Jude gave us snacks for the plane and extra T3s for Grandma that she had left over from an operation on her knee. She has a fake one now. I helped Grandma get back into her track suit. I put her sling on backwards at first. Everything happened and then believe it or not we were driving back to the airport with just Ken, not Lou, because it was too hard for him to keep saying goodbye over and over, man, it was giving him chest pain and he had to go walking for ten or twenty miles to empty his head. He said maybe some day he’d walk to Canada. I really hope he does.
14.
Let’s cut to being back home now, because talking about flying with Grandma and her broken arm and petering-out heart, and making connections in Frisco with running and confusion involved and Grandma not taking things seriously and forgetting how many T3s she’s taken so she’s probably overdosing and laughing about it is almost as exhausting as the trip itself. On the last leg of the journey I told Grandma she has a fire inside her and she has to keep it going but she couldn’t even talk then and the flight attendant called to have her taken off the airplane on a stretcher.
I ran along beside the stretcher holding on to Grandma’s hand and I also had her red purse on my shoulder and my backpack but our little suitcases were with someone else. We were running on the runway. In my head we lifted off and flew and flew, me and Grandma. I held on to her flying bed like it was one of those things Mom gave me when I was a kid to hold on to in the pool and kick like crazy to race her to the deep end.
Grandma loved how fast we were going in the ambulance. There was a mask over her face. She opened her eyes when we took a corner and I fell. She tried to take off her mask with her broken arm but she couldn’t because it was in the sling. She tried her other hand, but then the guy in the ambulance said oops, sweetheart, let’s leave that where it is for now. She didn’t hear him. He went back to typing things into a machine. She pulled off her mask. She said this was the year that Mario Andretti would finally have a shot at the Indy. She tried to point at the driver. The guy said ohhhhkay. He said let’s just keep this here for now, okay darling? He put her mask back on. She pulled it off. Are we going to a masquerade party? she said. Grandma, I said. Please, please, please keep it on. She gave me her look pretending to be in big trouble. The guy asked me who I was. Swiv, I said. Great, great, he said, but I mean who are you in relation to … he looked at Grandma. Swiv! I said. Are you her granddaughter? Yeah! I said. Grandma loved that. Who else would I be? Like some random kid Grandma had kidnapped to travel around with her? She grabbed me like the old people in Fresno. Her eyes were beaming messages to the guy. Nice, nice, said the guy. He smiled tenderly at Grandma. It’s good that you’re here, he told me. That’s what Grandma had said in Fresno. He asked if I had her list of medications. I got the list out of her little red purse. The guy stared at it. Wow! Is this … what do you call it? Cursive, I said. I can’t read it either, man. I half-smiled like Lou and T. Grandma squeezed my hand like I was the one with problems.
At last we were at the hospital. The guys from the ambulance whooshed Grandma into a room that had curtains for walls, like in our house, and said good luck, Swiv! It was a pleasure meeting you and your Grandma. The nurses took blood from Grandma and knocked her out with some drugs. I told them she had a broken arm and they said they’d X-ray that later and plaster it after getting her levels. Is that new? the nurse asked. She was pointing at the gap from Grandma’s missing tooth which everyone could see because her mouth was open while she slept. She was dancing, I said. In California. Ah! said the nurse. She wrote that down. The nurse asked me if I was okay and if I wanted to call someone. She asked me if I had parents or just Grandma. Grandma’s eyes stayed closed. I have all that, I said, yeah. I nodded. The nurse said I should get myself a doughnut and call my parents.
Mom didn’t freak out. She was calm. I told her we were home early at the Toronto Western Hospital because Grandma was having a heart attack or something. Mom said okay, honey, listen. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Why don’t you go get yourself a doughnut or something. I hung up and wandered down a hallway. I went into a washroom that was huge but only had one toilet in it and bars to hang on to. I sat on the toilet without using the toilet and hung on to the bars. Where the holy hell was I supposed to find a doughnut and what good would it do? I hung on to the bars by the toilet and sat there and sat there. My head kept flopping over and back up again. I couldn’t control it, like Grandma. Then Mom and a different person with four thousand keys on a ring were standing in the washroom. The person said, Here she is, Mama! Oh my god, said Mom. She bolted towards me. Oh my god, they didn’t know where you were. I went to get a fucking doughnut! I said. I had fallen asleep sitting on the toilet. I jumped up. I didn’t want to be found passed out on a toilet like a depressed celebrity. Mom tackled me and pinned me against the wall and hugged me forever while the person with the key said, Okay, I’ll leave you two here for a bit but this is a handicapped washroom so you’ll have to vacate it sooner or later, my friends. Gord was crushed in between me and Mom. We were so happy to be together. I was so happy that Mom was there. I’m serious about that. It was a true feeling. California had changed me, man.