Seeing the empty key hook by the front door sucks the air right out of me. Dear God, no. I crush the paper scrap with the hospital's number in a trembling fist. For all I know, Poppa will be dead in minutes if they don't operate. But without Mum's approval, they legally can't.
I cannot believe Mum left Theo and me alone in the apartment. She usually checks on us every ten minutes like clockwork, bugging us with questions or roping Theo into chores like opening jars or pulling things off high shelves. It's like she has this bizarre fear that we're going to rip each other's clothes off at any moment and make me the next teen pregnancy statistic.
Well, she can't have gone far — probably just to the little market on Columbus to pick up dinner ingredients. Surely she'll be back any minute. I should call the front desk and ask the doorman if he saw her go out. Theo could hold down the fort while I look for her.
Gosh, I can just picture her standing in line at Rico's, looking for all the world like a bohemian free spirit in her snug t-shirt, paint-spattered jeans, strappy sandals, gobs of gypsy jewelry, hair in long, loose layers. She'll glance up from her basket of Thai basil and coconut milk, see my face and just know. Know that I'm about to hurl a bomb at her. Know that trouble's found her yet again, like it always does.
How can I tell her? How? It's only been a year and a half since Dad's car crash and the month of ICU agony before he was snatched from us. How can she possibly cope with Poppa right now? He's as fatherly to her as a lion is to a gazelle.
I just wish I could make this all go away.
I look at the hospital number in my hand again, and my mouth goes as dry as a day-old croissant. What if Poppa and his car—? There's no ice on the roads, but a couch could tumble off a truck, or a rogue deer leap out of the woods and straight through his windshield. Poppa could have massive bleeding on the brain right now — pressure building like floodwaters behind a levee, flattening everything. Cells, synapses, ganglion crushed, dying, dead. I've seen it before.
My grand Paris dream starts to pull away, a face in a taxi window. Off toward Midtown. Off to find a more worthy recipient.
Who can help me stop this taxi from driving away with my dream?
A homeless drug addict steps in front of the taxi in my mind and it stops. The coked-up guy stands there, fists on hips, chin jutted out, dark eyes flashing, as if daring the driver to flatten him in his frayed cords and Nietzsche T-shirt. Uncle David?
He winks at me, then in a blink transforms from his old stoner self into the bald, flannel-shirted craftsman I now know and love. Of course. If there's anyone who can help me sort out what to do about Poppa, it's Mum's younger brother, the prodigal son.
I carry the phone to my bedroom, hit four on speed dial.
YOU ARE READING
Almost There
Teen FictionParis, the City of Lights. To seventeen-year-old Dani Deane, it's the Promised Land. There, her widowed mother's depression will vanish and she will no longer fear losing her only parent, her arty New York life, or her devoted boyfriend. But shortly...
