“Oh for Pete’s sake,” Piper said and grabbed a bouquet off the table. “I’m outta here if you guys drop one tear. Just let’s please get this over with.”
“I have to put my veil on,” Jorianne said, shooting daggers at her sister.
“I’ll help you,” Marilee said. She tried to take the finely netted headpiece from Jorianne.
The bride swatted her hand away. “You’re shaking like a leaf on a tree. You’ll mess up my hair.” She looked at me. “Dr. Wilder can you help me?”
“Sure,” I said. “But we’ve got to hurry.” I pulled the sheer curtain back and draped it over a nearby chair. Auntie Zanne, the groom and his best man, evidently a soldier dressed in a military uniform, were already standing under the flowered archway. The seventy-something organist, dressed in as much white as the bride, kept glancing toward the house expectantly, a plastered smile on her face, she was swaying and I hoped she’d still be upright when it was time for the Wedding March to be played. “Look. They’re all ready to go.” I nodded toward the scene outside the window, signaling for her to take a look.
“Ooooh!” she squeaked. “Okay. Okay. Okay! I’m ready.” She handed me the veil and turned her back to face the window. I came up behind her, but she could hardly stand still, her legs going back and forth like a jump rope in double Dutch, head bobbing.
“You’ll have to be still,” I said.
“Okay,” she said breathily. “I’ll try.”
“Just take deep breaths,” I said, “and keep your eye on your groom.” I put my chin over her shoulder, almost cheek-to-cheek and pointed.
But as I did, we both witnessed him do a violent body shake that made a surprised look flash across his face. Then his eyes went blank. Bumper coughed a couple of times and turned as pale as a ghost before he went down and collapsed into a heap.
“Oh Jesus!” Jorianne screamed. She hiked up her dress and ran for the door.
“Somebody call a doctor!” Marilee screeched as she ran behind her.
I guess the “letters” behind my name weren’t good enough for her.
Chapter Two
“I’m a doctor.”
A bevy of wedding guests had gathered around Bumper Hackett after he fell. Without lending help, they all stood around and gawked.
“Excuse me. Excuse me, please. I’m a doctor. Let me through.”
I thought I was the only doctor in the house. That voice told me I was not.
Who was that other doctor?
It couldn’t be...
I stopped walking and turned my ear toward his voice.
“Excuse me,” he said.
Oh, he sounded familiar. Very familiar.
I knew it wasn’t anyone from around Roble. That voice didn’t have one ounce of Southern in it.
“I can help,” he said, his voice low but strong.
He was someone I knew. Yes. Someone I knew well.
“Someone tell me what happened,” he said.
Smoky and deep, the sound of that voice made the hair on my neck rise.
It made my heart flutter.
“Breathe,” I said.
The backyard at the funeral home was large. Wild colorful perennials grew tall in an array of colors, a bouquet of fragrance filling the air. The gazebo sat to the back of my Auntie Zanne’s white framed greenhouse. Surrounded by oceans of vibrant blooms of annuals, a rambling pebble stone walkway staggered its way down to it where it was bordered by a small pond. Auntie had borrowed a pair of swans from the Houston Zoo that swam lazily in the blue water where magnolia blossoms floated.
Auntie thought they were perfect symbols for the nuptials. Swans because they mate for life, and magnolia flowers because, so she contended, they were older than the birds and the bees.
A perfect place for a wedding.
A bad time for an emergency.
Piper had put her bouquet down and with a roll of her eyes plopped down in a chair. I had run to the kitchen and picked up my medical bag, but by the time I got down to the gazebo, I had found someone else was tending to Bumper’s needs.
I stood on my tiptoes to see over the crowd, still I couldn’t make him out. I was hesitant to push my way through, the groom already had help and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know who that voice belonged to.
“Please everyone.” The voice was coming from low to the ground now. “Stand back,” it ordered. “Someone tell me his name.”
“Bumper,” I heard a sobbing woman answer.
