I think I will just have to get Honey and we will have to look together so I take the umbrella from the stump and run to the car squishing into the mud and open the door and Honey knows that things are weird and I say “Hi” brightly and “We’re just going to get out for a minute to look for Auntie Alice” and I unbuckle her and wrestle her out of the seat and pick up the umbrella and hold her in one arm to my hip, hitching her up to make sure of my grip and put the umbrella over both of us and enter the woods at the stump. I turn back to look at the car to try and orient myself and think hysterically that I need some kind of marker so that I can indicate our location because I’m irrationally terrified that we are going to be swallowed into the forest and never get out. I think we will just walk directly forward in a straight line and then after two minutes turn around and walk directly back and then we should I think get back to the stump or thereabouts, as long as we can get to the tree line at the edge of the clearing. The rain isn’t coming through too badly so I put Honey down on her feet and she clings to my shins and I close the umbrella and pick her back up and hold her tight with the umbrella sticking out perpendicular under my armpit and we walk forward and I look left and right and within a few yards we’ve climbed up a partially buried boulder which I think Good a landmark and then at the top I see on the other side Alice, Alice lying on the ground curled on her side with her head on her hand looking like a sleeping child. I cry out and say “Alice Alice Alice” and she doesn’t stir and I spring around the side of the rock and put Honey down as gently and quickly as I can and I put my hand on Alice’s neck like someone on a television show and I just feel cool soft papery skin and I put my head on her chest and try desperately to hear something beyond my own panting and I don’t but have no idea whether or not I would and I try to gently shake her shoulder and think she stirs but I’m not sure and I smooth her hair down with one hand the hair I’ve always wanted to touch and then I hear faintly a wailing through the rain and the wind in the trees and I pick up Honey and run back toward the clearing, straight back from the boulder where yes there is an ambulance barreling down the road and it appears Ivan from the safari motel has come through. It crosses the field and stops short just by the Buick and I run to it yelling “She’s back there” like a madwoman and it’s a man and a woman who emerge and they say “Calm down ma’am” and they go into the ambulance cab and say something into a walkie-talkie and then retrieve a stretcher and I point toward the woods and pant along beside them into the trees holding Honey who is absolutely silent and wide-eyed. Once they see Alice they drop to their knees and start their ministrations and I’m darting around saying “What’s happening is she okay is she okay” and the man says “Ma’am why don’t you take the baby and go on back to the car” and I turn tail with Honey and run back to the Buick and set her on the passenger seat next to me and I say “Fuck it” and “I’m sorry” and get out a cigarette and open the window all the way down but water comes in so I raise it up halfway and light the cigarette and she stares at me in quiet wonderment and starts to fiddle with the buttons on the passenger side seat and once I chuck the butt out the window I see the paramedics coming through the trees with something on their stretcher and the man looks at me and nods his head, one swift, grim motion.
I haul Honey onto my lap and get out of the car holding her and run to the paramedics who are putting Alice into the ambulance. “Honey, we’ve got to get her to the hospital, she’s real frail,” the woman says kindly and Honey the baby turns her head from my cheek to look at her. “Where are you taking her?” I say and they tell me the name of a hospital which is Bernville Emergency Clinic and the man barks some directions at me that I try to hold on to and then they have loaded her up and closed the door and I think I should have said goodbye and then I wearily get Honey back in the car and follow to the best of my ability the ambulance and once it has made its way up the dirt road and peeled out into the horizon I try to keep the directions in my head, mercifully the hospital is not back in Berwin Falls but just thirty miles from here. I think I did it once so I might as well count this day as a wash and light another cigarette and smoke out the window while driving which I don’t think I have done in ten years.
