“She’s displaying neurotoxic symptoms,” he said. “Ptosis, respiratory distress, falling blood pressure, lack of localized edema. We’re monitoring her closely since she may need to be intubated and placed on a ventilator.”
The grandsons—startled—gazed at him suspiciously, while the retarded-looking child waved at Dr. Breedlove with enthusiasm. “Hi!” he said.
Farish stepped forward in a way that made it clear he was in charge.
“Where is she?” He pushed past the doctor. “Let me talk to her.”
“Sir.
“Where is she?” said Farish, standing confounded among tubes and machines and beeping equipment.
Dr. Breedlove stepped in front of him. “Sir, she’s resting comfortably.” Expertly, with the aid of a pair of orderlies, he herded Farish out into the hall. “She doesn’t need to be disturbed now. There’s nothing you can do for her. See, there’s a waiting area down there where you can sit.
Farish shrugged his arm off. “What are yall doing for her?” he said, as if whatever it was, it wasn’t enough.
Dr. Breedlove went back into his smooth speech about the cardiorespiratory monitor and the ptosis and the lack of local edema. What he did not say was that the hospital had no cobra antitoxin and no way of obtaining any. The last few minutes with the Internal Medicine textbook had offered Dr. Breedlove quite a little education in a subject which had not been covered in medical school. For cobra bites, only the specific antitox would do. But only the very largest zoos and medical centers kept it in stock, and it had to be administered within a few hours, or it was useless. So the old lady was on her own. Cobra bite, said his textbook, was anywhere from ten to fifty percent fatal. That was a big margin—especially when the figures didn’t specify if the survival percentage was based upon treated or untreated bites. Besides, she was old, and she had an awful lot wrong with her besides snakebite. The records on her were an inch thick. And if pressed for odds on whether or not the old lady would live the night—or even the next hour—Dr. Breedlove would have had absolutely no idea what to hazard.
————
Harriet hung up the telephone, walked upstairs and into her mother’s bedroom—without knocking—and presented herself at the foot of the bed. “Tomorrow I’m going to Camp Lake de Selby,” she announced.
Harriet’s mother glanced up from her copy of the Ole Miss alumni magazine. She had been half-drowsing over a profile of a former classmate, who had some complicated job on Capitol Hill that Charlotte couldn’t quite get the gist of.
“I’ve called Edie. She’s driving me.”
“What?”
“The second session already started, and they told Edie it was against the rules but they’ll take me anyway. They even gave her a discount.”
She waited, impassively. Her mother didn’t say anything; but it didn’t matter what—if anything—she had to say because the matter was now squarely in Edie’s hands. And as much as she hated Camp de Selby, it wasn’t as bad as reform school or jail.
For Harriet had called her grandmother out of sheer panic. Running down Natchez Street she’d heard sirens wailing—she didn’t know whether it was ambulance or police—before she even made it home. Panting, limping, with cramps in her legs and a burning pain in her lungs, Harriet locked herself in the downstairs bathroom, stripped out of her clothes and threw them in the hamper, and ran herself a bath. Several times—while sitting rigidly in the bathtub, staring at the narrow tropical slashes of light that fell into the dim room through the venetian blinds—she’d heard sounds like voices at the front door. What on earth would she do if it was the police?
Petrified with fear, fully expecting someone to bang on the bathroom door at any moment, Harriet sat in the tub until the water was cold. Once out of the bath, and dressed, she tiptoed down to the front hall and peeked through the lace curtains, but there was nobody in the street. Ida had gone home for the day, and the house was ominously still. It seemed as if years had passed, but in reality it was only forty-five minutes.
Tensely, Harriet stood in the front hall, watching at the window. After a while she got tired of standing there, but still she could not bring herself to go upstairs and she walked back and forth, between the hall and the living room, looking out the front window every so often. Then, again, she heard sirens; for a heart-stopping moment, she thought she heard them turning down George Street. She stood in the middle of the living room, almost too frightened to move, and in a very short time her nerves got the better of her and she dialed Edie’s number—breathless, carrying the telephone over to the lace-curtained sidelights so she could watch the street as they talked.