“Bumper, can you hear me?” A hush had come over the crowd of guests and I heard the palm of a hand slap wet skin. “Bumper, open your eyes. Can you talk to me?”
“He’s my son. That’s my son,” that same woman spoke through her tears. “His name is Michael. Michael Hackett, Jr, but he’s my Bumper.”
“Bumper! Bumper!” Jorianne screamed, echoing his mother’s words. She had torn her way through the crowd and by the sound of her footsteps was stomping on the wooden floor of the gazebo. “Oh please, no! Don’t let him die.”
“That’s my plan,” the voice said calmly. “I need someone to call an ambulance. Now.”
I stood still as a pack of people began to push past me. My feet wouldn’t move and a foggy haze seemed to crest over me, the sun lost behind a cloud darkening my surroundings had made me feel disoriented. I closed my eyes to steady myself.
It couldn’t be...
“And could someone get the... um... bride,” the voice said. “Ma’am, you’re going to have to let me work.”
“I’m not a ma’am!” Jorianne cried. “I was supposed to be.” She let out a wail. “Today. I was going to be a ma’am today.”
“Come on, Jorianne.” I heard gentleness in Tonya’s voice. “Let’s get out of the way. Let the doctor help Bumper.”
“Call 911,” another voice called out, repeating the doctor’s request. “Call them now.”
“I’m already on it.” That was a voice I recognized. It belonged to Mr. Alvarez, the bride’s father.
“Daddy!” Jorianne seemed to just notice him, her voice rushing behind her as she left the covered area. “Oh, Daddy, what is going on?”
“Jorianne, I can’t call and get help if you don’t let me go.” His tone was rushed. Irritated.
“He has asthma,” Bumper’s sobbing mother said. “He’s got an inhaler. Somewhere.” Her voice was trembling. “Wait...” I heard her hesitate. “I have one in my purse.”
I now noticed two groomsmen, tall enough to rise above my blocked view of the downed groom and the doctor who came to his aid. Dressed in matching tuxedos, one white, the other black, both looked lost—teary eyes wide, jaws slack, but somehow the word “inhaler” seemed to jolt them.
“I got one,” one said. He was the thinner of the two, but still stocky. Six-foot-two at least, he was dark-complexioned and wore his shoulder length hair in dreads, falling neatly around his face.
“I’ve got one, too,” the other said, choking out the words. It seemed he was trying to keep himself from crying.
“I’ve got one!” the bride said loudly, seemingly not to be outdone. “It’s in my bag. Oh!” Panic rang through her words. “It’s back in the room!” She started bawling again. “I can’t get it! I can’t leave him! I can’t leave Bumper!”
“He’s not breathing,” the doctor said. Smooth and even. His words strong as he took charge. “An inhaler won’t be of any use. I’m going to loosen his bowtie and shirt.” I could hear his voice judder as he moved the body, grunting sounds accompanying the actions he’d announced. “I have to start CPR.”
“Oh my lord, please don’t let anything happen to my baby! Oh!” Momma Hackett wailed, “You Alvarezs are killing him. Making him do this. Oh Jesus, help me! Somebody help my baby!”
“Everyone stay calm,” the doctor ordered. “Someone please, can you help this man’s mot
her.”
“Bumper! No!” Jorianne shrieked.
She evidently wasn’t getting enough recognition.
“Get her a chair,” a stray voice said. “Get her into a chair before she hits the ground.”
Then I heard, “Who? Jorianne or Miss Hackett?”
Voices were coming from everywhere. “What happened to him?” someone whispered. “Can you die from an asthma attack... Oh my, that poor woman…” I heard the murmurings.
A new voice chimed in. “Here, I’ve got a chair for Miss Hackett.”
“Sit down, Jorianne,” her father instructed.
“I don’t have a chair,” she bawled. “No one’s gotten me a chair!”
“There’s plenty of them around,” he said. “Where’s your momma?”
“I’ve got a chair for her, Mr. Alvarez.” That was Marilee, I knew her tone.
