to say.
I could feel the dire need flowing from him. I knew Mom felt it too. My mother and I glanced at each other, shaken to the core.
Mom began to cry. “Oh, you poor man.” She patted his cheeks, her words spilling out as they did when she was overwhelmed. “Don’t tell anyone—okay, we won’t. We’ll come see you in the hospital, and you can tell us all about it. Help him, Jesus, Jesus. Help this poor soul.”
The siren grew loud. I pushed back on my haunches and saw a fire truck round the curve. It veered off the road a little below us and ground to a stop. The siren died away as two men jumped out. A white sheriff’s department car pulled up behind it. Men from the fire truck gathered equipment kits and ran toward us.
Morton’s eyes popped open. He pierced me with a final look. “Be . . . careful.”
I pushed to my feet. My mother didn’t move. “Mom, you’ll need to step back now so they can work on him.”
She brushed her fingertips across the man’s forehead. His eyes were closed again, pain pinching his face. “I don’t want to leave him.”
“You’ll have to.” I moved around Morton’s head to take her elbows.
The firemen reached us. The first fell to his knees on Morton’s other side and nodded to me. “What can you tell me?” He was already reaching into his kit for equipment.
“He’s still complaining of chest pains. I don’t know much more. His name’s Morton.”
The other fireman ran around to our side.
“Come on, Mom.” I pulled her to her feet. “We have to get out of the way.”
With obvious reluctance she shuffled backward with me. We moved some distance away and huddled together to watch. A breeze picked up, whistling a dirge around the parked vehicles. Mom shivered. I put an arm around her thin shoulders. We couldn’t see Morton’s face anymore. Could only watch the back of the fireman closest to us.