Then I pressed down on the gas pedal. As fast as I could, I drove.
I wanted to ask him if maybe he felt any better, but he wouldn’t even lift his head, instead just resting it against the window as he took turns groaning and grunting and moaning.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” I promised as we wound down the hill to the highway. Luckily, the house was on the side of town closest to the hospital and not clear on the other end.
One of his fingers lifted in acknowledgment. Maybe.
At the stop sign, I scrolled through his contacts and found one for an Uncle Johnny. I hit dial and put it on speakerphone, holding it in my left hand as I turned right.
The “Am, my guy” came clear through the phone.
“Hi, is this Johnny?” I replied.
There was a long pause and then a “Uh, yeah. Who’s this?”
I didn’t exactly sound like a teenage girl, I got it. “Hi, this is Aurora. I’m, uh, Amos’s and Mr. Rhodes’s neighbor.”
Silence.
“Amos seems really sick, and his dad isn’t answering, and I’m taking him to the hospital—”
“What?”
“His stomach hurts, and I think it might be his appendix, but I don’t know his birthday or if he has insurance—”
The man on the other end cursed. “Okay, okay. I’ll meet you at the hospital. I’m not too far, but I’ll be there as soon as I can get there.”
“Okay, okay, thanks,” I replied.
He hung up.
I eyed Amos again as he let out a long, low moan, and I cursed and drove even faster. What should I do? What could I do? Get his mind off the pain? I had to try. Every noise out of his mouth was getting harder and harder to bear.
“Amos, what kind of guitar are you wanting to buy?” I asked because it was the first thing that came to mind, hoping a distraction would help.
“What?” he whimpered.
I repeated my question.
“An electric guitar,” he grunted in a voice I could barely hear.
If this were any other situation, I might have rolled my eyes and sighed. An electric guitar. It wouldn’t be the first time someone assumed I knew nothing about music or instruments. But it was still a bummer. “But what kind? Fanned fret? Headless? Fanned fret and headless? Double-necked?”
If he was surprised I was asking him about something as inconsequential as a guitar when he was trying not to throw up from pain, he didn’t show it, but he did answer with a tight, “A… a headless.”
Okay, good. I could work with this. I pressed down on the gas a little more and kept on hauling ass. “How many strings?”
It didn’t take him as long to answer as it had a moment ago. “Six.”
“Do you know what kind of top you want?” I asked, knowing I might be irritating him by forcing him to talk but hopefully distracting him enough with the questions so that he’d think about something else. And because I didn’t want him to think I had no idea what I was referring to, I went more specific. “Spalted maple? Quilted maple?”
“Quilted!” he gasped violently, forcing his hand into a fist and banging it against his knee.
“Quilted is real nice,” I agreed, gritting my teeth and sending a silent prayer up that he was okay. My God. Five more minutes. We had five more minutes, maybe four if I could get around some of the slow drivers in front of us. “What about your fingerboard?” I threw out.
“I don’t know,” he basically cried.
I couldn’t cry too. I couldn’t cry too. I always cried when other people cried; it was a curse. “Birdseye maple might look nice with quilted maple,” I threw out in basically a shout like if I was loud enough to overpower his tears, they wouldn’t come out. “I’m sorry I’m yelling, but you’re scaring me. I promise I’m driving as fast as possible. If you don’t cry anymore, I know someone who knows someone, and maybe I can get you a discount on your guitar, okay? But please stop crying.”
This weak cough came out of his throat… that sounded a hell of a lot like a laugh. A butchered, pained one but a laugh.
A peek at him as I turned right showed there were still tearstains on his cheeks but maybe…
I took another right and pulled into the lot for the hospital, steering us toward the emergency room entrance, saying, “We’re almost there. We’re almost there. You’re going to be okay. You can have my appendix. It’s a good one, I think.”
He didn’t say he wanted it, but I was pretty sure he tried to give me a thumbs-up as I parked in front of the glass doors and helped Amos out of my car, one arm around his back, taking his weight into me. The poor kid felt like melting Jell-O. His knees were buckled and everything, and it seemed to take everything in him to put one foot in front of the other.