“Doc.” Mr. Alvarez’s boots clacked as he walked onto the platform. “The dispatcher said an ambulance is on the way.”
“Romaine!” I heard my name. “Make way for her. She’s a doctor.” The sea of congregants parted, I blinked and looking up on the platform of the gazebo, I saw my Auntie Zanne beckoning for me. “C’mon, Romaine. Come up here.”
And that’s when I saw him.
My ears hadn’t deceived me.
Nor had my heart.
Chapter Three
Alexander Hale. The man I had prayed to come from Chicago and rescue me from my exile to Roble was bent over the limp and unconscious Groom Bumper administering CPR.
I hadn’t seen him in nearly four months. My knees buckled and I wondered if the paramedics would be able to tend to two bodies. I was sure I was going down at any moment.
“C’mon,” Auntie Zanne said and marched down the two steps and over to me. She grabbed my arm and started pulling me. Looking back at me, she said, “What is wrong with you?” I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. “And where did he come from? Your Chief-of-Staff.”
I shrugged, shaking my head.
“Hi Romaine,” Alex said, a half grin on his face as we arrived up the gazebo steps. Breathing hard, he pumped steady, even compressions, not missing a beat even when saying my name.
I threw up a floppy hand but couldn’t form a response. My mouth had gone dry. Butterflies were doing the jitterbug in my stomach.
My Dr. Hale had come to the rescue, albeit for the groom. But he was there. In the flesh. He stopped pumping, leaned over Bumper and in one swift movement, tilted the head back and lifted his chin. Holding Bumper’s nose between his fingers he pushed through two rescue breaths.
“Your Chief-of-Staff needs help,” Auntie said to me. She’d said when she first met him that I never called him by his name. That I always referred to him by his title. Her saying it now was a way of showing me her dislike of him. I wasn’t going to give in to her digs.
And, I knew better than to jump in during someone giving CPR unless asked. Doing that, disrupting counting or rhythm, could cause a critical mistake, but I stood ready if he did need me.
Alex leaned in and listened for breathing, there must not have been a response because he started his compressions again. “One and…” He looked at us. “Not me,” he said panting, his words in the same cadence as his count. “I don’t need help. Not right now.” He looked at me. “Count.”
“And seven and eight and nine and…” I had mentally been counting with him, standing over the two of them, I picked up where he’d left off.
“Romaine can take over for me if the paramedics take a while to get here,” Alex said to Auntie Zanne. “If I get tired. How far away are they?”
“I’m not sure. Probably about fifteen minutes. No longer than that,” she said. “Especially when they hear it’s at my place.”
Alex smirked at the comment. “I can go that long,” he reassured her with a nod.
“Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine,” I said a little louder, letting him know how close he was to switching up.
“Thirty,” he called back and leaned in for another set of rescue breaths.
I looked around. “We need to get these people out of the way,” I said, now drawn into the emergency, I shook off my anxiousness. I was an M.E., I didn’t do rescue, by the time people got to me there was no hope of that, but I could handle myself in an emergency situation.
“Alex can take care of him,” I said to Auntie Zanne, emphasizing me using his name and not his title. I looked at him as he counted. “If he needs me, I’ll come back. Right now we need to get these people out of the way. The paramedics will need a clear path.”
“Okay,” Auntie Zanne said. “I’ll get the Roble Belles to help me. Probably best for everyone to just go on home, don’t you think? There won’t be a wedding today.”
The Roble Belles were the booster club for Roble High School’s football team. Four of their five members were sixty-five and older. Flannery Poole, the youngest, was in her late fifties.
“Get whoever you need. Do what you think is best,” I said, surveying the crowd, coming up with a plan to move them in my head. “I’ll work my way to the front, moving people out the way so I can direct the paramedics to the back.”
“What if your doctor needs you?” she asked and pointed toward Alex.
“He…He’s not my doctor,” I said, stumbling over my words, even though I had just called him that. I closed my eyes momentarily and shook my head. “I already said, if Alex needs me, Auntie, send someone for me. I’ll just be in the front.”
