Finding Casey by Jo-Ann Mapson Page B

now,” he said.
    â€œOkay.” I stood up.
    Mrs. Clemmons stood up, too. “You have quite an imagination, Laurel. I would love to hear more of that story.”
    But would she really? People from the Outside play tricks. “I don’t feel like telling any more of it today,” I said.
    â€œDoes talking hurt your throat?”
    I looked at her, wondering if this was a trick. “I have to go to CT with Aspen.”
    â€œMay I visit you later?”
    â€œWe’ll probably be gone as soon as the medicine works.”
    â€œI hope it works quickly,” she said. “If you’re still here tomorrow, I’ll stop by and say hello.”
    She waved, turned, and walked down a hallway, holding up her nametag to a box on the wall that caused a door to open. In a story, it would be magic, but in real life, it was a computer chip. I had to walk fast to keep up with the man pushing the gurney.
    In the room for CT, the man nurse moved Aspen from the gurney bed to a white table that connected to a tall white plastic wall machine with an arm shaped like a big circle. In the middle it had a perfectly round opening. “Aspen,” I said. “It looks like a great big doughnut.” But she didn’t wake up. The person who ran the scanner came out of a small office andarranged Aspen the way she wanted her. “Are you staying?” she asked, and I said, “Yes.” She got me an apron that felt like it was filled with sand and told me to put it on over my overalls.
    She went into the small office where I guessed the switches were. The thing made a clicking, pounding noise that hurt my ears. I was sure it would wake Aspen up. After a few minutes, she started to move her legs and arms, and at first I thought, Hurray, she’s waking up, but then they began to jitter and writhe and I realized what it was. “Please, stop,” I told the woman in the booth. “She’s having a seizure.”
    She came rushing into the room and so did the man nurse waiting outside, and they hollered, “Aspen! Wake up!” and one rubbed her knuckles on her chest, while the other one felt for her pulse. Then he said, “Holy shit, she’s crashing. Call a code!”
    Sh, hit, it. Tis, his.
More people came. Doctors, nurses, I don’t know, but there was yelling and pushing and carts on wheels and machines. I was shoved to the wall right next to the CT doughnut. Maybe the machine caused the seizure and the crashing. They put wires on her chest. They yelled out “Charging!” and “Clear!” and I could have left and no one would have noticed, but my feet would not go. I put my hands against the wall to make sure I was standing up, because it didn’t feel like that.
    Then I prayed, the way Seth always complained I didn’t. With my whole heart.

Chapter 5

Santa Fe, Thanksgiving Day, 2008
    The Vigil family’s Thanksgiving began like any other morning in the City Different. Juniper awoke to the smell of bacon frying, which meant her dad had been out walking the dogs and was now in the kitchen making breakfast. She heard the dogs barking outside, probably at a rabbit. In the summer, the rabbits’ tan bodies blended into the high-desert landscape, but come winter they stood out against the snow like targets. The rabbits’ whole reason for existence seemed to be tormenting the dogs by staying just out of reach. Juniper looked at her watch and scowled. It was early enough that she was going to have to go outdoors and haul them inside. She sat up, pulled on her Ugg boots, and wrapped her old Pendleton blanket around her shoulders.
    â€œCaddy!” she called as she hurried through the great room and flung open the French doors. A blast of cold air smacked her in the face. “Dodge, Caddy, indoors
now
!”
    Her border collie came to her right away, but Dodge was being his usual asshole self, barking as if a rabbit in his yard meant Armageddon.