The Name I Crossed Off My Emergency Card

Dottie

On Wednesday evening, the night before the surgery, Dottie came over with a casserole. Chicken and rice with cornflakes on top, the way she always makes it.

She was supposed to be the backup ride. Vicki was supposed to drive me to Quincy. We’d planned it for a month.

But I’d called Dottie on Tuesday and asked if she could do it instead, and she’d said yes before I even finished the question.

Dottie set the casserole on my stove and looked at me.

Then she pulled out a kitchen chair, sat down in it, and folded her hands on the table, the way she used to sit in the principal’s office when a parent came in mad.

“All right,” she said. “What did she do?”

I hadn’t told her anything. I hadn’t told anybody. But I sat down across from her and told her the whole thing, the $540 and the milk crate and the bank must have made a mistake.

Dottie didn’t say a bad word about Vicki. Not one. She just listened, and when I was done she reached over and squeezed my wrist.

“I’ll pick you up at five-fifteen,” she said. “Wear something warm. Those hospitals are colder than a meat locker.”

Before she left, she stopped in the kitchen doorway. “Gail,” she said. “You know my Karen. You know what all I went through with her.”

I did know. Dottie’s daughter Karen went through about ten years of bad men and bad debts.

Car loans, credit cards, one fellow who ran up a phone bill in Dottie’s name. Dottie paid and paid and paid and never said a word to anybody.

“I always wished,” Dottie said, and then she stopped. She shook her head. “Never mind. Get some sleep.”