I stepped down from the gazebo, people instinctively moving aside to let me pass, their questioning eyes searching mine for answers. I saw anxious tears flowing when it should have been champagne. I nodded and put on the funeral face my auntie had taught me after I’d come to live with her and became part of her business. It was one I had continued to use often with families during the identification process as a Cook County medical examiner.
I made my way down the long and wide drive, asking people to clear a way for the paramedics, saying “not yet,” when asked had they arrived yet, and keeping an ear open for word whether Alex needed me to relieve him. As I moved through the crowd, I was able to match some faces to the voices I’d heard.
Jorianne, the weeping bride, was surrounded by her bridesmaids and comforted by Mr. Dreadlocked Groomsman. Sitting beside her, he held her hand and directed others to give her more tissue from a box Marilee was holding. I scanned the anxious faces and her sister, Piper, was nowhere in sight.
The other groomsman stood guard over Mrs. Hackett. Oversized and solid, he had a ruddy complexion, arms that stuck out to his sides, unable to make them flush with his muscular body. His red-tinged eyes were blue, and his hair cut so short he looked nearly bald.
Delores Hackett, who I remembered from one of Auntie’s many club meetings, although I hadn’t seen her in a while, looked unsettled in the white folding chair. Sobs somewhat subsided, she sat shoulders slumped, the heel of her foot tapping to her racing apprehension. She swiped her nose and dabbed at her eyes with a balled up, overused tissue.
I backtracked. “May I?” I said to Marilee and pointed to the tissue box.
“Sure,” she said and held the box out toward me.
I plucked out three and walked over to Mrs. Hackett. The groomsman reacted to my arrival, standing up straight, shoulders back, he seemed on alert, ready to pounce if I’d come to disturb. But as soon as I got close, Mrs. Hackett grabbed me.
“Is Bumper going to be okay?” she asked. Her eyes pleading.
I knew better than to give any definite answers.
“Dr. Hale is one of the best doctors I know.”
“I remember you, though it’s been so long. Babet’s niece. You’re a doctor, right?” she asked.
“I am,” I said and handed her the tissues. I didn’t add what kind of doctor I was.
“His ast
hma just started acting up in the last couple of days,” she said. “I don’t know what triggered it. He hadn’t shown any sign of it for so long. At least the past few years. I thought he’d outgrown it.”
“Nerves,” the groomsman offered.
Mrs. Hackett glanced at him. “Maybe Boone is right. Bumper was so nervous about all of this.” She dipped her head toward the scene. “It was a lot.”
“Getting married makes everyone nervous,” I said and gave her an unfettered smile.
“He’s going into his third year at the University of Southern California, you know,” she said. “USC star football player, and star student, just like in high school.” She nodded firmly. “Then Jori came with her news...” She started pulling the tissue I’d had given her apart, shredding them into pieces. “And her mother insisted…”
“I see,” I said, then a polite pause before I continued, changing the subject. “I’m heading out front to look for the ambulance.” I didn’t want to get involved in blame pointing. “We’re going to get him to the hospital just as soon as we can.”
“Good.” Her gaze drifted and she started rocking from side to side.
“Okay,” I said and looked up at the groomsman, the one Mrs. Hackett had called Boone. “I’m going to go.” He gave me a nod.
“If you see his father, will you send him back?” Mrs. Hackett said, coming back to reality and stopping me before I stood up.
“His father?”
“I called Mr. Hackett,” Boone said as way of an explanation to me. “He’s on his way.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I hope he makes it before the ambulance gets here,” Mrs. Hackett said. “He didn’t want to come to the…” her voice trailed off.
“I see,” I said. It was a phrase I used frequently. It showed I understood and that I had no opinion. Grieving people don’t like opposition, they just want an ear to listen to whatever it is they have to say.
I didn’t know what the groom’s father looked like. I only knew her because she’d been to the house. “I’ll be sure to tell him where you are,” I said and gave a reassuring smile.
LOVE, HOPES, & MARRIAGE TROPES Page 2
