“I’m a nurse,” she said before she even reached us. “What happened?”
I could have cried from relief.
“She was walking,” I said. “Holding her chest. Then she collapsed.”
The nurse knelt immediately and checked her pulse, her breathing, the color in her face.
She looked up at me, sharp and steady.
“How long since you called?”
“Maybe two minutes.”
The nurse glanced toward the road, then back at the woman.
“What hospital’s closest?”
“County Medical,” I said.
“Four minutes if traffic’s light.”
The nurse bit the inside of her cheek and looked at the woman again.
The dispatcher was still talking through my phone.
The nurse leaned toward it and identified herself.
There had been some kind of traffic backup from a wreck a few roads over.
The ambulance was coming, but not fast enough for her liking.
The nurse made the call.
“We take her ourselves.”
Everything after that happened in a blur.
The nurse and I helped lift the woman.
She moaned once, very faintly.
Her head rolled against my shoulder.
I remember the smell of perfume and cold air and fear.
We laid her carefully across the backseat of my car.
The nurse climbed in beside her and kept talking to her in a calm, low voice the entire drive.
“You’re okay. Stay with me. Breathe for me. That’s it. Stay with me.”
I drove faster than I’ve ever driven in my life.
My hands clamped so hard on the wheel my knuckles ached.
Every red light felt like a personal insult from God.
By the time we screeched into the emergency drop-off lane, nurses were already wheeling a gurney out.
The woman in scrubs turned out to work at that hospital.
She knew exactly where to go, who to yell for, how to move people aside.
Within seconds the woman was gone through automatic doors and swallowed by bright lights and urgency.
And then, just like that, I was standing still.
Alone.
My heart pounded so hard I thought I might pass out myself.
A receptionist asked for my name in case the doctors needed details.
I gave it.
The nurse squeezed my arm once before hurrying after the gurney.
“You did good,” she said.
I sat down in the waiting area for what felt like a minute and what was probably ten.
That was when I finally checked my phone.
