SAM.
It was a face he knew and couldn’t place. He stared and tried to focus.
Friend or foe? Friend or foe? Do I owe you money? Are you friends with Lorraine? Please don’t be friends with Lorraine.
Sam closed his eyes again, embarrassed. Her voice was gentle. It was a nice voice.
“Sam, are you alive? It’s Penny.” She sounded far away.
Sam felt another kick on his foot, and he groaned.
“I’m Jude’s friend,” said the shiny face with the bright red lips.
“Who’s Jude?” he croaked.
“Your cousin.”
“Niece,” he corrected.
“Are you dying?”
He nodded and tried to slide his phone out of his pocket without passing out.
“Is Jude coming?” He didn’t want her to see him like this. He hated the thought of anyone seeing him like this.
“No.”
Thank God.
A Biggie lyric teased the corners of his brain.
Something about heartbeats and Sasquatch feet.
“Sam, WHAT’S happening? YOU look HORRIBLE.”
His hearing kept coming and going.
His heart was fit to burst.
Thudthudthud.
I’m dying, dead.
Deaddeaddead.
“I think I’m having a heart attack.” He closed his eyes.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she said. “Shit.”
And then.
“Hello? 911?”
Sam thought it was funny how everybody greeted the three-digit number they’d called. As if they had to ask.
“My friend’s sick. I don’t know. Yeah, I’m here with him.”
Sam felt a wave of nausea. He hoped he wouldn’t have to puke in public.
“Sam . . . um.”
“Becker,” he told her.
“Becker,” she said. “Twenty-one I think.”
Sam nodded.
“No,” she said. “I don’t know. At least I don’t think so . . .”
He felt her cold hand on his arm. He opened his eyes.
“Sam, are you on drugs?”
I wish.
He shook his head.
“No, no drugs. Um . . . shortness of breath, cold sweats . . .”
“Stabbing pain in my chest,” he said.
“Stabbing pain in his chest,” she repeated.
“Like a knitting needle,” he said.
“Like a knitting needle,” she repeated.
“Mm-hmm,” he heard her say. Followed by, “Yeah, I guess the knitting needle is going through his chest.”
Exactly.
Sam nodded again.
“Okay, thank you. Bye.”
Sam thought about how people on TV never said good-bye. And then he wondered why people only thought about the dumbest things as they lay dying.
Sam felt Penny sit down next to him.
“Sam, wake up.”
“I am up,” he whispered.
She was staring at him intently.
“Are you sure you’re not on drugs?”
He glared at her before realizing—inappropriately—that she was kind of cute when she made eye contact. Cute enough that he was bummed out that she was watching him die on the street.
“Positive,” he said.
She wiped his wet brow with her T-shirt sleeve, which was already damp. He saw a flash of bra and glanced away.
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why I did that. I’m supposed to keep talking to you until they get here.”
The cogs in his mind picked up steam.
“Wait, shit. Did you call an ambulance?”
She nodded. “Knitting needle?” she reminded him. As if 100 percent of knitting-needle-related incidents (imagined and otherwise) justified an emergency vehicle.
“Call them back!” he ordered. His heart hammered harder. “Call them back!” he repeated. “I can’t afford an ambulance.”
She stared at him for a beat, grabbed her phone, and marched away. A thousand years later, she returned.
“I called them.” She crouched in front of him with her hands on his shoulders. “Though yours is an incorrect response.”
Despite his stupor, Sam bristled at her word choice. “Incorrect”? Was it “incorrect” to be broke?
“Wait, can you do this?” She stuck her tongue straight out.
He stuck his tongue out.
“What’s the thing with the tongue and heart attacks?” she yelled impatiently, as if he were deliberately keeping diagnostic information from her. “Shit, I think that’s for a stroke.” She pulled out her phone and searched helplessly.
He drew his tongue back into his mouth.
“Okay,” she said, breathing deep. “Don’t die, okay?”
He nodded.
“Promise me,” she said.
He nodded again.
“You know what? Try to slow your breathing . . . one Mississippi . . . two Mississippi . . . Say it in your head.”
He focused on breathing.
“Did you eat today?”
He shook his head.
A Styrofoam drink container was thrust into his face. The straw smelled cinnamony and was covered in red lipstick.
“It’s not very good,” she told him.
He took a sip.
Horchata. Cold. Sweet. And she was right—this one was kind of gross.
“Did you drink a lot of coffee today?”
He nodded. Same as every day.
“Do you have radiating pain?”
He shook his head. She read off her phone.
“What about numbness?”
He shook his head.
“Sam?”
Sam nodded. He was Sam, it was true.
“We’re going to take a walk now.”
He shook his head.
He felt her grab his arm and sling it over her shoulders. She was soaking wet, and where his sweaty bare arm met her neck it was slippery. He put weight on his legs so he, a grown man, wouldn’t have to be carried by some lady again.
