Chapter Fifteen
It was not quite two o’clock when I pulled up in front of my grandmother’s apartment. The heat had risen to over a hundred degrees, but I was in such a good mood after my lunch that I didn’t notice it. The first sign of a problem that I noticed was that the air conditioner in the window next to the front door was not humming. I put my hand on it and felt no vibrations. It was off.
I put my key in the door and opened it. The apartment was like a furnace; the warm, still air not moving at all. There was not a sound to be heard.
“Hello?” I called. Nothing. I closed the front door and walked into my grandmother’s bedroom. She was lying on her back in bed, sheet and blanket pulled up to her chin. I shook her gently to wake her, but she did not awaken. I felt her forehead, and it felt warm. Then I noticed that the oxygen tube had slipped from her nostrils and was hanging over her upper lip.
I quickly felt her wrist for a pulse. It was very weak. I used the telephone by her bed to call the operator, and an ambulance was on its way. They were familiar with her neighborhood.
I turned the valve back on on her oxygen tank and replaced the tube in her nostrils. I opened the front and back doors, put the air conditioner on high, and sat by her bed to wait, dabbing at her face with a wet washcloth.
The ambulance arrived and two young men came right in the open front door with a gurney. They checked her vital signs while questioning me.
“Looks like heat stroke,” one said. “Lucky you got here when you did.” I didn’t feel lucky. What had happened? Had she known? And how did the air conditioner and oxygen get turned off? While I was with Sally Ann, had someone come in and done this? I had to know.
They took my grandmother out the front door to the ambulance and I locked up the apartment and followed
them to the hospital in my Chevy.
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