“I’m going to take you somewhere so someone can examine you, okay? I’m parked real, real close. Walk with me. Please?”
“Okay,” he said.
• • •
Fifteen minutes later, they were in front of a MedSpring Urgent Care.
The AC was blasting and Sam was soaked though otherwise calm. He wanted badly to go home and take a nap.
Penny was silent. Even in his peripheral vision, she seemed agitated. Her hands were clutching the steering wheel so tight her knuckles were white. He couldn’t believe that Jude’s mute, macabre roommate had saved his life. He wondered if he’d have to get her a small taxidermied spider or something for her efforts.
“I’ll be right here,” she said, staring straight ahead.
Sam didn’t want to explain to her that he couldn’t afford ambulances, hospitals, or the cheaper emergency clinics in crappy strip malls.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“No you’re not.”
“I don’t have health insurance,” he admitted.
“Oh.”
“I swear to God I’m fine now,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know what that was. Probably heat stroke.”
“Have you had heat stroke before?”
He shook his head.
“Did you know that if you’ve had heat stroke once, your brain remembers the circuitry so it’s easier for you to get heat stroke again? Maybe way easier than before?”
He shook his head and recalled Penny’s earlier jokes about apps making apps. She was apparently a huge nerd.
“So . . . ,” she said. Penny’s dark eyes were shiny, and pink bloomed on her cheeks. “Wait, did you have a panic attack?”
“What? No. I don’t have panic attacks. Never in my life.” Jesus, give a girl WebMD and she starts thinking she’s a physician.
“You had a goddamned panic attack,” she said, turning away from him again. “The sweatiness, the heart-attack feeling. Oh my God!” She slapped the bottom of the steering wheel with her left hand. “It’s obvious. And you didn’t eat today. Caffeine. So dumb!”
“Okay, hold on.” He threw his hands up. “Why are you so angry?” Sam reached out to touch the back of the hand closest to him, but she jerked away, exhaling noisily.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shoulders slumping. “It’s adrenaline. Rage is my usual fear response.”
“That,” he said, “is a nifty quality.”
Nifty?
“I know,” said Penny. “Everybody just loves it. Ugh.” She groaned, rubbing her face and smearing lipstick across her chin.
He nodded. He didn’t know what to do about the lipstick. Maybe he’d get away with not saying anything until he got home.
Penny handed him a bottle of water. He took it gratefully.
Then she grabbed her black and gray camouflage backpack from the backseat, plopped it onto her lap, and rummaged through it. She handed him a small bag of raw cashews from a blue zippered bag filled with other small, compact snacks.
“Uh, sometimes it’s triggered by caffeine or low blood sugar with me,” Penny said, explaining the snack.
Okay, he had to tell her.
“You’ve got lipstick everywhere,” he said, pointing toward her chin.
She angled the rearview and sighed again.
In another compartment of her bag, this time from a black zipper bag, she pulled out a small packet of moistened wipes. A green, plastic cable tie sprang out of it and onto her lap.
“EDC,” she said, quietly putting it back.
“EDC?”
“Everyday carry,” she said. “Stuff I have on me at all times. Go bags, for emergencies.”
“As in, an apocalypse go bag, go bag?”
“Correct,” she said.
There was that incorrect, correct thing again.
“But I have this on me every day. Usually, the EDC community are guys with concealed firearms and flashlights, which I think is dumb since we have phones with a flashlight function. . . .” Penny trailed off. Sam had wondered why chicks had such big bags. He figured it was their makeup, not soft cases filled with doomsday rations and zip ties of varying length.
“Snacks are important,” he said. “And you can never have enough plastic cables.”
“Are you making fun of me?” she asked.
“No.” He shook his head vehemently and took another handful of cashews. “Not at all. I respect the shit out of it. Your EDC is saving my ass.”
She had a small scar above her left eyebrow and he wanted to ask about it. Maybe she’d had some bizarre things go down in her life. It would explain her whole style.
“Did everything sound all underwater?” she asked after a second. Her lips were wiped clean, and Sam noticed they looked better without all that gunk on them.
“Underwater?”
“When you were passing out.”
“Yeah, muffled.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“My girlfriend’s pregnant,” he said suddenly, startling himself.
Penny tilted her head.
“Well, she’s my ex.”
“Whoa,” she breathed.
“Yeah. I still love her though.”
“Ugh.”
“She cheated on me.”
The confessions wouldn’t stop. He wanted to show his gratitude for the ride and the snack and the not making him feel like a headcase when it was clear that he was. Except at no point did his vocal cords just step in line and say thank you.
“Wow,” she said
Penny’s fingers inched toward his. Sam thought for a fleeting moment that she would hold his hand, but instead she went for a couple cashews and was extra careful to avoid touching him.
“The first one is the worst. By a lot,” she said, crunching. Sam wasn’t sure if she was talking about panic attacks or pregnant ex-girlfriends. Not that it mattered.